Who invented the atomic bomb. Father of the atomic bomb Who created the first atomic bomb

The question of the creators of the first Soviet nuclear bomb is quite controversial and requires a more detailed study, but who really father of the Soviet atomic bomb, there are several entrenched opinions. Most physicists and historians believe that the main contribution to the creation of Soviet nuclear weapons was made by Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov. However, some express the opinion that without Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the founder of Arzamas-16 and the creator of the industrial basis for obtaining enriched fissile isotopes, the first test of this type of weapon in the Soviet Union would have dragged on for several more years.

Let us consider the historical sequence of research and development work to create a practical sample of an atomic bomb, leaving aside the theoretical studies of fissile materials and the conditions for the occurrence of a chain reaction, without which a nuclear explosion is impossible.

For the first time, a series of applications for obtaining copyright certificates for the invention (patents) of the atomic bomb was filed in 1940 by employees of the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology F. Lange, V. Spinel and V. Maslov. The authors considered issues and proposed solutions for the enrichment of uranium and its use as an explosive. The proposed bomb had a classic detonation scheme (cannon type), which was later, with some changes, used to initialize nuclear explosion in American nuclear bombs ah based on uranium.

The outbreak of the Great Patriotic War slowed down theoretical and experimental research in the field of nuclear physics, and the largest centers (Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology and the Radium Institute - Leningrad) ceased their activities and were partially evacuated.

Beginning in September 1941, the intelligence agencies of the NKVD and the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Red Army began to receive an increasing amount of information about the special interest shown in the military circles of Great Britain in the development of explosives based on fissile isotopes. In May 1942, the Main Intelligence Directorate, summarizing the materials received, reported to the State Defense Committee (GKO) on the military purpose of ongoing nuclear research.

Around the same time, Lieutenant Technician Georgy Nikolayevich Flerov, who in 1940 was one of the discoverers of spontaneous fission of uranium nuclei, wrote a letter personally to I.V. Stalin. In his message, the future academician, one of the creators of Soviet nuclear weapons, draws attention to the fact that publications on works related to the fission of the atomic nucleus have disappeared from the scientific press in Germany, Great Britain and the United States. According to the scientist, this may indicate the reorientation of "pure" science in the practical military field.

In October-November 1942, the foreign intelligence service of the NKVD reported to L.P. Beria, all available information about work in the field of nuclear research, obtained by illegal intelligence officers in England and the USA, on the basis of which the People's Commissar writes a memorandum to the head of state.

At the end of September 1942, I.V. Stalin signs the resolution of the State Defense Committee on the resumption and intensification of "works on uranium", and in February 1943, after studying the materials submitted by L.P. Beria, a decision is made to transfer all research on the creation of nuclear weapons (atomic bombs) into a "practical channel". General management and coordination of all types of work were entrusted to the Deputy Chairman of the GKO V.M. Molotov, the scientific management of the project was entrusted to I.V. Kurchatov. The management of work on the search for deposits and the extraction of uranium ore was entrusted to A.P. Zavenyagin, M.G. was responsible for the creation of enterprises for the enrichment of uranium and the production of heavy water. Pervukhin, and the People's Commissar of Nonferrous Metallurgy P.F. Lomako "trusted" by 1944 to accumulate 0.5 tons of metallic (enriched to the required standards) uranium.

At this, the first stage (the deadlines for which were disrupted), providing for the creation of an atomic bomb in the USSR, was completed.

After the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japanese cities, the leadership of the USSR saw with their own eyes the backlog scientific research and practical work on the creation of nuclear weapons from their competitors. To intensify and create an atomic bomb as soon as possible, on August 20, 1945, a special decree of the GKO was issued on the creation of Special Committee No. 1, whose functions included organizing and coordinating all types of work to create a nuclear bomb. L.P. is appointed the head of this emergency body with unlimited powers. Beria, the scientific leadership is entrusted to I.V. Kurchatov. Direct management of all research, design and manufacturing enterprises was supposed to be carried out by the People's Commissar of Arms B.L. Vannikov.

Due to the fact that scientific, theoretical and experimental studies have been completed, intelligence data about the organization industrial production uranium and plutonium were obtained, scouts obtained schemes for American atomic bombs, the greatest difficulty was the transfer of all types of work to an industrial basis. To create enterprises for the production of plutonium, the city of Chelyabinsk - 40 was built from scratch (scientific supervisor I.V. Kurchatov). In the village of Sarov (future Arzamas - 16), a plant was built for the assembly and production on an industrial scale of the atomic bombs themselves (supervisor - chief designer Yu.B. Khariton).

Thanks to the optimization of all types of work and strict control over them by L.P. Beria, who, however, did not interfere with the creative development of the ideas embedded in the projects, in July 1946, technical specifications for the creation of the first two Soviet atomic bombs were developed:

• "RDS - 1" - a bomb with a plutonium charge, the explosion of which was carried out according to the implosive type;
• "RDS - 2" - a bomb with a cannon detonation of a uranium charge.

I.V. Kurchatov.

Paternity rights

Tests of the first atomic bomb created in the USSR "RDS - 1" (abbreviation in different sources stands for - "jet engine C" or "Russia makes itself") took place in the last days of August 1949 in Semipalatinsk under the direct supervision of Yu.B. Khariton. The power of the nuclear charge was 22 kilotons. However, from the point of view of modern copyright law, it is impossible to attribute paternity to this product to any of the Russian (Soviet) citizens. Earlier, when developing the first practical model suitable for military use, the Government of the USSR and the leadership of Special Project No. 1 decided to copy the domestic implosion bomb with a plutonium charge from the American Fat Man prototype dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki as much as possible. Thus, the “fatherhood” of the first nuclear bomb of the USSR rather belongs to General Leslie Groves, the military leader of the Manhattan project, and Robert Oppenheimer, known throughout the world as the “father of the atomic bomb” and who provided scientific leadership on the project. "Manhattan". The main difference between the Soviet model and the American one is the use of domestic electronics in the detonation system and a change in the aerodynamic shape of the bomb body.

The first "purely" Soviet atomic bomb can be considered the product "RDS - 2". Despite the fact that it was originally planned to copy the American uranium prototype "Kid", the Soviet uranium atomic bomb "RDS - 2" was created in an implosive version, which had no analogues at that time. L.P. participated in its creation. Beria - general project management, I.V. Kurchatov is the scientific supervisor of all types of work and Yu.B. Khariton is the scientific adviser and chief designer responsible for the manufacture of a practical sample of the bomb and its testing.

Speaking about who is the father of the first Soviet atomic bomb, one should not lose sight of the fact that both RDS - 1 and RDS - 2 were blown up at the test site. The first atomic bomb dropped from the Tu - 4 bomber was the RDS - 3 product. Its design repeated the RDS-2 implosion bomb, but had a combined uranium-plutonium charge, thanks to which it was possible to increase its power, with the same dimensions, up to 40 kilotons. Therefore, in many publications, academician Igor Kurchatov is considered the “scientific” father of the first atomic bomb actually dropped from an aircraft, since his colleague in the scientific workshop, Yuli Khariton, was categorically against making any changes. The fact that in the entire history of the USSR L.P. Beria and I.V. Kurchatov were the only ones who in 1949 were awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR - "... for the implementation of the Soviet atomic project, the creation of an atomic bomb."

Truth in the penultimate instance

There are not many things in the world that are considered indisputable. Well, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, I think you know. And that the Moon revolves around the Earth, too. And about the fact that the Americans were the first to create an atomic bomb, ahead of both the Germans and the Russians.

So did I, until four years ago an old magazine fell into my hands. He left my beliefs about the sun and the moon alone, but faith in American leadership was shaken quite seriously. It was a plump volume in German, a 1938 binder of Theoretical Physics. I don’t remember why I got there, but quite unexpectedly I came across an article by Professor Otto Hahn.

The name was familiar to me. It was Hahn, the famous German physicist and radiochemist, who in 1938, together with another prominent scientist, Fritz Straussmann, discovered the fission of the uranium nucleus, in fact, starting work on the creation of nuclear weapons. At first, I just skimmed through the article diagonally, but then completely unexpected phrases made me become more attentive. And, ultimately, even forget about why I originally picked up this magazine.

Gan's article was devoted to an overview of nuclear developments in different countries ah world. As a matter of fact, there was nothing special to review: everywhere except Germany, nuclear research was in the pen. They didn't see much point. " This abstract matter has nothing to do with state needs., said British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain around the same time when he was asked to support British atomic research with public money.

« Let these bespectacled scientists look for money themselves, the state has a lot of other problems!" — this was the opinion of most world leaders in the 1930s. Except, of course, the Nazis, who just financed the nuclear program.
But it was not Chamberlain's passage, carefully quoted by Hahn, that caught my attention. England does not interest the author of these lines much at all. Much more interesting was what Hahn wrote about the state of nuclear research in the United States of America. And he literally wrote the following:

If we talk about the country in which the processes of nuclear fission are given the least attention, then the United States should undoubtedly be called. Of course, now I am not considering Brazil or the Vatican. However among developed countries, even Italy and communist Russia are far ahead of the United States. Little attention is paid to the problems of theoretical physics on the other side of the ocean, priority is given to applied developments that can give immediate profit. Therefore, I can state with confidence that during the next decade the North Americans will not be able to do anything significant for the development of atomic physics.

At first I just laughed. Wow, how wrong my compatriot! And only then I thought: whatever one may say, Otto Hahn was not a simpleton or an amateur. He was well informed about the state of atomic research, especially since before the outbreak of World War II this topic was freely discussed in scientific circles.

Maybe the Americans misinformed the whole world? But for what purpose? No one even thought about nuclear weapons in the 1930s. Moreover, most scientists considered its creation impossible in principle. That is why, until 1939, all new achievements in atomic physics instantly recognized by the whole world - they were published quite openly in scientific journals. No one hid the fruits of their labor, on the contrary, there was an open rivalry between different groups of scientists (almost exclusively Germans) - who will move forward faster?

Maybe scientists in the States were ahead of the whole world and therefore kept their achievements a secret? Nonsense assumption. To confirm or refute it, we will have to consider the history of the creation of the American atomic bomb - at least as it appears in official publications. We are all accustomed to take it on faith as a matter of course. However, upon closer examination, there are so many oddities and inconsistencies in it that you simply wonder.

With the world on a string - US bomb

1942 began well for the British. The German invasion of their little island, which seemed imminent, now, as if by magic, receded into a misty distance. Last summer, Hitler made the biggest mistake of his life - he attacked Russia. This was the beginning of the end. The Russians not only held out against the hopes of the Berlin strategists and the pessimistic forecasts of many observers, but also gave the Wehrmacht a good punch in the teeth in a frosty winter. And in December, the big and powerful United States came to the aid of the British and was now an official ally. In general, there were more than enough reasons for joy.

