The 20th century was oversaturated with events: two World Wars, the Cold War, Caribbean crisis(which almost led to a new global clash), the fall of communist ideology and the rapid development of technology. During this period, the development of a wide variety of weapons was carried out, but the leading powers sought to develop precisely weapons of mass destruction.
Many projects were curtailed, but the Soviet Union managed to create weapons of unprecedented power. We are talking about the AN602, known to the general public as the "Tsar Bomba", created during the arms race. Development was carried out for quite a long time, but the final tests were successful.
History of creation
The "Tsar Bomba" was a natural result of the period of the arms race between America and the USSR, the confrontation of these two systems. The USSR received atomic weapons later than its competitor and wanted to equalize its military potential through advanced, more powerful devices.
The choice logically fell on the development of thermal nuclear weapons: Hydrogen bombs were more powerful than conventional nuclear projectiles.
Even before the Second World War, scientists came to the conclusion that with the help of thermonuclear fusion it is possible to extract energy. During the war, Germany, the USA and the USSR were developing thermonuclear weapons, and the Soviets and America already by the 50s. began to carry out the first explosions.
Post-war period and the beginning cold war made the creation of weapons of mass destruction a priority for the leading powers.
Initially, the idea was to create not the Tsar Bomba, but the Tsar Torpedo (the project received the abbreviation T-15). She, due to the lack of the necessary aviation and rocket carriers of thermonuclear weapons at that time, had to be launched from a submarine.
Its explosion was supposed to cause a devastating tsunami on the coast of the United States. After a closer study, the project was curtailed, recognizing it as doubtful from the standpoint of real combat effectiveness.
Name
"Tsar Bomba" had several abbreviations:
- AN 602 ("product 602);
- RDS-202 and RN202 (both are erroneous).
There were other names in use (which came from the West):
- "Big Ivan";
- "Kuzka's mother".
The name "Kuzka's mother" takes its roots from Khrushchev's statement: "We will show America Kuzka's mother!"
They began to unofficially call this weapon "Tsar Bomba" because of its unprecedented power compared to all really tested carriers.
An interesting fact: "Kuzkina's mother" had a power comparable to the explosion of 3,800 Hiroshima, therefore, in theory, the "Tsar Bomb" really carried the Soviet-style apocalypse to the enemies.
Development
The bomb was developed in the USSR from 1954 to 1961. The order came personally from Khrushchev. The project involved a group of nuclear physicists, the best minds of the time:
- HELL. Sakharov;
- V.B. Adamsky;
- Yu.N. Babaev;
- S.G. Kocharyants;
- Yu.N. Smirnov;
- Yu.A. Trutnev and others.
The development was led by Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR I.V. Kurchatov. The entire staff of scientists, in addition to creating a bomb, sought to identify the limits of the maximum power of thermonuclear weapons. AN 602 was developed as a smaller version of the RN202 explosive device. In comparison with the original idea (the mass reached up to 40 tons), it really lost weight.
The idea of delivering a 40-ton bomb was rejected by A.N. Tupolev due to inconsistency and inapplicability in practice. Not a single Soviet aircraft of those times could lift it.
In the last stages of development, the bomb has changed:
- They changed the material of the shell and reduced the dimensions of the “mother of Kuzma”: it was a cylindrical body 8 m long and about 2 m in diameter, which had streamlined shapes and tail stabilizers.
- They reduced the power of the explosion, thereby slightly reducing the weight (the uranium shell began to weigh 2,800 kg, and the total mass of the bomb decreased to 24 tons).
- Her descent was carried out using a parachute system. She slowed down the fall of the ammunition, which allowed the bomber to leave the epicenter of the explosion in a timely manner.
Tests
The mass of the thermonuclear device was 15% of the take-off mass of the bomber. In order for it to be freely located in the drop bay, the fuselage fuel tanks were removed from it. A new, more load-bearing beam holder (BD-242), equipped with three bomber locks, was responsible for keeping the projectile in the bomb bay. For the release of the bomb was responsible for electric, so that all three locks were opened simultaneously.
Khrushchev announced the planned weapons tests already at the XXII Congress of the CPSU in 1961, as well as during meetings with foreign diplomats. On October 30, 1961, AN602 was delivered from the Olenya airfield to the Novaya Zemlya training ground.
