In the translated literature (translated mainly from English) for children and adolescents, which was popular in the 90s, I found an interesting feature. If the British honestly wrote that the world's first nuclear power plant started working in Russia, then the Americans write that “the first industrial reactor started working in 1956 in the USA”. So they sailed, I thought. But everything was completely different.
This summer, against the backdrop of turbulent events in the country and in the world, an important anniversary passed almost unnoticed. Exactly 60 years ago, in 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant gave electricity in the city of Obninsk. Note, the first is not in the USSR, but in the world. It was built not in the USA, not in Great Britain or France, not in the reviving Germany and Japan, but in the Soviet Union. The same Soviet Union, which lost 28 million people in the war and several million more in the first post-war years. In the Soviet Union, whose industry had recently been in ruins.
The small power of 5 MW did not detract from the significance of the event. For the first time, electrical energy was obtained not by the movement of water or wind, not by burning hydrocarbons, but by splitting the atomic nucleus. It was a breakthrough that scientists all over the world have been pursuing for three decades.
The timing of the construction of the first nuclear power plant is also striking. The experimental, in fact, installation was erected in two years, worked for half a century and was stopped already in the new century. And now compare the pace of construction of the current, for example, the Kaliningrad nuclear power plant, when all technologies have long been tested.
Of course, the development of civilian nuclear energy in those days was an integral part of defense issues, which have always been a priority. It was not only about the manufacture of charges, but also reactor power plants for ships and submarines. But Soviet scientists, we must give them their due, were able to insist that the civilian component is important for the overall development of the country and its political prestige abroad.
By the way, in the same 1954 the Americans completed their first nuclear submarine "Nautilus". With it, in general, a new era of the world submarine fleet began, which has now become truly submarine. Prior to this, "submarines" spent most of their time on the surface, where they charged batteries.
Against this background, the Soviet program was the triumph of precisely the "peaceful atom" that was supposed to serve the needs of the national economy. All those involved in the development, construction and operation of the station fell in a rain of state awards.
A number of experiments were carried out at the Obninsk nuclear power plant, which significantly advanced the domestic nuclear program. In 1958, the Soviet state already received its nuclear submarine, and in 1959 the world's first surface ship with a nuclear power plant - the icebreaker Lenin.
All these achievements, in addition to practical benefits, were supposed to show the Soviet people (and the whole world) the advantages of socialism. Just like the Russian cosmonautics, which emerged in parallel at the same time. It was a triumph not only for Russian, but also for world science as a whole.
Such an intensive development of nuclear energy came at a price. The "Kyshtym tragedy", which is considered the largest radiation disaster after Chernobyl and Fukushima, is a confirmation of this. But in those days, accidents were treated as an inevitable cost of progress.
In the 1950s, it seemed that atomic trains, airplanes and even vacuum cleaners and heaters were about to appear, and nuclear-powered rockets would carry people to Mars and Venus. These dreams were not destined to come true, at least in those days. But, perhaps, we will also find something like that. For example, in early 2011, some media reported on the development of a Russian locomotive with a nuclear power plant. However, there is little hope for a breakthrough. In Soviet times, grandiose projects were kept secret to the last and told to the broad masses only when everything had already been done. Now it is customary to talk a lot and with pomp about grandiose plans, and at the exit we often get either something awkward or nothing at all. Such, apparently, is the spirit of our time.