Only a few high-ranking officials who owned the information that British intelligence had received were not happy. At the end of 1941, the British became aware that the Germans were developing their atomic research at a frantic pace.. The ultimate goal of this process became clear - a nuclear bomb. The British atomic scientists were competent enough to imagine the threat posed by the new weapon.

At the same time, the British had no illusions about their capabilities. All the resources of the country were directed to elementary survival. Although the Germans and Japanese were up to their necks in the war with the Russians and the Americans, from time to time they found an opportunity to poke their fist into the decrepit building of the British Empire. From each such poke, the rotten building staggered and creaked, threatening to collapse.

Rommel's three divisions fettered almost the entire combat-ready British army in North Africa. Admiral Dönitz's submarines, like predatory sharks, darted across the Atlantic, threatening to interrupt the vital supply chain from across the ocean. Britain simply did not have the resources to enter into a nuclear race with the Germans.. The backlog was already large, and in the very near future it threatened to become hopeless.

I must say that the Americans were initially skeptical about such a gift. The military department point-blank did not understand why it should spend money on some obscure project. What other new weapons are there? Here are aircraft carrier groups and armadas of heavy bombers - yes, this is strength. And the nuclear bomb, which scientists themselves imagine very vaguely, is just an abstraction, grandmother's tales.

I had to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to contact directly American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with a request, literally a plea, not to reject the English gift. Roosevelt called the scientists to him, figured out the issue and gave the go-ahead.

Usually the creators of the canonical legend of the American bomb use this episode to emphasize the wisdom of Roosevelt. Look, what a shrewd president! We will look at it a little differently: in what pen were the Yankees in atomic research, if they so long and stubbornly refused to cooperate with the British! So Gan was absolutely right in his assessment of the American nuclear scientists - they were nothing solid.

Only in September 1942 was it decided to start work on the atomic bomb. The organizational period took some more time, and things really moved from dead center only with the advent of the new year, 1943. From the army, the work was headed by General Leslie Groves (later he would write memoirs in which he would detail the official version of what was happening), the real leader was Professor Robert Oppenheimer. I will talk about it in detail a little later, but for now let's admire one more curious detail- how the team of scientists who began work on the bomb was formed.

In fact, when Oppenheimer was asked to recruit specialists, he had very little choice. Good nuclear physicists in the States could be counted on the fingers of a crippled hand. So the professor took a wise decision- to recruit people whom he knows personally and whom he can trust, regardless of what area of ​​\u200b\u200bphysics they were engaged in before. And so it turned out that the lion's share of the seats was occupied by employees of Columbia University from Manhattan County (by the way, that is why the project was called Manhattan).

But even these forces were not enough. British scientists had to be involved in the work, literally devastating British research centers, and even specialists from Canada. In general, the Manhattan Project has become a kind of Tower of Babel, with the only difference being that all of its participants spoke more or less the same language. However, this did not save us from the usual quarrels and squabbles in the scientific community, which arose due to the rivalry of different scientific groups. Echoes of these frictions can be found on the pages of Groves' book, and they look very funny: the general, on the one hand, wants to convince the reader that everything was decorous and decent, and on the other hand, to boast how deftly he managed to reconcile completely quarreling scientific luminaries.

And now they are trying to convince us that in this friendly atmosphere of a large terrarium, the Americans managed to create an atomic bomb in two and a half years. And the Germans, who pored over their nuclear project merrily and amicably for five years, did not succeed. Miracles, and nothing more.

However, even if there were no squabbles, such record terms would still arouse suspicion. The fact is that in the process of research you need to go through certain stages, which is almost impossible to reduce. The Americans themselves attribute their success to gigantic funding - in the end, More than two billion dollars were spent on the Manhattan Project! However, no matter how you feed a pregnant woman, she still will not be able to give birth to a full-term baby before nine months. It is the same with the nuclear project: it is impossible to significantly speed up, for example, the process of uranium enrichment.

The Germans worked for five years with full effort. Of course, they also had mistakes and miscalculations that took up precious time. But who said that the Americans had no mistakes and miscalculations? There were, and many. One of these mistakes was the involvement of the famous physicist Niels Bohr.

Skorzeny's unknown operation

British intelligence services are very fond of boasting about one of their operations. It's about about the rescue of the great Danish scientist Niels Bohr from Nazi Germany. The official legend says that after the outbreak of World War II, the outstanding physicist lived quietly and calmly in Denmark, leading a rather secluded lifestyle. The Nazis offered him cooperation many times, but Bohr invariably refused.

By 1943, the Germans nevertheless decided to arrest him. But, warned in time, Niels Bohr managed to escape to Sweden, from where the British took him out in the bomb bay of a heavy bomber. By the end of the year, the physicist was in America and began to work zealously for the benefit of the Manhattan Project.

The legend is beautiful and romantic, only it is sewn with white thread and does not withstand any tests.. There is no more credibility in it than in the fairy tales of Charles Perrault. Firstly, because the Nazis look like complete idiots in it, and they never were like that. Think well! In 1940 the Germans occupied Denmark. They know that a Nobel laureate lives on the territory of the country, who can be of great help to them in their work on the atomic bomb. The same atomic bomb, which is vital for the victory of Germany.

And what do they do? They occasionally visit the scientist for three years, politely knock on the door and quietly ask: “ Herr Bohr, do you want to work for the benefit of the Fuhrer and the Reich? You do not want? Okay, we'll come back later.". No, this was not the way the German secret services worked! Logically, they should have arrested Bohr not in 1943, but in 1940. If possible, force (namely force, not beg!) to work for them, if not, at least make sure that he cannot work for the enemy: put him in a concentration camp or destroy him. And they leave him to roam free, under the noses of the British.

Three years later, the legend goes, the Germans finally realize that they are supposed to arrest the scientist. But then someone (namely, someone, because I did not find any indication of who did it anywhere) warns Bohr of the imminent danger. Who could it be? It was not the habit of the Gestapo to shout at every corner about impending arrests. People were taken quietly, unexpectedly, at night. So, the mysterious patron of Bor is one of the rather high-ranking officials.

Let's leave this mysterious savior angel alone for now and continue to analyze the wanderings of Niels Bohr. So the scientist fled to Sweden. How do you think, how? On a fishing boat, avoiding German Coast Guard boats in the fog? On a raft made of boards? No matter how! Bor, with the greatest possible comfort, sailed to Sweden on the most ordinary private steamer, which officially entered the port of Copenhagen.

Let's not puzzle over the question of how the Germans released the scientist if they were going to arrest him. Let's think about this better. The flight of a world-famous physicist is an emergency on a very serious scale. On this occasion, an investigation was inevitably to be carried out - the heads of those who screwed up the physicist, as well as the mysterious patron, would have flown. However, no traces of such an investigation could be found. Maybe because it didn't exist.

Indeed, how valuable was Niels Bohr for the development of the atomic bomb? Born in 1885 and becoming a Nobel laureate in 1922, Bohr turned to the problems of nuclear physics only in the 1930s. At that time, he was already a major, accomplished scientist with well-formed views. Such people rarely succeed in areas that require an innovative approach and out of the box thinking- namely, nuclear physics was such an area. For several years, Bohr failed to make any significant contribution to atomic research.

However, as the ancients said, the first half of life a person works for the name, the second - the name for the person. With Niels Bohr, this second half has already begun. Having taken up nuclear physics, he automatically began to be considered a major specialist in this field, regardless of his real achievements.

But in Germany, where such world-famous nuclear scientists as Hahn and Heisenberg worked, the real value of the Danish scientist was known. That is why they did not actively try to involve him in the work. It will turn out - good, we will trumpet to the whole world that Niels Bohr himself is working for us. If it doesn’t work out, it’s also not bad, it won’t get underfoot with its authority.

By the way, in the United States, Niels Bohr to a large extent got in the way. The fact is that an outstanding physicist did not believe at all in the possibility of creating a nuclear bomb. At the same time, his authority forced to reckon with his opinion. According to Groves' memoirs, the scientists working on the Manhattan Project treated Bohr like an elder. Now imagine that you are doing some difficult work without any confidence in the final success. And then someone whom you consider a great specialist comes up to you and says that it’s not even worth spending time on your lesson. Will the job get easier? I don't think.

In addition, Bohr was a staunch pacifist. In 1945, when the US already had an atomic bomb, he vehemently protested its use. Accordingly, he treated his work with coolness. Therefore, I urge you to think again: what did Bohr bring more - movement or stagnation in the development of the issue?

It's a strange picture, isn't it? It began to clear up a little after I learned one interesting detail, which seemed to have nothing to do with Niels Bohr or the atomic bomb. We are talking about the "main saboteur of the Third Reich" Otto Skorzeny.

It is believed that Skorzeny's rise began after he released Italian dictator Benito Mussolini from prison in 1943. Imprisoned in a mountain prison by his former associates, Mussolini could not, it would seem, hope for release. But Skorzeny, on the direct instructions of Hitler, developed a daring plan: to land troops in gliders and then fly away in a small airplane. Everything turned out perfectly: Mussolini is free, Skorzeny is held in high esteem.

At least that's what most people think. Only a few well-informed historians know that cause and effect are confused here. Skorzeny was entrusted with an extremely difficult and responsible task precisely because Hitler trusted him. That is, the rise of the "king of special operations" began before the story of Mussolini's rescue. However, very soon - a couple of months. Skorzeny was promoted in rank and position exactly when Niels Bohr fled to England. I couldn't find any reason to upgrade.

So we have three facts:
— First of all, the Germans did not prevent Niels Bohr from leaving for Britain;
— Secondly, Boron did more harm than good to Americans;
— third, immediately after the scientist ended up in England, Skorzeny gets a promotion.

But what if these are the details of one mosaic? I decided to try to reconstruct the events. Having captured Denmark, the Germans were well aware that Niels Bohr was unlikely to assist in the creation of an atomic bomb. Moreover, it will rather interfere. Therefore, he was left to live in peace in Denmark, under the very nose of the British. Maybe even then the Germans expected that the British would kidnap the scientist. However, for three years the British did not dare to do anything.

At the end of 1942, vague rumors began to reach the Germans about the start of a large-scale project to create an American atomic bomb. Even given the secrecy of the project, it was absolutely impossible to keep the awl in the bag: the instant disappearance of hundreds of scientists from different countries, one way or another connected with nuclear research, should have prompted any mentally normal person to such conclusions.

