Test of the first atomic bomb in the USSR. The first nuclear test in the world - the first nuclear explosion The first nuclear test in the world

Since the first atomic explosion, code-named Trinity, on July 16, 1945, almost two thousand atomic bomb tests have been carried out, most of which took place in the 60s and 70s.
When this technology was new, testing was done frequently, and it was quite a spectacle.

All of them led to the development of a newer and more powerful nuclear weapons. But since the 1990s governments different countries began to limit future tests - take, for example, the US moratorium and the UN treaty on a comprehensive nuclear test ban.

A selection of photographs from the first 30 years of atomic bomb testing:

Test nuclear explosion Upshot-Knothole Grable in Nevada on May 25, 1953. A 280mm nuclear projectile was fired from the M65 cannon, detonated in the air - about 150 meters above the ground - and produced an explosion with a yield of 15 kilotons. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Open wiring of a nuclear device codenamed The Gadget (the unofficial name of the Trinity project) - the first test atomic explosion. The device was prepared for the explosion, which occurred on July 16, 1945. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The shadow of Los Alamos National Laboratory director Jay Robert Oppenheimer overseeing the assembly of the Gadget projectile. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The 200-ton Jumbo steel container used in the Trinity project was made to recover plutonium if the explosive did not start a chain reaction. As a result, Jumbo was not useful, but he was placed near the epicenter to measure the effects of the explosion. Jumbo survived the explosion, but the same cannot be said for its supporting frame. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The growing fireball and blast wave of the Trinity explosion 0.025 seconds after the explosion on July 16, 1945. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Long exposure photo of the Trinity explosion a few seconds after detonation. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Fireball "fungus" of the first atomic explosion in the world. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The US military watches the explosion during Operation Crossroads on Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946. It was the fifth atomic explosion after the first two test and two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (U.S. Department of Defense)

A nuclear mushroom and a column of spray into the sea during a nuclear bomb test on Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. It was the first underwater test atomic explosion. After the explosion, several former warships ran aground. (AP Photo)

A huge nuclear mushroom after the bombing of Bikini Atoll on July 25, 1946. The dark dots in the foreground are ships placed specifically in the path of the blast wave to test what it will do to them. (AP Photo)

On November 16, 1952, a B-36H bomber dropped an atomic bomb on the northern part of Runit Island in Eniwetok Atoll. The result was an explosion with a capacity of 500 kilotons and a diameter of 450 meters. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Operation Greenhouse took place in the spring of 1951. It consisted of four explosions at the Pacific nuclear test site in the Pacific Ocean. This is a photo of the third test, codenamed "George", conducted on May 9, 1951. It became the first explosion in which deuterium and tritium were burned. Power - 225 kilotons. (U.S. Department of Defense)

The "rope tricks" of a nuclear explosion, captured less than one millisecond after the explosion. During Operation Tumbler Snapper in 1952, this nuclear device was suspended 90 meters above the Nevada desert on mooring lines. As the plasma spread, the radiated energy overheated and vaporized the wires above the fireball, resulting in these "spikes". (U.S. Department of Defense)

During Operation Upshot Knothole, a group of dummies were planted in the dining room of a house to test the effect of a nuclear explosion on houses and people. March 15, 1953. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel)

That's what happened to them after the nuclear explosion. (U.S. Department of Defense)

In the same house number two, on the second floor, there was another mannequin on the bed. A 90-meter steel tower is visible in the window of the house, on which nuclear bomb. The purpose of the test explosion is to show people what will happen if a nuclear explosion occurs in American city. (AP Photo/Dick Strobel)

Damaged bedroom, windows and vanished blankets after test explosion atomic bomb March 17, 1953. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Mannequins representing a typical American family in the living room of Test House No. 2 at the Nevada nuclear test site. (AP Photo)

The same "family" after the explosion. Someone was scattered all over the living room, someone just disappeared. (U.S. Department of Defense)

During Operation Plumb at the Nevada nuclear test site on August 30, 1957, a projectile detonated from a ball in the Yucca Flat desert at an altitude of 228 meters. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

test explosion hydrogen bomb during Operation Redwing over Bikini Atoll on May 20, 1956. (AP Photo)

Ionizing glow around the cooling fireball in the Yucca Desert at 4:30 am on July 15, 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