The flight of the bomber took 2 hours, the projectile was dropped from a height of 10,500 m.
The explosion took place at 11:33 Moscow time after being dropped from a height of 4,000 m above the target. The bomb's flight time was 188 seconds. The aircraft that delivered the bomb flew 39 km from the drop zone during this time, and the laboratory aircraft (Tu-95A) that accompanied the carrier flew 53 km.
The shock wave caught up with the car at a distance of 115 km from the target: the vibration was felt significant, about 800 meters of altitude was lost, but this did not affect the further flight. The reflective paint was burned out in some places, and parts of the aircraft were damaged (some even melted).
The final power of the Tsar Bomb explosion (58.6 megatons) exceeded the planned one (51.5 megatons).
After the operation summed up:
- The fireball resulting from the explosion had a diameter of about 4.6 km. In theory, it could grow to the surface of the earth, but thanks to the reflected shock wave, this did not happen.
- The light radiation would have resulted in 3rd degree burns to anyone within 100 km of the target.
- The resulting mushroom reached 67 km. in height, and its diameter at the upper tier reached 95 km.
- Wave atmospheric pressure after the explosion, it circled the earth three times, moving at an average speed of 303 m / s (9.9 degrees of the arc of a circle per hour).
- People who were 1000 km. from the explosion, felt it.
- The sound wave reached a distance of approximately 800 km, but no destruction or damage was officially identified in the surrounding areas.
- Atmospheric ionization led to radio interference at a distance of several hundred kilometers from the explosion and lasted 40 minutes.
- Radioactive contamination in the epicenter (2-3 km) from the explosion was about 1 milliroentgen per hour. 2 hours after the operation, the contamination was practically not dangerous. According to the official version, no one was killed.
- The funnel formed after the explosion of the Kuzkina Mother was not huge for a bomb with a yield of 58,000 kilotons. It exploded in the air, above the rocky ground. The location of the Tsar Bomb explosion on the map showed that it was about 200 m in diameter.
- After the dump, thanks to the fusion reaction (virtually leaving no radioactive contamination), there was a relative purity of more than 97%.
Consequences of the test
Traces of the detonation of the Tsar Bomba are still preserved on the Novaya Zemlya. It was about the most powerful explosive device in the history of mankind. The Soviet Union demonstrated to the rest of the powers that it possessed advanced weapons of mass destruction.
Science as a whole also benefited from the test of AN 602. The experiment made it possible to test the principles of calculation and design of thermonuclear charges of the multistage type that were then in force. It has been experimentally proven that:
- The power of a thermonuclear charge, in fact, is not limited by anything (theoretically, the Americans concluded this 3 years before the bomb explosion).
- The cost of increasing the charge power can be calculated. At 1950 prices, one kiloton of TNT cost 60 cents (for example, an explosion comparable to the bombing of Hiroshima cost $10).
Prospects for practical use
AN602 is not ready for use in combat. Under conditions of fire on the carrier aircraft, the bomb (comparable in size to a small whale) could not be delivered to the target. Rather, its creation and testing was an attempt to demonstrate technology.
Later, in 1962, a new weapon was tested at Novaya Zemlya (a test site in the Arkhangelsk region), a thermonuclear charge made in the AN602 case, the tests were carried out several times:
- Its mass was 18 tons, and its capacity was 20 megatons.
- Delivery was carried out from heavy strategic bombers 3M and Tu-95.
The reset confirmed that thermonuclear aviation bombs of smaller mass and power are easier to manufacture and use in combat conditions. The new ammunition was still more destructive than those dropped on Hiroshima (20 kilotons) and Nagasaki (18 kilotons).
Using the experience of creating the AN602, the Soviets developed warheads of even higher power, installed on superheavy combat missiles:
- Global: UR-500 (could be implemented under the name "Proton").
- Orbital: H-1 (on its basis, they later tried to create a launch vehicle that would deliver the Soviet expedition to the moon).
As a result, the Russian bomb was not developed, but indirectly influenced the course of the arms race. Later, the creation of the "Kuzkina Mother" formed the concept of the development of the strategic nuclear forces of the USSR - the "Nuclear Doctrine of Malenkov-Khrushchev".