The Nazis were sure that they were far ahead of the Yankees (and this was true), but this did not prevent the enemy from doing something nasty. And at the beginning of 1943, one of the most secret operations of the German special services was carried out. On the threshold of Niels Bohr's house, a certain well-wisher appears who tells him that they want to arrest him and throw him into a concentration camp, and offers his help. The scientist agrees - he has no other choice, being behind barbed wire is not the best prospect.

At the same time, apparently, the British are being lied to about the complete indispensability and uniqueness of Bohr in the field of nuclear research. The British are pecking - and what can they do if the prey itself goes into their hands, that is, to Sweden? And for complete heroism, Bora is taken out of there in the belly of a bomber, although they could comfortably send him on a ship.

And then the Nobel laureate appears at the epicenter of the Manhattan Project, producing the effect of an exploding bomb. That is, if the Germans managed to bomb the research center at Los Alamos, the effect would be about the same. Work has slowed down, moreover, very significantly. Apparently, the Americans did not immediately realize how they were cheated, and when they realized, it was already too late.
Do you still believe that the Yankees built the atomic bomb themselves?

Mission "Alsos"

Personally, I finally refused to believe in these tales after I studied in detail the activities of the Alsos group. This operation of the American intelligence services was kept secret for many years - until its main participants left for a better world. And only then did information come to light - albeit fragmentary and scattered - about how the Americans hunted for German atomic secrets.

True, if you thoroughly work on this information and compare it with some well-known facts, the picture turned out to be very convincing. But I won't get ahead of myself. So, the Alsos group was formed in 1944, on the eve of the landing of the Anglo-Americans in Normandy. Half of the members of the group are professional intelligence officers, half are nuclear scientists.

At the same time, in order to form Alsos, the Manhattan Project was mercilessly robbed - in fact, the best specialists. The task of the mission was to collect information about the German atomic program. The question is, how desperate were the Americans in the success of their undertaking, if they made the main bet on stealing the atomic bomb from the Germans?
It was great to despair, if we recall a little-known letter from one of the atomic scientists to his colleague. It was written on February 4, 1944 and read:

« It looks like we're in a hopeless case. The project is not moving forward one iota. Our leaders, in my opinion, do not believe in the success of the whole undertaking at all. Yes, and we do not believe. If it were not for the huge money that we are paid here, I think many would have been doing something more useful long ago.».

This letter was cited at one time as proof of American talents: look, they say, what good fellows we are, in a little over a year we pulled out a hopeless project! Then in the USA they realized that not only fools live around, and they hurried to forget about the piece of paper. With great difficulty I managed to dig up this document in an old scientific journal.

They spared no money and effort to ensure the actions of the Alsos group. She was well equipped with everything you need. The head of the mission, Colonel Pash, had a document from US Secretary of Defense Henry Stimson, which obligated everyone to provide the group with all possible assistance. Even Commander-in-Chief of the Allied Forces Dwight Eisenhower did not have such powers.. By the way, about the commander-in-chief - he was obliged to take into account the interests of the Alsos mission in planning military operations, that is, to capture in the first place those areas where German atomic weapons could be.

At the beginning of August 1944, to be precise - on the 9th, the Alsos group landed in Europe. One of the leading US nuclear scientists, Dr. Samuel Goudsmit, was appointed scientific director of the mission. Before the war, he maintained close ties with his German colleagues, and the Americans hoped that the "international solidarity" of scientists would be stronger than political interests.

Alsos managed to achieve the first results after the Americans occupied Paris in the fall of 1944.. Here Goudsmit met with the famous French scientist Professor Joliot-Curie. Curie seemed sincerely happy about the defeats of the Germans; however, as soon as it came to the German atomic program, he went into a deaf "unconscious". The Frenchman insisted that he did not know anything, had not heard anything, the Germans did not even come close to developing an atomic bomb, and in general their nuclear project was of an exclusively peaceful nature.

It was clear that the professor was missing something. But there was no way to put pressure on him - for cooperation with the Germans in what was then France, they were shot, regardless of scientific merits, and Curie was clearly afraid of death most of all. Therefore, Goudsmit had to leave without salty slurping.

Throughout his stay in Paris, vague but threatening rumors constantly reached him: uranium bomb exploded in Leipzig, in mountainous areas Bavaria is marked by strange outbreaks at night. Everything indicated that the Germans were either very close to creating atomic weapons or had already created them.

What happened next is still shrouded in mystery. They say that Pasha and Goudsmit still managed to find some valuable information in Paris. Since November at least, Eisenhower has received constant demands to move forward into German territory at any cost. The initiators of these demands - now it's clear! - in the end, it turned out to be people associated with the atomic project and who received information directly from the Alsos group. Eisenhower did not have a real opportunity to carry out the orders received, but the demands from Washington became more and more stringent. It is not known how all this would have ended if the Germans had not made another unexpected move.

Ardennes riddle

In fact, by the end of 1944, everyone believed that Germany had lost the war. The only question is how long the Nazis will be defeated. It seems that only Hitler and his closest associates adhered to a different point of view. They tried to delay the moment of the catastrophe until the last moment.

This desire is quite understandable. Hitler was sure that after the war he would be declared a criminal and would be tried. And if you play for time, you can get a quarrel between the Russians and the Americans and, ultimately, get out of the water, that is, out of the war. Not without losses, of course, but without losing power.

Let's think: what was needed for this in conditions when Germany had nothing left of forces? Naturally, spend them as sparingly as possible, keep a flexible defense. And Hitler, at the very end of the 44th, throws his army into a very wasteful Ardennes offensive. What for?

The troops are given completely unrealistic tasks - to break through to Amsterdam and throw the Anglo-Americans into the sea. Before Amsterdam, German tanks were at that time like walking to the moon, especially since fuel splashed in their tanks for less than half the way. Scare allies? But what could frighten well-fed and armed armies, behind which was the industrial power of the United States?

Generally, Until now, not a single historian has been able to clearly explain why Hitler needed this offensive. Usually everyone ends with the argument that the Fuhrer was an idiot. But in fact, Hitler was not an idiot, moreover, he thought quite sensibly and realistically until the very end. Idiots can rather be called those historians who make hasty judgments without even trying to figure something out.

But let's look at the other side of the front. There are even more amazing things going on! And it's not even that the Germans managed to achieve initial, albeit rather limited, successes. The fact is that the British and Americans were really scared! Moreover, the fear was completely inadequate to the threat. After all, from the very beginning it was clear that the Germans had few forces, that the offensive was local in nature ...

So no, and Eisenhower, and Churchill, and Roosevelt simply fall into a panic! In 1945, on January 6, when the Germans were already stopped and even driven back, British Prime Minister writes panic letter to Russian leader Stalin which requires immediate assistance. Here is the text of this letter:

« There is very heavy fighting going on in the West, and at any time big decisions may be required from the High Command. You yourself know from your own experience how disturbing is the situation when one has to defend a very wide front after a temporary loss of initiative.

It is highly desirable and necessary for General Eisenhower to know in in general terms what you intend to do, as this, of course, will affect all of his and our most important decisions. According to the message received, our emissary Air Chief Marshal Tedder was in Cairo last night, weather-bound. His trip was greatly delayed through no fault of yours.

If he has not yet arrived to you, I shall be grateful if you can let me know if we can count on a major Russian offensive on the Vistula front or somewhere else during January and at any other points that you may you wish to mention. I will not pass on this highly classified information to anyone, with the exception of Field Marshal Brooke and General Eisenhower, and only on condition that it is kept in the strictest confidence. I consider the matter urgent».

If you translate from diplomatic language into ordinary: save us, Stalin, they will beat us! Therein lies another mystery. What kind of "beat" if the Germans have already been thrown back to the starting lines? Yes, of course, the American offensive, planned for January, had to be postponed to the spring. So what? We must rejoice that the Nazis squandered their strength in senseless attacks!

And further. Churchill slept and saw how to keep the Russians out of Germany. And now he is literally begging them to start moving west without delay! To what extent should Sir Winston Churchill be frightened?! It seems that the slowdown in the advance of the Allies deep into Germany was interpreted by him as a mortal threat. I wonder why? After all, Churchill was neither a fool nor an alarmist.

And yet, the Anglo-Americans spend the next two months in a terrible nervous tension. Subsequently, they will carefully hide it, but the truth will still break through to the surface in their memoirs. For example, Eisenhower after the war will call the last war winter "the most disturbing time."

What worried the marshal so much if the war was actually won? Only in March 1945 did the Ruhr operation begin, during which the Allies occupied West Germany, surrounding 300,000 Germans. The commander of the German troops in the area, Field Marshal Model, shot himself (the only one of the entire German generals, by the way). Only after this did Churchill and Roosevelt more or less calm down.

But back to the Alsos group. In the spring of 1945, it noticeably intensified. During the Ruhr operation, scientists and intelligence officers moved forward almost after the vanguard of the advancing troops, collecting a valuable harvest. In March-April, many scientists involved in German nuclear research fall into their hands. The decisive find was made in mid-April - on the 12th, members of the mission write that they stumbled upon "a real gold mine" and now they "learn about the project in the main." By May, Heisenberg, and Hahn, and Osenberg, and Diebner, and many other outstanding German physicists were in the hands of the Americans. Nevertheless, the Alsos group continued active searches in the already defeated Germany ... until the end of May.

But at the end of May, something strange happens. The search is almost over. Rather, they continue, but with much less intensity. If earlier they were engaged in by prominent world-famous scientists, now they are beardless laboratory assistants. And the big scientists pack their things in droves and leave for America. Why?

To answer this question, let's see how events developed further.

At the end of June, the Americans conduct tests of an atomic bomb - allegedly the first in the world.
And in early August, they drop two on Japanese cities.
After that, the Yankees run out of ready-made atomic bombs, and for quite a long time.

Strange situation, isn't it? Let's start with the fact that only a month passes between testing and combat use of a new superweapon. Dear readers, this is not the case. Making an atomic bomb is much more difficult than conventional projectile or a rocket. For a month it is simply impossible. Then, probably, the Americans made three prototypes at once? Also incredible.

Making a nuclear bomb is a very expensive procedure. There is no point in doing three if you are not sure that you are doing everything right. Otherwise, it would be possible to create three nuclear projects, build three research centers, and so on. Even the US is not rich enough to be so extravagant.