Flash exploded nuclear warhead air-to-air missiles at 7:30 am on July 19, 1957 at Indian Springs Air Force Base, 48 km from the site of the explosion. In the foreground - the same aircraft"Scorpion". (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

The fireball of a Priscilla projectile on June 24, 1957, during a series of operations "Plumb". (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

NATO representatives watch the explosion during Operation Boltzmann on May 28, 1957. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

The tail section of a U.S. Navy airship after a nuclear test in Nevada on August 7, 1957. The airship was hovering in free flight, more than 8 km from the epicenter of the explosion, when it was overtaken by the blast wave. There was no one in the airship. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

Observers during Operation Hardtack I - Explosion thermonuclear bomb in 1958. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

The Arkansas test is part of Operation Dominic, a series of more than 100 explosions in Nevada and the Pacific in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Part of the Fishbowl Bluegill high-altitude nuclear test series - a 400 kiloton explosion in the atmosphere, at an altitude of 48 km above Pacific Ocean. View from above. October 1962 (U.S. Department of Defense)

Rings around a nuclear mushroom during the Yeso test project in 1962. (U.S. Department of Defense)

Sedan Crater was formed by the explosion of 100 kilotons of explosives at a depth of 193 meters under loose desert deposits in Nevada on July 6, 1962. The crater turned out to be 97 meters deep and 390 meters in diameter. (National Nuclear Security Administration / Nevada Site Office)

Photo of the French government's nuclear explosion on Mururoa Atoll in 1971. (AP Photo)

The same nuclear explosion on the Mururoa atoll. (Pierre J. / CC BY NC SA)

The Survivor City was built 2286 meters from the epicenter of a 29 kiloton nuclear explosion. The house remained almost intact. The "surviving city" consisted of houses, office buildings, shelters, sources of electricity, communications, radio stations and "residential" vans. The test, codenamed Apple II, took place on May 5, 1955. (U.S. Department of Defense)

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At the Alamogordo Proving Ground in New Mexico. The atomic bomb test operation was codenamed Trinity. The planning of the operation began in the spring of 1944. Complex theory nuclear reaction and doubts about the correctness of the design of the atomic bomb required verification before the first combat use. At the same time, the option of a bomb failure, an explosion without starting a chain reaction, or an explosion of low power was considered at first. To save at least some of the expensive plutonium and eliminate the threat of contamination of the area with this extremely toxic substance, the Americans ordered a large, durable steel container that could withstand the explosion of a conventional explosive.

Local at one of the abandoned mines where nuclear tests, Semipalatinsk, 1991
© ITAR-TASS/V.Pavlunin
International Day Against Nuclear Tests: Consequences of Explosions

For the test, a sparsely populated area of ​​the United States was selected in advance, and one of the conditions was the absence of Indians in it. This was not due to racism or secrecy, but to the complex relationship between the leadership of the "Manhattan Project" ("Manhattan Project", which developed nuclear weapons) with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. As a result, at the end of 1944, the Alamogordo area in the state of New Mexico, which was administered by an air base, was chosen, although the airfield itself was located far from it.

The nuclear bomb was mounted on a 30-meter steel tower. This was done taking into account the intended use of a combat nuclear charge in aerial bombs. Also undermining in the air maximized the impact of the explosion on the target. The bomb itself was given the code name "Gadget", now widely used to refer to electronic devices. Fissile materials, two plutonium hemispheres were installed in the "Gadget" at the last moment.

How the explosion happened

The explosion, which marked the beginning of the nuclear era, thundered at 5:30 am local time on July 16, 1945. Then no one could unequivocally predict what would happen in a nuclear explosion, and the night before, one of the physicists participating in the Manhattan Project, Enrico Fermi, even argued about whether a nuclear bomb would set fire to the Earth’s atmosphere, causing a man-made Apocalypse. Another physicist, Robert Oppenheimer, on the contrary, pessimistically estimated the force of the future explosion at only 300 tons of TNT. Estimates varied from "dummy" to 18 thousand tons. However, without the most frightening consequences in the form of a set fire to the atmosphere, it happened. All those who participated in the test noted the bright flash of the bomb explosion, which flooded everything around with a blinding light. The blast wave at a distance from the point of explosion, on the contrary, somewhat disappointed the military. In fact, the force of the explosion was monstrous and the giant 150-ton Jumbo container was easily overturned by it. Even far from the landfill, the inhabitants were agitated by the terrifying force of the explosion.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
© AP Photo/Shizuo Kambayashi
Media: thousands of people ask Obama to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Associated with a weak blast wave peculiar method explosion force measurements. Fermi took pieces of paper and held them in his hand at a certain height, which he measured in advance. As the shock wave approached, he opened his fist and let the shock wave sweep the scraps of paper from his palm. After measuring the distance they flew off, the physicist hastily estimated the strength of the explosion on a slide rule. It is usually claimed that Fermi's calculation exactly matched the data obtained later on the basis of the readings of complex instruments. However, the assessment coincided only against the backdrop of a spread in preliminary assumptions from 300 tons to 18 thousand tons. The force of the explosion calculated from the readings of the device in the Trinity test was about 20 thousand tons. The United States received a frightening weapon that was used both in the political game, already at the Potsdam Conference, and in two strikes on Japan on August 6 and 9, 1945.

Bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

The US originally planned to drop 9 atomic bombs, 3 in support of each amphibious operation on the Japanese Islands scheduled for late September 1945. The US military planned to detonate bombs over rice fields or the sea. And in this case, the psychological effect would be achieved. But the government was adamant: bombs should be used against densely populated cities.

The first bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. On August 6, two B-29 bombers appeared over the city. The alarm signal was given, but, seeing that there were few aircraft, everyone thought that this was not a major raid, but reconnaissance. When the bombers reached the city center, one of them dropped a small parachute, after which the planes flew away. Immediately after that, at 8:15 a.m., there was a deafening explosion.

Among the smoke, dust and debris, wooden houses flared up one after another, until the end of the day the city was engulfed in flames. And when, finally, the flame subsided, the whole city was one ruin.

© TASS Newsreel/Nikolay Moshkov
The first test of an atomic bomb in the Soviet Union. Dossier

On August 8, another atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. It also caused great damage and caused numerous casualties. The explosion over Nagasaki affected an area of ​​approximately 110 square kilometers, of which 22 were water surface and 84 were only partially inhabited. According to a Nagasaki Prefecture report, "people and animals died almost instantly" up to 1 km from the epicenter. Almost all houses within a radius of 2 km were destroyed. The death toll by the end of 1945 ranged from 60 to 80 thousand people.

The first atomic bomb in the USSR

In the USSR, the first test of an atomic bomb - the RDS-1 product - was carried out on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. RDS-1 was a "drop-shaped" airborne atomic bomb, weighing 4.6 tons, 1.5 m in diameter and 3.7 m long. Plutonium was used as a fissile material. The bomb was detonated at 07:00 local time (4:00 Moscow time) on a mounted metal lattice tower 37.5 m high, located in the center of the experimental field with a diameter of about 20 km. The power of the explosion was 20 kilotons of TNT.

The RDS-1 product (the documents indicated the decoding "jet engine" C ") was created in the design bureau No. 11 (now the Russian Federal nuclear center- All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF, Sarov), which was organized to create an atomic bomb in April 1946. The work on creating the bomb was led by Igor Kurchatov (scientific supervisor of work on the atomic problem since 1943; organizer of the bomb test) and Yuli Khariton ( chief designer KB-11 in 1946-1959).

© ITAR-TASS/Yuri Mashkov
Defense Department: US atomic bomb tests are provocative

A total of 2,062 nuclear weapons tests have been conducted in the world, which eight states have. The US accounts for 1032 explosions (1945-1992). The United States of America is the only country to have used this weapon. The USSR conducted 715 tests (1949-1990). The last explosion took place on October 24, 1990 at the test site " New Earth". In addition to the USA and the USSR, nuclear weapons were created and tested in Great Britain - 45 (1952-1991), France - 210 (1960-1996), China - 45 (1964-1996), India - 6 (1974, 1998), Pakistan - 6 (1998) and North Korea - 3 (2006, 2009, 2013).

© AP Photo Archive/Charlie Riedel
Lavrov: US nuclear weapons capable of reaching Russian territory remain in Europe

In 1996, a universal cessation of nuclear testing was enshrined in the international treaty Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban (CTBT). After that, only three countries carried out nuclear explosions - India, Pakistan and North Korea.

The first Soviet charge for an atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site (Kazakhstan).