Device and specifications
The bomb was similar to the RN202 model, but had a number of design changes:
- Other centering.
- 2-stage explosion initiation system. The nuclear charge of the 1st stage (1.5 megatons of the total explosion power) triggered a thermonuclear reaction in the 2nd stage (with lead components).
The detonation of the charge occurred as follows:
First, there is an explosion of a low-power initiator charge, closed inside the NV shell (in fact, a miniature atomic bomb with a capacity of 1.5 megatons). As a result of a powerful emission of neutrons and high temperature, thermonuclear fusion begins in the main charge.
The neutrons destroy the deuterium-lithium insert (a compound of deuterium and an isotope of lithium-6). As a result of a chain reaction, lithium-6 is split into tritium and helium. As a result, the atomic fuse contributes to the onset of thermonuclear fusion in the detonated charge.
Tritium and deuterium mix, a thermonuclear reaction starts: inside the bomb, the temperature and pressure rapidly rise, the kinetic energy of the nuclei grows, facilitating mutual penetration with the formation of new, heavier elements. The main reaction products are free helium and fast neurons.
Fast neutrons are capable of splitting atoms from the uranium shell, which also generate huge energy (about 18 Mt). The process of fission of uranium-238 nuclei is activated. All of the above contributes to the formation of an explosive wave and the release of a huge amount of heat, due to which the fireball grows.
Each atom of uranium decays into 2 radioactive parts, resulting in up to 36 different chemical elements and about 200 radioactive isotopes. And because of this, radioactive fallout appears, which, after the explosion of the Tsar Bomba, was registered at a distance of hundreds of kilometers from the test site.
The charge and decomposition scheme of the elements are designed in such a way that all these processes proceed instantly.
The design allows you to increase power with virtually no restrictions, and, in comparison with standard atomic bombs, saving money and time.
At first, a 3-stage system was planned (as planned, the second stage activated nuclear fission in blocks from the 3rd stage, which had a component of uranium-238), initiating a nuclear "Jekyll-Hyde reaction", but it was removed due to potentially high level radioactive contamination. This led to half the estimated explosion power (from 101.5 megatons to 51.5).
The final version differed from the original one by a lower level of radioactive contamination after the explosion. As a result, the bomb lost more than half of its planned charge power, but this was justified by scientists. They were afraid that the earth's crust might not withstand such a powerful impact. It was for this reason that they called out not on the ground but in the air.
It was necessary to prepare not only the bomb, but also the aircraft responsible for its delivery and release. This was beyond the power of a conventional bomber. The aircraft must have:
- Reinforced suspension;
- Appropriate design of the bomb bay;
- Reset device;
- Coated with reflective paint.
These tasks were solved after revising the dimensions of the bomb itself and making it a carrier of huge nuclear bombs (in the end, this model was adopted by the Soviets and received the name Tu-95V).
Rumors and hoaxes related to AN 602
It was rumored that the final yield of the explosion was 120 megatons. Such projects have taken place (say, the combat version of the global missile UR-500, the planned capacity of which is 150 megatons), but have not been implemented.
There was a rumor that the initial charge power was 2 times higher than the final one.
They reduced it (except for the above) because of the fear of the appearance of a self-sustaining thermonuclear reaction in the atmosphere. It is curious that similar warnings had previously come from scientists who developed the first atomic bomb (the Manhattan Project).
The last misconception is about the occurrence of the "geological" consequences of weapons. It was believed that the detonation of the original version of the "Ivan bomb" could break through the earth's crust to the mantle if it exploded on the ground, and not in the air. This is not true - the diameter of the funnel after a ground detonation of a bomb, for example, one megaton, is approximately 400 m, and its depth is up to 60 m.
Calculations showed that the explosion of the Tsar Bomba on the surface would lead to the appearance of a funnel with a diameter of 1.5 km and a depth of up to 200 m. The fireball that appeared after the explosion of the "King of the Bomb" would have erased the city on which it fell, and in its place a large crater would have formed. The shockwave would have destroyed the suburb, and all survivors would have received 3rd and 4th degree burns. It might not have broken through the mantle, but earthquakes, and all over the world, would have been guaranteed.
findings
The Tsar Bomba was indeed a grandiose project and a symbol of that crazy era when the great powers sought to overtake each other in creating weapons of mass destruction. A demonstration of the power of the new weapons of mass destruction was held.