However, well, let's assume that the Americans really built three prototypes at once. Why didn't they immediately start mass production of nuclear bombs after successful tests? After all, immediately after the defeat of Germany, the Americans found themselves in the face of a much more powerful and formidable enemy - the Russians. The Russians, of course, did not threaten the United States with war, but they prevented the Americans from becoming masters of the entire planet. And this, from the point of view of the Yankees, is a completely unacceptable crime.

Nevertheless, the United States has new atomic bombs ... When do you think? In the autumn of 1945? In the summer of 1946? Not! Only in 1947 did the first nuclear weapons begin to enter the American arsenals! You will not find this date anywhere, but no one will undertake to refute it either. The data that I managed to get is absolutely secret. However, they are fully confirmed by the facts known to us about the subsequent buildup of the nuclear arsenal. And most importantly - the results of tests in the deserts of Texas, which took place at the end of 1946.

Yes, yes, dear reader, exactly at the end of 1946, and not a month earlier. The data about this was obtained by Russian intelligence and got to me in a very complicated way, which, probably, does not make sense to disclose on these pages, so as not to substitute the people who helped me. On the eve of the new year, 1947, a very curious report lay on the table of the Soviet leader Stalin, which I will quote here verbatim.

According to Agent Felix, in November-December of this year, a series of nuclear explosions were carried out in the El Paso, Texas area. At the same time, prototypes of nuclear bombs were tested, similar to those dropped on the Japanese islands last year.

Within a month and a half, at least four bombs were tested, the tests of three ended unsuccessfully. This series of bombs was created in preparation for the large-scale industrial production of nuclear weapons. Most likely, the beginning of such a release should be expected no earlier than mid-1947.

The Russian agent fully confirmed the data I had. But maybe all this is disinformation on the part of the American intelligence services? Unlikely. In those years, the Yankees tried to convince their opponents that they were the strongest in the world, and would not underestimate their military potential. Most likely, we are dealing with a carefully hidden truth.

What happens? In 1945, the Americans drop three bombs - and all are successful. The next test - the same bombs! - pass a year and a half later, and not too successfully. Serial production begins in another six months, and we do not know - and will never know - to what extent the atomic bombs that appeared in the American army warehouses corresponded to their terrible purpose, that is, how high-quality they were.

Such a picture can be drawn only in one case, namely: if the first three atomic bombs - the same ones from 1945 - were not built by the Americans on their own, but received from someone. To put it bluntly - from the Germans. Indirectly, this hypothesis is confirmed by the reaction of German scientists to the bombing of Japanese cities, which we know about thanks to the book by David Irving.

"Poor Professor Gan!"

In August 1945, ten leading German nuclear physicists, ten chief actors"atomic project" of the Nazis, were held captive in the United States. All possible information was pulled out of them (I wonder why, if you believe the American version that the Yankees were far ahead of the Germans in atomic research). Accordingly, scientists were kept in a kind of comfortable prison. There was also a radio in this prison.

On August 6, at seven o'clock in the evening, Otto Hahn and Karl Wirtz were at the radio. It was then that in the next news release they heard that the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan. The first reaction of the colleagues to whom they brought this information was unequivocal: this cannot be true. Heisenberg believed that the Americans could not create their own nuclear weapons (and, as we now know, he was right).

« Did the Americans mention the word "uranium" in connection with their new bomb? he asked Han. The latter replied in the negative. “Then it has nothing to do with the atom,” Heisenberg snapped. An eminent physicist believed that the Yankees simply used some kind of high-powered explosive.

However, the nine o'clock newscast dispelled all doubts. Obviously, until then the Germans simply did not assume that the Americans managed to capture several German atomic bombs. However, now the situation has cleared up, and scientists began to torment the pangs of conscience. Yes Yes exactly! Dr. Erich Bagge wrote in his diary: Now this bomb has been used against Japan. They report that even after a few hours the bombed city is hidden by a cloud of smoke and dust. We are talking about the death of 300 thousand people. Poor professor Gan!»

Moreover, that evening, scientists were very worried about how "poor Gang" would not commit suicide. Two physicists were on duty at his bedside until late to prevent him from killing himself, and went to their rooms only after they found that their colleague had finally fallen into a sound sleep. Gan himself later described his impressions as follows:

For a while I was occupied with the idea of ​​dumping all the uranium into the sea in order to avoid a similar catastrophe in the future. Although I felt personally responsible for what happened, I wondered if I or anyone else has the right to deprive humanity of all the fruits that a new discovery can bring? And now this terrible bomb has worked!

Interestingly, if the Americans are telling the truth, and the bomb that fell on Hiroshima was really created by them, why should the Germans feel "personally responsible" for what happened? Of course, each of them contributed to nuclear research, but on the same basis, one could place some of the blame on thousands of scientists, including Newton and Archimedes! After all, their discoveries eventually led to the creation of nuclear weapons!

The mental anguish of German scientists acquires meaning only in one case. Namely, if they themselves created the bomb that destroyed hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Otherwise, why should they worry about what the Americans have done?

However, so far all my conclusions have been nothing more than a hypothesis, confirmed only by circumstantial evidence. What if I'm wrong and the Americans really managed the impossible? To answer this question, it was necessary to closely study the German atomic program. And it's not as easy as it seems.

/Hans-Ulrich von Krantz, "The Secret Weapon of the Third Reich", topwar.ru/

One day - one truth" url="https://diletant.media/one-day/26522782/">

7 countries with nuclear weapons form a nuclear club. Each of these states spent millions to create their own atomic bomb. Development has been going on for years. But without the gifted physicists who were assigned to conduct research in this area, nothing would have happened. About these people in today's Diletant selection. media.

Robert Oppenheimer

The parents of the man under whose leadership the world's first atomic bomb was created had nothing to do with science. Oppenheimer's father was a textile trader, and his mother was an artist. Robert graduated early from Harvard, took a course in thermodynamics and became interested in experimental physics.


After several years of work in Europe, Oppenheimer moved to California, where he lectured for two decades. When the Germans discovered the fission of uranium in the late 1930s, the scientist thought about the problem of nuclear weapons. Since 1939, he was actively involved in the creation of the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project and directed the laboratory at Los Alamos.

In the same place, on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer's "brainchild" was first tested. "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," said the physicist after the test.

A few months later, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer has since insisted on using atomic energy exclusively for peaceful purposes. Having become a defendant in a criminal case because of his unreliability, the scientist was removed from secret developments. He died in 1967 from cancer of the larynx.

Igor Kurchatov

The USSR acquired its own atomic bomb four years later than the Americans. It was not without the help of scouts, but the merits of the scientists working in Moscow should not be underestimated. Atomic research was led by Igor Kurchatov. His childhood and youth were spent in the Crimea, where he first trained as a locksmith. Then he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Tauride University, continued to study in Petrograd. There he entered the laboratory of the famous Abram Ioffe.

Kurchatov took over the Soviet nuclear project when he was only 40 years old. Years of painstaking work involving leading experts have brought long-awaited results. The first nuclear weapon in our country called RDS-1 was tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949.

The experience accumulated by Kurchatov and his team allowed the Soviet Union to subsequently launch the world's first industrial nuclear power plant, as well as a nuclear reactor for a submarine and an icebreaker, which no one has been able to do before.

Andrey Sakharov

The hydrogen bomb appeared first in the United States. But American pattern was the size of a three-story house and weighed over 50 tons. Meanwhile, the RDS-6s product, created by Andrei Sakharov, weighed only 7 tons and could fit on a bomber.

During the war, Sakharov, while in evacuation, graduated with honors from Moscow State University. He worked as an engineer-inventor at a military plant, then entered the FIAN graduate school. Under the leadership of Igor Tamm, he worked in a research group for the development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov came up with the basic principle of the Soviet hydrogen bomb - puff.

Tests of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb took place in 1953

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested near Semipalatinsk in 1953. To assess the destructive capabilities, a city was built on the site from industrial and administrative buildings.

Since the late 1950s, Sakharov devoted much time to human rights activities. He condemned the arms race, criticized the communist government, spoke out for the abolition of the death penalty and against the forced psychiatric treatment of dissidents. He opposed the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1980 he was exiled to Gorky for his beliefs, where he repeatedly went on hunger strikes and from where he was able to return to Moscow only in 1986.

Bertrand Goldschmidt

The ideologist of the French nuclear program was Charles de Gaulle, and the creator of the first bomb was Bertrand Goldschmidt. Before the start of the war, the future specialist studied chemistry and physics, joined Marie Curie. German occupation and the attitude of the Vichy government towards the Jews forced Goldschmidt to stop his studies and emigrate to the United States, where he collaborated first with American and then with Canadian colleagues.


In 1945, Goldschmidt became one of the founders of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The first test of the bomb created under his leadership took place only 15 years later - in the south-west of Algeria.

Qian Sanqiang

China joined the club nuclear powers only in October 1964. Then the Chinese tested their own atomic bomb with a capacity of more than 20 kilotons. Mao Zedong decided to develop this industry after his first trip to the Soviet Union. In 1949, Stalin showed the possibilities of nuclear weapons to the great helmsman.

Qian Sanqiang was in charge of the Chinese nuclear project. A graduate of the Physics Department of Tsinghua University, he went to study in France at public expense. He worked at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. Qian talked a lot with foreign scientists and did some pretty serious research, but he missed his homeland and returned to China, taking a few grams of radium as a gift from Irene Curie.

One of the first practical steps The Special Committee and the PGU made decisions on the creation of a production base for a nuclear weapons complex. In 1946, a number of important decisions were made in connection with these plans. One of them concerned the creation of a specialized design bureau for the development of nuclear weapons at Laboratory No. 2.

On April 9, 1946, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a closed resolution No. 806-327 on the creation of KB-11. That was the name of the organization designed to create a "product", that is, an atomic bomb. P.M. was appointed head of KB-11. Zernov, chief designer - Yu.B. Khariton.

By the time the resolution was adopted, the issue of creating KB-11 had been worked out in detail. Its location has already been determined, taking into account the specifics future work. On the one hand especially high degree the secrecy of the planned work, the need for explosive experiments predetermined the choice of a sparsely populated area, hidden from visual observations. On the other hand, one should not move too far away from the enterprises and organizations co-executing the atomic project, a significant part of which were located in the central regions of the country. An important factor was the presence of a production base and transport arteries on the territory of the future design bureau.

KB-11 was tasked with creating two variants of atomic bombs - plutonium using spherical compression and uranium with cannon rapprochement. Upon completion of the development, it was planned to conduct state tests of charges at a special range. A ground explosion of a charge of a plutonium bomb was supposed to be carried out before January 1, 1948, a uranium bomb - before June 1, 1948.