This event was preceded by a long and difficult work of physicists. The beginning of work on nuclear fission in the USSR can be considered the 1920s. Since the 1930s, nuclear physics has become one of the main areas of Russian physical science, and in October 1940, for the first time in the USSR, a group of Soviet scientists made a proposal to use atomic energy for weapons purposes, submitting an application to the Invention Department of the Red Army "On the use of uranium as an explosive and poisonous substance."

The war that began in June 1941 and the evacuation of scientific institutes involved in the problems of nuclear physics interrupted work on the creation of atomic weapons in the country. But already in the autumn of 1941, the USSR began to receive intelligence information about the conduct of secret intensive research work in the UK and the USA aimed at developing methods for using atomic energy for military purposes and creating explosives of enormous destructive power.

This information forced, despite the war, to resume work on uranium in the USSR. On September 28, 1942, a secret decree was signed State Committee Defense No. 2352ss "On the organization of work on uranium", according to which research on the use of atomic energy was resumed.

In February 1943, Igor Kurchatov was appointed scientific director of work on the atomic problem. In Moscow, headed by Kurchatov, Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences (now the National Research Center "Kurchatov Institute") was created, which began to study atomic energy.

Initially, Vyacheslav Molotov, Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee (GKO) of the USSR, was in charge of the nuclear problem. But on August 20, 1945 (a few days after the US carried out the atomic bombing of Japanese cities), the GKO decided to create a Special Committee, headed by Lavrenty Beria. He became the curator of the Soviet nuclear project.

At the same time, for the direct management of research, design, engineering organizations and industrial enterprises occupied in the Soviet nuclear project, the First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR was created (later the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR, now the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom). The former People's Commissar of Ammunition, Boris Vannikov, became the head of the PSU.

In April 1946, the design bureau KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - VNIIEF) was created at Laboratory No. 2 - one of the most secret enterprises for the development of domestic nuclear weapons, whose chief designer was Yuli Khariton. Plant N 550 of the People's Commissariat of Ammunition, which produced artillery shells, was chosen as the base for the deployment of KB-11.

The top-secret object was located 75 kilometers from the city of Arzamas (Gorky region, now Nizhny Novgorod Region) on the territory of the former Sarov Monastery.

KB-11 was given the task of creating an atomic bomb in two versions. In the first of them, the working substance should be plutonium, in the second - uranium-235. In the middle of 1948, work on the uranium version was discontinued due to its relatively low efficiency compared to the cost of nuclear materials.

The first domestic atomic bomb had the official designation RDS-1. It was deciphered in different ways: “Russia makes itself”, “Motherland gives Stalin”, etc. But in the official resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 21, 1946, it was encrypted as “Special Jet Engine (“C”).

The creation of the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out taking into account the available materials according to the scheme of the US plutonium bomb tested in 1945. These materials were provided by Soviet foreign intelligence. An important source information was Klaus Fuchs, a German physicist, a participant in the work on the nuclear programs of the United States and Great Britain.

Intelligence materials on the American plutonium charge for the atomic bomb made it possible to shorten the time for the creation of the first Soviet charge, although many technical solutions the American prototype were not the best. Even on early stages Soviet specialists could offer the best solutions for both the charge as a whole and its individual components. Therefore, the first charge for an atomic bomb tested by the USSR was more primitive and less effective than the original version of the charge proposed by Soviet scientists in early 1949. But in order to guarantee and in a short time to show that the USSR also possesses atomic weapons, it was decided to use a charge created according to the American scheme at the first test.

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

RDS-1 was an aviation atomic bomb weighing 4.7 tons, 1.5 meters in diameter and 3.3 meters long. It was developed in relation to the Tu-4 aircraft, the bomb bay of which allowed the placement of a "product" with a diameter of no more than 1.5 meters. Plutonium was used as the fissile material in the bomb.

For the production of an atomic bomb charge in the city of Chelyabinsk-40 on Southern Urals In 1997, a plant was built under the conditional number 817 (now the Mayak Production Association).

The plant's reactor 817 was brought to its design capacity in June 1948, and a year later the plant received the necessary amount of plutonium to manufacture the first charge for an atomic bomb.

The site for the test site, where it was planned to test the charge, was chosen in the Irtysh steppe, about 170 kilometers west of Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. A plain with a diameter of about 20 kilometers was allotted for the test site, surrounded from the south, west and north by low mountains. To the east of this space were small hills.

