Russian Nuclear Programme

      

The Soviet Union became the second nation in the world to detonate a nuclear device on 29 August 1949 (the U.S. had previously exploded eight devices). Between that date, and 24 October 1990 (the date of the last Soviet, or Russian, test) the Soviet Union conducted 715 nuclear tests, by official count. As with the U.S., the term "test" may indicate the near simultaneous detonation of more than one nuclear exposive device, so the actual number of devices exploded is 969 (for comparison, the U.S. has conducted 1056 tests/explosions using at least 1151 devices).

        Not included are "hydronuclear tests", what are tests involving fissile material with yields (by design) of less than 1 ton. The Soviet Union conducted about 100 of these tests, with the yields remaining below 100 kg. Explosive device fizzles with yields of less than 1 ton are included however.

     Thanks to the painstaking effort of scientists the work was progressing fast. In 1946, the scientists led by Igor Kurchatov attained self-sustained uranium chain reaction for the first time in Eurasia. Two years later, this achievement was translated into commissioning of the first 100 MW production Reactor A.  It was put into operation at industrial facility № 817 (now PA Mayak in Ozersk, Chelyabinsk Region).  The first Soviet nuclear reactor (and the first nuclear reactor in Europe) went critical on Christmas day 1946, at 6 p.m. local time at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. The graphite moderated F-1 (for "Physics-1") was apparently based on the design of the Hanford 305 reactor and originally operated at a power level of 10 watts (later upgraded to 24 kilowatts). Larger graphite moderated plutonium production reactors provided the fissile material for the first Soviet atomic bombs.

       The first Soviet nuclear charge (RDS-1) was successfully tested in Semipalatinsk on August 9, 1949.  Thus, the four-year heroic effort of Soviet scientists and engineers allowed the Soviet Union to come on a par with the United States of America.

                                                    THE TSAR

       On October 30, 1961, the most powerful weapon ever constructed by mankind was exploded over the island of Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic Sea. The device was code-named "Tsar", was a multi-stage hydrogen bomb which was built in only sixteen weeks by engineers in the USSR at the order of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The Tsar Bomb was a three-stage Teller–Ulam design hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 megatons (Mt). This is equivalent to 1,400 times the combined power of the bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 10 times the combined power of all the explosives used in WWII, or one quarter of the estimated yield of the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa. It so decides decrease to 50 megatons, but even so was four times more powerful than any weapon in the arsenal of Western.

        Nuclear explosion of the most powerful American bomb, codenamed Castle Bravo, 15 megatons Due to the short time of several calculations were estimated development and construction took place with many unknowns.

           Nuclear device came to be two meters in diameter and 8 in length, raising questions about the method of delivery. It took a Tu-95 bomber heavily modified to carry the bomb, which went to weigh 27 tonnes.

       All buildings in Severny were destroyed and hundreds of miles away wooden houses were destroyed and the lost brick roofs, windows and doors. Radio communications were interrupted for almost an hour. The explosion could be seen and felt to Finland, and breaking windows. Atmospheric shock waves around the planet have done 3 times. People who would have been less than 100 km would have suffered burns of grade 3. The heat was felt up to 270 km. Seismic shock measured from 5 to 5.25 on the Richter scale. The power released in the 39 nanoseconds of the explosion was 5.4 x 1024 watts (5.4 yottawatt), approximately 1.4% of the power of the sun.