The official starting point for the development of the RDS-1 should be the date of issuance of the “Tactical and Technical Assignment for the Atomic Bomb” (TTZ), signed by Chief Designer Yu.B. Khariton on July 1, 1946 and sent to the head of the First Main Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR B.L. Vannikov. The terms of reference consisted of 9 points and specified the type of nuclear fuel, the method of its transfer through the critical state, the overall mass characteristics of the atomic bomb, the timing of the operation of electric detonators, the requirements for a high-altitude fuse and self-destruction of the product in the event of failure of the equipment that ensures the operation of this fuse.

In accordance with the TTZ, it was planned to develop two versions of atomic bombs - an implosion type on plutonium and uranium with cannon rapprochement. The length of the bomb was not to exceed 5 meters, diameter - 1.5 meters, and weight - 5 tons.

At the same time, it was planned to build a test site, an airfield, a pilot plant, as well as the organization of a medical service, the creation of a library, etc.

The creation of an atomic bomb required the solution of an exceptionally wide range of physical and technical issues associated with an extensive program of computational and theoretical research, design and experimental work. First of all, it was necessary to study the physicochemical properties of fissile materials, to develop and test methods for their casting and machining. It was necessary to create radiochemical methods for extracting various fission products, organize the production of polonium, and develop a technology for manufacturing neutron sources. It required methods for determining the critical mass, the development of a theory of efficiency or efficiency, as well as the theory of a nuclear explosion in general, and much more.

The above brief enumeration of the directions in which the work has been developed, far from exhausts the entire content of the activities that required implementation for the successful completion of the atomic project.

By the February 1948 resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, which corrected the deadlines for fulfilling the main task of the atomic project, Yu.B. Khariton and P.M. Zernov was instructed to ensure the manufacture and presentation by March 1, 1949 for state tests of one set of the RDS-1 atomic bomb with full equipment.

In order to complete the task in a timely manner, the resolution stipulated the scope and timing of the completion of research work and the manufacture of materiel for flight design tests, as well as the resolution of certain organizational and personnel issues.

From the research works, the following stood out:

• completion by May 1948 of the development of a spherical charge of explosives;
• study until July of the same year of the problem of compression of metals during the explosion of an explosive charge;
• development of the neutron fuse design by January 1949;
• determination of critical mass and assembly of plutonium and uranium charges for RDS-1 and RDS-2. Ensuring the assembly of a plutonium charge for the RDS-1 until February 1, 1949.

The development of the design of the actual atomic charge - "RD-1" - (later, in the second half of 1946, called "RDS-1") was started at NII-6 at the end of 1945. Development began with a 1/5 scale model of the charge. The work was carried out without technical specifications, but exclusively according to the oral instructions of Yu.B. Khariton. The first drawings were made by N.A. Terletsky, who worked at NII-6 in a separate room, where only Yu.B. Khariton and E.M. Adaskin - deputy. director of NII-6, who carried out general coordination of work with other groups that began the development of high-speed detonators to ensure the synchronous detonation of a group of electric detonators and work on an electrical actuation system. A separate group began to deal with the selection of explosives and technologies for manufacturing unusual shapes of parts from the aircraft.

At the beginning of 1946, the model was developed, and by the summer it was made in 2 copies. The model was tested at the NII-6 test site in Sofrino.

By the end of 1946, the development of documentation for a full-scale charge began, the development of which began to be carried out already in KB-11, where at the beginning of 1947 in Sarov, initially, the minimum conditions for the manufacture of blocks and blasting were created (details from explosives, before being launched into operation of plant No. 2 in KB-11, supplied from NII-6).

If by the beginning of the development of atomic charges, domestic physicists were to some extent ready for the topic of creating an atomic bomb (in their own previous work), then for the designers this topic was completely new. They did not know the physical foundations of the charge, new materials used in the design, their physical and mechanical properties, the admissibility of joint storage, etc.

The large dimensions of explosive parts and their complex geometric shapes, tight tolerances required the solution of many technological problems. So, specialized enterprises of the country did not undertake to manufacture a large-sized charge case, and they had to pilot plant No. 1 (KB-11) to make a sample hull, after which these hulls began to be manufactured at the Kirov Plant in Leningrad. Large-sized parts from explosives were also originally made in KB-11.

During the initial organization of the development of the constituent elements of the charge, when institutes and enterprises of various ministries were involved in the work, a problem arose due to the fact that the documentation was developed according to various departmental guidance materials (instructions, specifications, normals, construction of a drawing designation, etc. .). This provision made production very difficult due to the large differences in the requirements for manufactured charge elements. The situation was corrected in 1948-1949. with the appointment of N.L. Dukhov. He brought with him from OKB-700 (from Chelyabinsk) the “Drawing Economy System” adopted there and organized the processing of previously developed documentation, bringing it to unified system. The new system best suited the conditions of our specific development, which provides for a multi-variant design study (due to the novelty of the designs).

As for the radio and electrical charge elements (“RDS-1”), they are entirely domestically developed. Moreover, they were developed with duplication of the most critical elements (to ensure the necessary reliability) and possible miniaturization.

Strict requirements for the reliability of the charge operation, the safety of work with the charge, the preservation of the quality of the charge during the warranty period of its shelf life determined the thoroughness of the development of the design.

Information provided by intelligence about the contours of the bombs and their sizes were few and often contradictory. So, about the caliber of the uranium bomb, i.e. "Kid", it was reported that he was either 3 "(inches), then 51/2" (in fact, the caliber turned out to be noticeably larger). About the plutonium bomb, i.e. "Fat Man" - that it looks "like a pear-shaped body", and about the diameter - it is 1.27 m, then 1.5 m. So the developers of the bombs had to start everything almost from scratch.

TsAGI was involved in working out the contours of the body of the KB-11 aerial bomb. Purges in its wind tunnels of an unprecedented number of contour options (more than 100, under the guidance of Academician S.A. Khristianovich) began to bring success.

The need to use complex system automation is another fundamental difference from the development of conventional bombs. The automation system consisted of safety stages and long-range cocking sensors; starting, "critical" and contact sensors; energy sources (accumulators) and an initiation system (including a set of detonator capsules), which ensures the synchronous operation of the latter, with a difference in time from the microsecond range.

Thus, at the first stage of the project implementation:

• the carrier aircraft was determined: TU-4 (on the orders of I.V. Stalin, the American “flying fortress” B-29 was reproduced);
• several options for the designs of aerial bombs have been developed; their flight tests were carried out and the contours and structures that meet the requirements of atomic weapons were selected;
• the automation of the bomb and the instrument panel of the aircraft was developed, which guaranteed the safety of the suspension, flight and release of the battery, the implementation of an air blast at a given height and, at the same time, the safety of the aircraft after an atomic explosion.

Structurally, the first atomic bomb consisted of the following fundamental components:

• nuclear charge;
• an explosive device and an automatic charge detonation system with safety systems;
• ballistic case of an air bomb, which housed a nuclear charge and automatic detonation.

The atomic charge of the RDS-1 bomb was a multilayer structure in which the transition of the active substance - plutonium to the supercritical state was carried out due to its compression by means of a converging spherical detonation wave in the explosive.

Great success was achieved not only by technologists, but also by metallurgists and radiochemists. Thanks to their efforts, even the first plutonium parts contained a small amount of impurities and highly active isotopes. The last point was especially significant, since short-lived isotopes, being the main source of neutrons, could have a negative effect on the probability of a premature explosion.

A neutron fuse (NC) was installed in the cavity of the plutonium core in a composite shell of natural uranium. During 1947-1948, about 20 different proposals were considered regarding the principles of operation, design and improvement of the NZ.

One of the most complex components of the first RDS-1 atomic bomb was an explosive charge made from an alloy of TNT and RDX.

The choice of the outer radius of the explosive was determined, on the one hand, by the need to obtain a satisfactory energy release, and, on the other hand, by the permissible external dimensions of the product and the technological capabilities of production.

The first atomic bomb was developed in relation to its suspension in the TU-4 aircraft, the bomb bay of which provided the possibility of placing a product with a diameter of up to 1500 mm. Based on this dimension, the midsection of the ballistic body of the RDS-1 bomb was determined. The explosive charge was structurally a hollow ball and consisted of two layers.

The inner layer was formed from two hemispherical bases made from a domestic alloy of TNT and RDX.

The outer layer of the RDS-1 explosive charge was assembled from separate elements. This layer, designed to form a spherical converging detonation wave at the base of the explosive and called the focusing system, was one of the main functional units of the charge, which largely determined its performance characteristics.

Already on the initial stage development of nuclear weapons, it became obvious that the study of the processes occurring in the charge should go along the computational and experimental path, which made it possible to correct the theoretical analysis based on the experimental results of experimental data on the gas-dynamic characteristics of nuclear charges.

It should be especially noted that the chief designer of the RDS-1, Yu.B. Khariton and the main developers, theoretical physicists, were aware of the high probability of a 2.5% incomplete explosion (decrease in explosion power by ~ 10%) and the consequences that await them if it occurs. They knew and… they worked.

The site for the test site was chosen near the city of Semipalatinsk, Kazakh SSR, in a waterless steppe with rare abandoned and dry wells, salt lakes, partially covered by low mountains. The site intended for the construction of the test complex was a plain with a diameter of about 20 km, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains.

The construction of the landfill began in 1947, and by July 1949 it was completed. In just two years, a colossal amount of work was completed, with excellent quality and at a high technical level. All materials were delivered to construction sites by road on dirt roads for 100-200 km. Traffic was around the clock in both winter and summer.

On the experimental field there were numerous structures with measuring equipment, military, civil and industrial facilities for studying the impact of damaging factors of a nuclear explosion. In the center of the experimental field there was a metal tower 37.5 m high for the RDS-1 installation.

The experimental field was divided into 14 test sectors: two fortification sectors; sector of civil constructions; physical sector; military sectors to accommodate samples of military equipment; biological sector. Along the radii in the northeast and southeast directions at various distances from the center, instrument buildings were erected to accommodate photochronographic, film and oscillographic equipment that recorded the processes of a nuclear explosion.

At a distance of 1000 m from the center, an underground building was built for equipment that registers light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. The optical and oscilloscope equipment was controlled via cables from a programmable machine.

To study the impact of a nuclear explosion, segments of subway tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built on the experimental field, samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery rocket launchers, ship superstructures of various types were placed. It took 90 railway wagons to transport this military equipment.

The government commission for testing the RDS-1, chaired by M.G. Pervukhina began work on July 27, 1949. On August 5, the commission concluded that the test site was fully ready and proposed to carry out detailed testing of operations for assembling and undermining the product within 15 days. The time of the test was determined - the last days of August.