The construction of the training ground, which was called training ground No. 2 of the Ministry of the Armed Forces of the USSR (later the Ministry of Defense of the USSR), was started in 1947, and by July 1949 it was basically completed.

For testing at the test site, an experimental site with a diameter of 10 kilometers, divided into sectors, was prepared. It was equipped with special facilities to ensure testing, observation and registration of physical research. In the center of the experimental field, a metal lattice tower 37.5 meters high was mounted, designed to install the RDS-1 charge. At a distance of one kilometer from the center, an underground building was built for equipment that registers light, neutron and gamma fluxes of a nuclear explosion. To study the impact of a nuclear explosion on the experimental field, sections of metro tunnels, fragments of airfield runways were built, samples of aircraft, tanks, artillery were placed. rocket launchers, ship superstructures various types. To ensure the operation of the physical sector, 44 structures were built at the test site and a cable network was laid with a length of 560 kilometers.

In June-July 1949, two groups of KB-11 workers with auxiliary equipment and household equipment were sent to the test site, and on July 24 a group of specialists arrived there, which was to be directly involved in preparing the atomic bomb for testing.

On August 5, 1949, the government commission for testing the RDS-1 issued a conclusion on the complete readiness of the test site.

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.

On August 24, 1949, Kurchatov arrived at the training ground. By August 26, all preparatory work at the landfill was completed. The head of the experiment, Kurchatov, ordered the testing of the RDS-1 on August 29 at eight o'clock in the morning local time and the conduct of preparatory operations starting at eight o'clock in the morning on August 27.

On the morning of August 27, the assembly of a combat product began near the central tower. On the afternoon of August 28, the bombers carried out the last full inspection of the tower, prepared the automation for the explosion and checked the demolition cable line.

At four o'clock in the afternoon on August 28, a plutonium charge and neutron fuses were delivered to the workshop near the tower. The final installation of the charge was completed by three o'clock in the morning on August 29. At four o'clock in the morning, the fitters rolled the product out of the assembly shop along the rail track and installed it in the tower's cargo lift cage, and then raised the charge to the top of the tower. By six o'clock, the equipment of the charge with fuses and its connection to the subversive circuit was completed. Then the evacuation of all people from the test field began.

In connection with the worsening weather, Kurchatov decided to postpone the explosion from 8.00 to 7.00.

At 6.35 the operators turned on the power of the automation system. 12 minutes before the explosion, the field machine was turned on. 20 seconds before the explosion, the operator turned on the main connector (switch) connecting the product to the automatic control system. From that moment on, all operations were performed automatic device. Six seconds before the explosion, the main mechanism of the automaton turned on the power of the product and part of the field devices, and one second turned on all the other devices, gave a signal to detonate.

Exactly at seven o'clock 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 its first charge for an atomic bomb.

The charge power was 22 kilotons of TNT.

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 gaped in place of the tower, the soil in the center of the field melted, and a continuous crust of slag formed. Civilian buildings and industrial structures were completely or partially destroyed.

The equipment used in the experiment made it possible to carry out optical observations and measurements of the heat flux, shock wave parameters, characteristics of neutron and gamma radiation, determine the level of radioactive contamination of the area in the area of ​​the explosion and along the trail of the explosion cloud, and study the impact damaging factors nuclear explosion on biological objects.

For the successful development and testing of a charge for an atomic bomb by several closed decrees of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of October 29, 1949, she was awarded orders and medals of the USSR large group leading researchers, designers, technologists; many were awarded the title of laureates of the Stalin Prize, and more than 30 people received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.

As a result of the successful test of the RDS-1, the USSR eliminated the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons, becoming the second nuclear power in the world.

In December 1946, the first experimental nuclear reactor was launched in the USSR, which required 45 tons of uranium to operate. To launch an industrial reactor, which was required to produce plutonium, another 150 tons of uranium were needed, which were accumulated only by the beginning of 1948.

Test launches of the reactor began on June 8, 1948 near Chelyabinsk, but at the end of the year a serious accident occurred, due to which the reactor was shut down for 2 months. At the same time, manual disassembly and assembly of the reactor was carried out, during which thousands of people were irradiated, including Igor Kurchatov and Avraamy Zavenyagin, members of the leadership of the Soviet nuclear project who participated in the liquidation of the accident. The 10 kilograms of plutonium necessary for the manufacture of an atomic bomb were obtained in the USSR by mid-1949.