I.V. was appointed scientific supervisor of the test. Kurchatov, from the Ministry of Defense, Major General V.A. led the preparation of the test site for testing. Bolyatko, the scientific management of the test site was carried out by M.A. Sadovsky.

In the period from August 10 to 26, 10 rehearsals were held to control the test field and equipment for detonating the charge, as well as three training exercises with the launch of all equipment and 4 detonations of full-scale explosives with an aluminum ball from automatic detonation.

On August 21, a plutonium charge and four neutron fuses were delivered to the test site by a special train, one of which was to be used to detonate a military product.

Scientific supervisor of the experiment I.V. Kurchatov, in accordance with the instructions of L.P. Beria, gave the order to test the RDS-1 on August 29 at 8 am local time.

On the night of 08/29/49, the final assembly of the charge was carried out. The assembly of the central part with the installation of parts made of plutonium and a neutron fuse was carried out by a group consisting of N.L. Dukhova, N.A. Terletsky, D.A. Fishman and V.A. Davidenko (installation "NZ"). The final installation of the charge was completed by 3 o'clock in the morning on August 29 under the direction of A.Ya. Malsky and V.I. Alferova. Members of the special committee L.P. Beria, M.G. Pervukhin and V.A. Makhnev controlled the course of the final operations.

On the day of the test command post test site, located 10 km from the center of the test field, gathered most of the top management of the test: L.P. Beria, M.G. Pervukhin, I.V. Kurchatov, Yu.B. Khariton, K.I. Shchelkin, employees of KB-11, who participated in the final installation of the charge on the tower.

By 6 o'clock in the morning, the charge was raised to the test tower, its equipment with fuses and connection to the subversive circuit were completed.

Due to the deterioration of the weather with a shift one hour earlier (from 7.00 instead of 8.00 according to the plan), all the work provided for under the approved regulations began to be carried out.

At 06:35, the operators turned on the power of the automation system, and at 06:48 the test field automatic machine was turned on.

Exactly at 7 am on August 29, 1949, the whole area was lit up with a blinding light, which marked that the USSR had successfully completed the development and testing of the first atomic bomb.

According to the memoirs of the test participant D.A. Fishman, the events in the command post were unfolding in the following way:

In the last seconds before the explosion, the doors located on the back side of the command post building (from the center of the field) were ajar so that the moment of the explosion could be observed from the burst of illumination of the area. At the moments of "zero" everyone saw a very bright illumination of the earth and clouds. The brightness exceeded the solar one several times. It was clear that the explosion had been successful!

Everyone ran out of the room and ran up to the parapet, protecting the command post from the direct impact of the explosion. Before them, a picture of the formation of a huge cloud of dust and smoke, enchanting in its scale, was opened, in the center of which a flame was blazing!

But Malsky's words were heard from the loudspeaker: “Everyone immediately enter the command post building! A shock wave is approaching ”(according to calculations, it should have approached the command post in 30 seconds).

Upon entering the premises, L.P. Beria warmly congratulated everyone on a successful test, and I.V. Kurchatov and Yu.B. Khariton kissed. But inside, apparently, he still had some doubts about the completeness of the explosion, since he did not immediately call and report to I.V. Stalin about a successful test, but went to the second observation post, where the nuclear physicist M.G. Meshcheryakov, who in 1946 attended demonstration tests of US atomic charges on the Bikini Atoll.

At the second observation post, Beria also warmly congratulated M.G. Meshcheryakova, Ya.B. Zeldovich, N.L. Dukhov and other comrades. After that, he meticulously questioned Meshcheryakov about the external effect of the American explosions. Meshcheryakov assured that our explosion was superior to the American one in terms of external picture.

Having received confirmation from an eyewitness, Beria went to the headquarters of the test site in order to inform Stalin about the successful test.

Stalin, having learned about the successful test, immediately called B.L. Vannikov (who was at home and due to illness could not attend the test) and congratulated him on a successful test.

According to the memoirs of Boris Lvovich, in response to congratulations, he began to say that this was the merit of the party and the government ... Here Stalin interrupted him, saying: “Come on, Comrade Vannikov, these formalities. You better think about how we can a short time start making these products.

20 minutes after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead shielding were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and inspect the center of the field.

The reconnaissance found that all structures in the center of the field had been demolished. A funnel formed in place of the tower, the soil in the center of the field melted and a continuous crust of slag formed. Civil buildings and industrial facilities were completely or partially destroyed. Eyewitnesses presented a terrible picture of the great massacre.

The energy release of the first Soviet atomic bomb was 22 kilotons of TNT equivalent.

The world of the atom is so fantastic that its understanding requires a radical break in the usual concepts of space and time. Atoms are so small that if a drop of water could be enlarged to the size of the Earth, each atom in that drop would be smaller than an orange. In fact, one drop of water is made up of 6000 billion billion (6000000000000000000000) hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And yet, despite its microscopic size, the atom has a structure to some extent similar to the structure of our solar system. In its incomprehensibly small center, the radius of which is less than one trillionth of a centimeter, is a relatively huge "sun" - the nucleus of an atom.

Around this atomic "sun" tiny "planets" - electrons - revolve. The nucleus consists of two main building blocks of the Universe - protons and neutrons (they have a unifying name - nucleons). An electron and a proton are charged particles, and the amount of charge in each of them is exactly the same, but the charges differ in sign: the proton is always positively charged, and the electron is always negative. The neutron does not carry an electric charge and therefore has a very high permeability.

In the atomic measurement scale, the mass of the proton and neutron is taken as unity. The atomic weight of any chemical element therefore depends on the number of protons and neutrons contained in its nucleus. For example, a hydrogen atom, whose nucleus consists of only one proton, has an atomic mass of 1. A helium atom, with a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons, has an atomic mass of 4.

The nuclei of atoms of the same element always contain the same number of protons, but the number of neutrons may be different. Atoms that have nuclei with the same number of protons, but differ in the number of neutrons and related to varieties of the same element, are called isotopes. To distinguish them from each other, a number equal to the sum of all particles in the nucleus of a given isotope is assigned to the element symbol.

The question may arise: why does the nucleus of an atom not fall apart? After all, the protons included in it are electrically charged particles with the same charge, which must repel each other with great force. This is explained by the fact that inside the nucleus there are also so-called intranuclear forces that attract the particles of the nucleus to each other. These forces compensate for the repulsive forces of protons and do not allow the nucleus to fly apart spontaneously.

The intranuclear forces are very strong, but they act only at very close range. Therefore, nuclei of heavy elements, consisting of hundreds of nucleons, turn out to be unstable. The particles of the nucleus are in constant motion here (within the volume of the nucleus), and if you add some additional amount of energy to them, they can overcome internal forces - the nucleus will be divided into parts. The amount of this excess energy is called the excitation energy. Among the isotopes of heavy elements, there are those that seem to be on the very verge of self-decay. Only a small "push" is enough, for example, a simple hit in the nucleus of a neutron (and it should not even be accelerated to high speed) to initiate a nuclear fission reaction. Some of these "fissile" isotopes were later made artificially. In nature, there is only one such isotope - it is uranium-235.

Uranus was discovered in 1783 by Klaproth, who isolated it from uranium pitch and named it after the recently discovered planet Uranus. As it turned out later, it was, in fact, not uranium itself, but its oxide. Pure uranium, a silvery-white metal, was obtained
only in 1842 Peligot. The new element did not have any remarkable properties and did not attract attention until 1896, when Becquerel discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity of uranium salts. After that, uranium became the object of scientific research and experimentation, but practical application still didn't have.

When, in the first third of the 20th century, physicists more or less understood the structure of the atomic nucleus, they first of all tried to fulfill the old dream of alchemists - they tried to turn one chemical element in another. In 1934, the French researchers, the spouses Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, reported to the French Academy of Sciences about the following experiment: when aluminum plates were bombarded with alpha particles (nuclei of the helium atom), aluminum atoms turned into phosphorus atoms, but not ordinary, but radioactive, which, in turn, passed into a stable isotope of silicon. Thus, an aluminum atom, having added one proton and two neutrons, turned into a heavier silicon atom.

This experience led to the idea that if the nuclei of the heaviest element existing in nature, uranium, are “shelled” with neutrons, then one can obtain an element that does not exist in natural conditions. In 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann repeated in general terms the experience of the Joliot-Curie spouses, taking uranium instead of aluminum. The results of the experiment were not at all what they expected - instead of a new superheavy element with a mass number greater than that of uranium, Hahn and Strassmann received light elements from the middle part of the periodic system: barium, krypton, bromine and some others. The experimenters themselves could not explain the observed phenomenon. It was not until the following year that the physicist Lisa Meitner, to whom Hahn reported her difficulties, found a correct explanation for the observed phenomenon, suggesting that when uranium was bombarded with neutrons, its nucleus split (fissioned). In this case, nuclei of lighter elements should have been formed (this is where barium, krypton and other substances came from), and 2-3 free neutrons should have been released. Further research allowed to clarify in detail the picture of what is happening.

Natural uranium consists of a mixture of three isotopes with masses 238, 234 and 235. The main amount of uranium falls on the isotope-238, the nucleus of which includes 92 protons and 146 neutrons. Uranium-235 is only 1/140 of natural uranium (0.7% (it has 92 protons and 143 neutrons in its nucleus), and uranium-234 (92 protons, 142 neutrons) is only 1/17500 of the total mass of uranium (0 006% The least stable of these isotopes is uranium-235.

From time to time, the nuclei of its atoms spontaneously divide into parts, as a result of which lighter elements of the periodic system are formed. The process is accompanied by the release of two or three free neutrons, which rush at a tremendous speed - about 10 thousand km / s (they are called fast neutrons). These neutrons can hit other uranium nuclei, causing nuclear reactions. Each isotope behaves differently in this case. Uranium-238 nuclei in most cases simply capture these neutrons without any further transformations. But in about one case out of five, when a fast neutron collides with the nucleus of the 238 isotope, a curious nuclear reaction occurs: one of the uranium-238 neutrons emits an electron, turning into a proton, that is, the uranium isotope turns into more
the heavy element is neptunium-239 (93 protons + 146 neutrons). But neptunium is unstable - after a few minutes one of its neutrons emits an electron, turning into a proton, after which the neptunium isotope turns into the next element of the periodic system - plutonium-239 (94 protons + 145 neutrons). If a neutron enters the nucleus of unstable uranium-235, then fission immediately occurs - the atoms decay with the emission of two or three neutrons. It is clear that in natural uranium, most of whose atoms belong to the 238 isotope, this reaction has no visible consequences - all free neutrons will eventually be absorbed by this isotope.

But what if we imagine a fairly massive piece of uranium, consisting entirely of the 235 isotope?

Here the process will go differently: the neutrons released during the fission of several nuclei, in turn, falling into neighboring nuclei, cause their fission. As a result, a new portion of neutrons is released, which splits the following nuclei. Under favorable conditions, this reaction proceeds like an avalanche and is called a chain reaction. A few bombarding particles may suffice to start it.

Indeed, let only 100 neutrons bombard uranium-235. They will split 100 uranium nuclei. In this case, 250 new neutrons of the second generation will be released (an average of 2.5 per fission). The neutrons of the second generation will already produce 250 fissions, at which 625 neutrons will be released. In the next generation it will be 1562, then 3906, then 9670, and so on. The number of divisions will increase without limit if the process is not stopped.

However, in reality, only an insignificant part of neutrons gets into the nuclei of atoms. The rest, swiftly rushing between them, are carried away into the surrounding space. A self-sustaining chain reaction can only occur in a sufficiently large array of uranium-235, which is said to have a critical mass. (This mass under normal conditions is 50 kg.) It is important to note that the fission of each nucleus is accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy, which turns out to be about 300 million times more than the energy spent on fission! (It has been calculated that with the complete fission of 1 kg of uranium-235, the same amount of heat is released as when burning 3 thousand tons of coal.)

This colossal surge of energy, released in a matter of moments, manifests itself as an explosion of monstrous force and underlies the operation of nuclear weapons. But in order for this weapon to become a reality, it is necessary that the charge does not consist of natural uranium, but of a rare isotope - 235 (such uranium is called enriched). Later it was found that pure plutonium is also a fissile material and can be used in an atomic charge instead of uranium-235.

All these important discoveries were made on the eve of World War II. Soon secret work began in Germany and other countries on the creation of an atomic bomb. In the United States, this problem was taken up in 1941. The whole complex of works was given the name of the "Manhattan Project".

The administrative leadership of the project was carried out by General Groves, and the scientific direction was carried out by Professor Robert Oppenheimer of the University of California. Both were well aware of the enormous complexity of the task before them. Therefore, Oppenheimer's first concern was the acquisition of a highly intelligent scientific team. There were many physicists in the United States at that time who had emigrated from Nazi Germany. It was not easy to involve them in the creation of weapons directed against their former homeland. Oppenheimer spoke to everyone personally, using the full force of his charm. Soon he managed to gather a small group of theorists, whom he jokingly called "luminaries." And in fact, it included the largest experts of that time in the field of physics and chemistry. (Among them are 13 Nobel Prize winners, including Bohr, Fermi, Frank, Chadwick, Lawrence.) In addition to them, there were many other specialists of various profiles.

The US government did not skimp on spending, and from the very beginning the work assumed a grandiose scope. In 1942, the world's largest research laboratory was founded at Los Alamos. The population of this scientific city soon reached 9 thousand people. In terms of the composition of scientists, the scope of scientific experiments, the number of specialists and workers involved in the work, the Los Alamos Laboratory had no equal in world history. The Manhattan Project had its own police, counterintelligence, communications system, warehouses, settlements, factories, laboratories, and its own colossal budget.

The main goal of the project was to obtain enough fissile material from which to create several atomic bombs. In addition to uranium-235, as already mentioned, the artificial element plutonium-239 could serve as a charge for the bomb, that is, the bomb could be either uranium or plutonium.

Groves and Oppenheimer agreed that work should be carried out simultaneously in two directions, since it is impossible to decide in advance which of them will be more promising. Both methods were fundamentally different from each other: the accumulation of uranium-235 had to be carried out by separating it from the bulk of natural uranium, and plutonium could only be obtained as a result of a controlled nuclear reaction by irradiating uranium-238 with neutrons. Both paths seemed unusually difficult and did not promise easy solutions.

Indeed, how can two isotopes be separated from each other, which differ only slightly in their weight and chemically behave in exactly the same way? Neither science nor technology has ever faced such a problem. Plutonium production also seemed very problematic at first. Prior to this, the entire experience of nuclear transformations was reduced to several laboratory experiments. Now it was necessary to master the production of kilograms of plutonium on an industrial scale, develop and create a special installation for this - a nuclear reactor, and learn how to control the course of a nuclear reaction.

And here and there a whole complex of complex problems had to be solved. Therefore, the "Manhattan Project" consisted of several subprojects, headed by prominent scientists. Oppenheimer himself was the head of the Los Alamos Science Laboratory. Lawrence was in charge of the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. Fermi led research at the University of Chicago on the creation of a nuclear reactor.

Initially, the most important problem was obtaining uranium. Before the war, this metal actually had no use. Now that it was needed immediately in huge quantities, it turned out that there was no industrial way to produce it.

The Westinghouse company undertook its development and quickly achieved success. After purification of uranium resin (in this form uranium occurs in nature) and obtaining uranium oxide, it was converted into tetrafluoride (UF4), from which metallic uranium was isolated by electrolysis. If at the end of 1941, American scientists had only a few grams of metallic uranium at their disposal, then in November 1942 its industrial production at the Westinghouse plants reached 6,000 pounds per month.

At the same time, work was underway on the creation of a nuclear reactor. The plutonium production process actually boiled down to the irradiation of uranium rods with neutrons, as a result of which part of the uranium-238 had to turn into plutonium. Sources of neutrons in this case could be fissile uranium-235 atoms scattered in sufficient quantities among uranium-238 atoms. But in order to maintain a constant reproduction of neutrons, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 atoms had to begin. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, for every atom of uranium-235 there were 140 atoms of uranium-238. It is clear that the neutrons flying in all directions were much more likely to meet exactly them on their way. That is, a huge number of released neutrons turned out to be absorbed by the main isotope to no avail. Obviously, under such conditions, the chain reaction could not go. How to be?

At first it seemed that without the separation of two isotopes, the operation of the reactor was generally impossible, but one important circumstance was soon established: it turned out that uranium-235 and uranium-238 were susceptible to neutrons of different energies. It is possible to split the nucleus of an atom of uranium-235 with a neutron of relatively low energy, having a speed of about 22 m/s. Such slow neutrons are not captured by uranium-238 nuclei - for this they must have a speed of the order of hundreds of thousands of meters per second. In other words, uranium-238 is powerless to prevent the start and progress of a chain reaction in uranium-235 caused by neutrons slowed down to extremely low speeds - no more than 22 m/s. This phenomenon was discovered by the Italian physicist Fermi, who lived in the United States since 1938 and supervised the work on the creation of the first reactor here. Fermi decided to use graphite as a neutron moderator. According to his calculations, neutrons emitted from uranium-235, having passed through a layer of graphite of 40 cm, should have reduced their speed to 22 m/s and started a self-sustaining chain reaction in uranium-235.

The so-called "heavy" water could serve as another moderator. Since the hydrogen atoms that make up it are very close in size and mass to neutrons, they could best slow them down. (About the same thing happens with fast neutrons as with balls: if a small ball hits a large one, it rolls back, almost without losing speed, but when it meets a small ball, it transfers a significant part of its energy to it - just like a neutron in an elastic collision bounces off a heavy nucleus only slightly slowing down, and on collision with the nuclei of hydrogen atoms loses all its energy very quickly.) However, ordinary water is not suitable for slowing down, since its hydrogen tends to absorb neutrons. That is why deuterium, which is part of "heavy" water, should be used for this purpose.

In early 1942, under the leadership of Fermi, construction began on the first ever nuclear reactor in the tennis court under the west stands of the Chicago Stadium. All work was carried out by the scientists themselves. The reaction can be controlled in the only way - by adjusting the number of neutrons involved in the chain reaction. Fermi envisioned doing this with rods made from materials such as boron and cadmium, which absorb neutrons strongly. Graphite bricks served as a moderator, from which physicists erected columns 3 m high and 1.2 m wide. Rectangular blocks with uranium oxide were installed between them. About 46 tons of uranium oxide and 385 tons of graphite went into the entire structure. To slow down the reaction, cadmium and boron rods introduced into the reactor served.

If this weren't enough, then for insurance, on a platform located above the reactor, there were two scientists with buckets filled with a solution of cadmium salts - they were supposed to pour them over the reactor if the reaction got out of control. Fortunately, this was not required. On December 2, 1942, Fermi ordered all the control rods to be extended, and the experiment began. Four minutes later, the neutron counters began to click louder and louder. With every minute, the intensity of the neutron flux became greater. This indicated that a chain reaction was taking place in the reactor. It went on for 28 minutes. Then Fermi signaled, and the lowered rods stopped the process. Thus, for the first time, man released the energy of the atomic nucleus and proved that he could control it at will. Now there was no longer any doubt that nuclear weapons were a reality.

In 1943, the Fermi reactor was dismantled and transported to the Aragonese National Laboratory (50 km from Chicago). Was here shortly
another nuclear reactor was built, in which heavy water was used as a moderator. It consisted of a cylindrical aluminum tank containing 6.5 tons of heavy water, into which 120 rods of uranium metal were vertically loaded, enclosed in an aluminum shell. The seven control rods were made from cadmium. Around the tank was a graphite reflector, then a screen made of lead and cadmium alloys. The entire structure was enclosed in a concrete shell with a wall thickness of about 2.5 m.

Experiments at these experimental reactors confirmed the possibility of industrial production of plutonium.

The main center of the "Manhattan Project" soon became the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee River Valley, whose population in a few months grew to 79 thousand people. Here, in a short time, the first plant for the production of enriched uranium was built. Immediately in 1943, an industrial reactor was launched that produced plutonium. In February 1944, about 300 kg of uranium was extracted from it daily, from the surface of which plutonium was obtained by chemical separation. (To do this, the plutonium was first dissolved and then precipitated.) The purified uranium was then returned to the reactor again. In the same year, in the barren, desolate desert on the south bank of the Columbia River, construction began on the huge Hanford Plant. Three powerful nuclear reactors were located here, giving several hundred grams of plutonium daily.

In parallel, research was in full swing to develop an industrial process for uranium enrichment.

Having considered different variants, Groves and Oppenheimer decided to focus on two methods: gas diffusion and electromagnetic.

The gas diffusion method was based on a principle known as Graham's law (it was first formulated in 1829 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Graham and developed in 1896 by the English physicist Reilly). In accordance with this law, if two gases, one of which is lighter than the other, are passed through a filter with negligible holes, then a little more light gas will pass through it than heavy gas. In November 1942, Urey and Dunning at Columbia University created a gaseous diffusion method for separating uranium isotopes based on the Reilly method.