The test of the first domestic atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site. In place of the tower with the bomb, a funnel 3 meters in diameter and 1.5 meters deep was formed, covered with melted sand. After the explosion, it was allowed to stay 2 kilometers from the epicenter and no more than 15 minutes due to the high level of radiation.

At 25 meters from the tower there was a building made of reinforced concrete structures, with an overhead crane in the hall for installing a plutonium charge. The structure was partially destroyed, the structure itself survived. Of the 1,538 experimental animals, 345 died as a result of the explosion, some of the animals imitated soldiers in the trenches.

The T-34 tank and field artillery received light damage within a radius of 500-550 meters from the epicenter, and at a distance of up to 1500 meters, all types of aircraft received significant damage. At a distance of a kilometer from the epicenter and further every 500 meters, 10 cars"Victory", all 10 cars burned down.

At a distance of 800 meters, two residential 3-storey houses, built 20 meters from each other, so that the first shielded the second, were completely destroyed, residential panel and log houses of the urban type were completely destroyed within a radius of 5 kilometers. Most of the damage was received from the shock wave. Railway and highway bridges located at 1,000 and 1,500 meters, respectively, were mangled and thrown 20-30 meters from their place.

The wagons and vehicles located on the bridges, half-burnt, were scattered across the steppe at a distance of 50-80 meters from the installation site. Tanks and cannons were overturned and mangled, animals were carried away. The tests were considered successful.

Lavrentiy Beria and Igor Kurchatov, the project managers, were awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR. A number of scientists who participated in the project - Kurchatov, Flerov, Khariton, Khlopin, Shchelkin, Zeldovich, Bochvar, as well as Nikolaus Riehl, became Heroes of Socialist Labor.

All of them were awarded Stalin Prizes, and also received dachas near Moscow and Pobeda cars, and Kurchatov received a ZIS car. The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was also received by Boris Vannikov, one of the leaders of the Soviet defense industry, his deputy Pervukhin, deputy minister Zavenyagin, as well as 7 more generals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who led nuclear facilities. Project manager Beria was awarded the order Lenin.

When Lawrence began to pester Oppenheimer with questions about what he was thinking at the time of the explosion, the creator of the atomic bomb looked darkly at the journalist and quoted lines from the sacred Indian book Bhagavad Gita to him:

If the shine of a thousand suns [mountains]
Flashes together in the sky
Man becomes Death
Earth threat.

On the same day at dinner, amid the painful silence of his colleagues, Kistyakovsky said:

I am sure that before the end of the world, in the last millisecond of the existence of the Earth, last man will see what we have seen today." Ovchinnikov V.V. Hot ash. - M.: Pravda, 1987, pp. 103-105.

"On the evening of July 16, 1945, just before the opening of the Potsdam Conference, a dispatch was delivered to Truman, which, even after decoding, was read as a doctor's report. : "The operation was done this morning. The diagnosis is still incomplete, but the results seem satisfactory and already exceed expectations. Dr. Groves is pleased." Ovchinnikov V.V. Hot ash. - M.: Pravda, 1987, p.108.

On this topic:

On July 9, 1972, an underground nuclear explosion was staged in the densely populated Kharkov region to extinguish a burning gas borehole. Today, only a few people know that a nuclear explosion was arranged near Kharkov. Its explosive power was only three times less than that of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

On September 22, 2001, the United States tightened sanctions against India and Pakistan, imposed in 1998 after these countries tested nuclear weapons. In 2002, these countries were on the brink of nuclear war.

April 1, 2009 the world welcomed the statement of the Presidents Russian Federation and United States of America Barack Obama commitment to a world free of nuclear weapons and the fulfillment of obligations under article VI of the non-proliferation treaty with a view to further reducing and limiting strategic offensive arms.

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"Convinced that nuclear disarmament and the total elimination of nuclear weapons are the only absolute guarantee against the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons", the General Assembly proclaimed 26 September "International Day for the Struggle for complete liquidation nuclear weapons", which is designed to contribute to the complete elimination of nuclear weapons by mobilizing international efforts. First proposed in October 2013 in a resolution (A/RES/68/32) was the result of a meeting at highest level on nuclear disarmament, held in General Assembly United Nations On September 26, 2013, the International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons was celebrated for the first time in