Since natural uranium is a solid, it was first converted to uranium fluoride (UF6). This gas was then passed through microscopic - on the order of thousandths of a millimeter - holes in the filter septum.

Since the difference in the molar weights of the gases was very small, behind the baffle the content of uranium-235 increased only by a factor of 1.0002.

In order to increase the amount of uranium-235 even more, the resulting mixture is again passed through a partition, and the amount of uranium is again increased by 1.0002 times. Thus, in order to increase the content of uranium-235 to 99%, it was necessary to pass the gas through 4000 filters. This took place in a huge gaseous diffusion plant at Oak Ridge.

In 1940, under the leadership of Ernst Lawrence at the University of California, research began on the separation of uranium isotopes by the electromagnetic method. It was necessary to find such physical processes that would allow isotopes to be separated using the difference in their masses. Lawrence made an attempt to separate isotopes using the principle of a mass spectrograph - an instrument that determines the masses of atoms.

The principle of its operation was as follows: pre-ionized atoms were accelerated by an electric field and then passed through a magnetic field in which they described circles located in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the field. Since the radii of these trajectories were proportional to the mass, the light ions ended up on circles of a smaller radius than the heavy ones. If traps were placed in the path of the atoms, then it was possible in this way to separately collect different isotopes.

That was the method. Under laboratory conditions, he gave good results. But the construction of a plant in which isotope separation could be carried out on an industrial scale proved to be extremely difficult. However, Lawrence eventually managed to overcome all difficulties. The result of his efforts was the appearance of the calutron, which was installed in a giant plant in Oak Ridge.

This electromagnetic plant was built in 1943 and turned out to be perhaps the most expensive brainchild of the Manhattan Project. Lawrence's method required a large number of complex, as yet undeveloped devices involving high voltage, high vacuum, and strong magnetic fields. The costs were enormous. Calutron had a giant electromagnet, the length of which reached 75 m and weighed about 4000 tons.

Several thousand tons of silver wire went into the windings for this electromagnet.

The entire work (excluding the cost of $300 million worth of silver, which the State Treasury provided only temporarily) cost $400 million. Only for the electricity spent by the calutron, the Ministry of Defense paid 10 million. Much of the equipment at the Oak Ridge factory was superior in scale and precision to anything ever developed in the field.

But all these expenses were not in vain. Having spent a total of about $ 2 billion, US scientists by 1944 created unique technology uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Meanwhile, at the Los Alamos Laboratory, they were working on the design of the bomb itself. The principle of its operation was in general terms clear for a long time: the fissile substance (plutonium or uranium-235) should have been transferred to a critical state at the time of the explosion (for a chain reaction to occur, the mass of the charge should be even noticeably larger than the critical one) and irradiated with a neutron beam, which entailed is the start of a chain reaction.

According to calculations, the critical mass of the charge exceeded 50 kilograms, but it could be significantly reduced. In general, the magnitude of the critical mass is strongly influenced by several factors. The larger the surface area of ​​the charge, the more neutrons are emitted uselessly into the surrounding space. A sphere has the smallest surface area. Consequently, spherical charges, other things being equal, have the smallest critical mass. In addition, the value of the critical mass depends on the purity and type of fissile materials. It is inversely proportional to the square of the density of this material, which allows, for example, by doubling the density, to reduce the critical mass by a factor of four. The required degree of subcriticality can be obtained, for example, by compacting the fissile material due to the explosion of a conventional explosive charge made in the form of a spherical shell surrounding the nuclear charge. The critical mass can also be reduced by surrounding the charge with a screen that reflects neutrons well. Lead, beryllium, tungsten, natural uranium, iron, and many others can be used as such a screen.

One of the possible designs of the atomic bomb consists of two pieces of uranium, which, when combined, form a mass greater than the critical one. In order to cause a bomb explosion, you need to bring them together as quickly as possible. The second method is based on the use of an inward-converging explosion. In this case, the flow of gases from a conventional explosive was directed at the fissile material located inside and compressing it until it reached a critical mass. The connection of the charge and its intense irradiation with neutrons, as already mentioned, causes a chain reaction, as a result of which, in the first second, the temperature rises to 1 million degrees. During this time, only about 5% of the critical mass managed to separate. The rest of the charge in early bomb designs evaporated without
any good.

The first atomic bomb in history (it was given the name "Trinity") was assembled in the summer of 1945. And on June 16, 1945, the first atomic explosion on Earth was carried out at the nuclear test site in the Alamogordo desert (New Mexico). The bomb was placed in the center of the test site on top of a 30-meter steel tower. around her on long distance recording equipment was located. At 9 km there was an observation post, and at 16 km - a command post. The atomic explosion made a tremendous impression on all the witnesses of this event. According to the description of eyewitnesses, there was a feeling that many suns merged into one and lit up the polygon at once. Then a huge ball of fire appeared above the plain, and a round cloud of dust and light began to slowly and ominously rise towards it.

After taking off from the ground, this fireball flew up to a height of more than three kilometers in a few seconds. With every moment it grew in size, soon its diameter reached 1.5 km, and it slowly rose into the stratosphere. The fireball then gave way to a column of swirling smoke, which stretched out to a height of 12 km, taking the form of a giant mushroom. All this was accompanied by a terrible roar, from which the earth trembled. The power of the exploded bomb exceeded all expectations.

As soon as the radiation situation allowed, several Sherman tanks, lined with lead plates from the inside, rushed into the explosion area. On one of them was Fermi, who was eager to see the results of his work. Dead scorched earth appeared before his eyes, on which all life was destroyed within a radius of 1.5 km. The sand sintered into a glassy greenish crust that covered the ground. In a huge crater lay the mutilated remains of a steel support tower. The force of the explosion was estimated at 20,000 tons of TNT.

The next step was to be the combat use of the bomb against Japan, which, after the surrender of fascist Germany, alone continued the war with the United States and its allies. There were no launch vehicles then, so the bombing had to be carried out from an aircraft. The components of the two bombs were transported with great care by the USS Indianapolis to Tinian Island, where the US Air Force 509th Composite Group was based. By type of charge and design, these bombs were somewhat different from each other.

The first bomb - "Baby" - was a large-sized aerial bomb with an atomic charge of highly enriched uranium-235. Its length was about 3 m, diameter - 62 cm, weight - 4.1 tons.

The second bomb - "Fat Man" - with a charge of plutonium-239 had an egg shape with a large-sized stabilizer. Its length
was 3.2 m, diameter 1.5 m, weight - 4.5 tons.

On August 6, Colonel Tibbets' B-29 Enola Gay bomber dropped the "Kid" on the large Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb was dropped by parachute and exploded, as it was planned, at an altitude of 600 m from the ground.

The consequences of the explosion were terrible. Even on the pilots themselves, the sight of the peaceful city destroyed by them in an instant made a depressing impression. Later, one of them admitted that they saw at that moment the worst thing that a person can see.

For those who were on earth, what was happening looked like a real hell. First of all, a heat wave passed over Hiroshima. Its action lasted only a few moments, but it was so powerful that it melted even tiles and quartz crystals in granite slabs, turned telephone poles into coal at a distance of 4 km and, finally, so incinerated human bodies that only shadows remained of them on the pavement asphalt. or on the walls of houses. Then from under fireball a monstrous gust of wind broke out and rushed over the city at a speed of 800 km / h, sweeping away everything in its path. The houses that could not withstand his furious onslaught collapsed as if they had been cut down. In a giant circle with a diameter of 4 km, not a single building remained intact. A few minutes after the explosion, a black radioactive rain fell over the city - this moisture turned into steam condensed in the high layers of the atmosphere and fell to the ground in the form of large drops mixed with radioactive dust.

After the rain, a new gust of wind hit the city, this time blowing in the direction of the epicenter. He was weaker than the first, but still strong enough to uproot trees. The wind blew giant fire in which everything that could burn was on fire. Of the 76,000 buildings, 55,000 were completely destroyed and burned down. Witnesses of this terrible catastrophe recalled people-torches from which burnt clothes fell to the ground along with tatters of skin, and crowds of distraught people, covered with terrible burns, who rushed screaming through the streets. There was a suffocating stench of burnt human flesh in the air. People lay everywhere, dead and dying. There were many who were blind and deaf and, poking in all directions, could not make out anything in the chaos that reigned around.

The unfortunate, who were from the epicenter at a distance of up to 800 m, burned out in a split second in the literal sense of the word - their insides evaporated, and their bodies turned into lumps of smoking coals. Located at a distance of 1 km from the epicenter, they were struck by radiation sickness in an extremely severe form. Within a few hours, they began to vomit severely, the temperature jumped to 39-40 degrees, shortness of breath and bleeding appeared. Then, non-healing ulcers appeared on the skin, the composition of the blood changed dramatically, and the hair fell out. After terrible suffering, usually on the second or third day, death occurred.

In total, about 240 thousand people died from the explosion and radiation sickness. About 160 thousand received radiation sickness in a milder form - their painful death was delayed for several months or years. When the news of the catastrophe spread throughout the country, all of Japan was paralyzed with fear. It increased even more after Major Sweeney's Box Car aircraft dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9th. Several hundred thousand inhabitants were also killed and wounded here. Unable to resist the new weapons, the Japanese government capitulated - the atomic bomb put an end to World War II.

War is over. It lasted only six years, but managed to change the world and people almost beyond recognition.

Human civilization before 1939 and human civilization after 1945 are strikingly different from each other. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the emergence of nuclear weapons. It can be said without exaggeration that the shadow of Hiroshima lies over the entire second half of the 20th century. It became a deep moral burn for many millions of people, both those who were contemporaries of this catastrophe and those born decades after it. Modern man can no longer think about the world the way it was thought before August 6, 1945 - he understands too clearly that this world can turn into nothing in a few moments.

A modern person cannot look at the war, as his grandfathers and great-grandfathers watched - he knows for sure that this war will be the last, and there will be neither winners nor losers in it. Nuclear weapons have left their mark on all spheres public life, and modern civilization cannot live by the same laws as sixty or eighty years ago. No one understood this better than the creators of the atomic bomb themselves.

"People of our planet Robert Oppenheimer wrote, should unite. The horror and destruction sown by the last war dictate this thought to us. Explosions of atomic bombs proved it with all cruelty. Other people at other times have said similar words - only about other weapons and other wars. They didn't succeed. But whoever says today that these words are useless is deceived by the vicissitudes of history. We cannot be convinced of this. The results of our labor leave no other choice for humanity but to create a unified world. A world based on law and humanism."