For comparison, in the United States, which was previously considered the leader in terms of nuclear potential, the most powerful thermonuclear bomb in service had a power (in TNT equivalent) 4 times less than that of the AN 602.
The "Tsar Bomba" was dropped from the carrier, while the Americans blew up their projectile in the hangar.
For a number of technical and military nuances, they switched to the development of less spectacular, but more effective weapons. It is not practical to produce 50 and 100 megaton bombs: these are single items, suitable only for political pressure.
"Kuzkina's mother" helped develop negotiations on a ban on testing of weapons of mass destruction in 3 environments. As a result, the USA, the USSR and Great Britain signed the treaty already in 1963. The President of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (the main "scientific center of the Soviets of that time") Mstislav Keldysh said that Soviet science sees its goal in the further development and strengthening of peace.
Video
Evgenia Pozhidaeva about the Berkeem show on the eve of the next UN General Assembly.
"... initiatives that are not the most beneficial for Russia are legitimized by ideas that have dominated the mass consciousness for seven decades. The presence of nuclear weapons is seen as a prerequisite for a global catastrophe. Meanwhile, these ideas are largely an explosive mixture of propaganda clichés and frank " urban legends". Around the "bomb" an extensive mythology has developed, which has a very distant relation to reality.
Let's try to deal with at least part of the collection of nuclear myths and legends of the XXI century.
Myth #1
The effect of nuclear weapons may have "geological" proportions.
Thus, the power of the famous "Tsar Bomba" (aka "Kuzkina-mother") "was reduced (to 58 megatons) so as not to break through the earth's crust to the mantle. 100 megatons would be quite enough for this." More radical options go as far as "irreversible tectonic shifts" and even "ball splitting" (ie the planet). To reality, as you might guess, this has not just a zero relation - it tends to the region of negative numbers.
So, what is the "geological" effect of nuclear weapons in reality?
The diameter of the funnel formed during a ground-based nuclear explosion in dry sandy and clay soils (i.e., in fact, the maximum possible - on denser soils, it will naturally be smaller) is calculated using a very unpretentious formula "38 times the cube root of the explosion yield in kilotons". The explosion of a megaton bomb creates a funnel with a diameter of about 400 m, while its depth is 7-10 times less (40-60 m). A ground explosion of a 58-megaton munition, thus, forms a funnel with a diameter of about one and a half kilometers and a depth of about 150-200 m. digging efficiency. In other words, "piercing the earth's crust" and "breaking the ball" are from the field of fishing tales and gaps in the field of literacy.
Myth #2
"Stocks of nuclear weapons in Russia and the United States are enough for a guaranteed 10-20-fold destruction of all life forms on Earth." "The nuclear weapons that we already have are enough to destroy life on earth 300 times in a row."
Reality: propaganda fake.
With an air explosion with a power of 1 Mt, the zone of complete destruction (98% of the dead) has a radius of 3.6 km, strong and medium destruction - 7.5 km. At a distance of 10 km, only 5% of the population dies (however, 45% are injured varying degrees severity). In other words, the area of "catastrophic" damage in a megaton nuclear explosion is 176.5 square kilometers (the approximate area of Kirov, Sochi and Naberezhnye Chelny; for comparison, the area of Moscow in 2008 is 1090 square kilometers). As of March 2013, Russia had 1,480 strategic warheads, the United States - 1,654. In other words, Russia and the United States can jointly turn a country the size of France into a zone of destruction up to and including medium ones, but not the whole world.
With more targeted "fire" The United States can even after the destruction of key facilities that provide a retaliatory strike (command posts, communications centers, missile silos, strategic aviation airfields, etc.) almost completely and immediately destroy almost the entire urban population of the Russian Federation(in Russia there are 1097 cities and about 200 "non-urban" settlements with a population of more than 10 thousand people); a significant part of agriculture will also die (mainly due to radioactive fallout). Pretty obvious indirect effects will wipe out a significant portion of the survivors in a short time. A nuclear attack by the Russian Federation, even in the "optimistic" version, will be much less effective - the population of the United States is more than twice as large, much more dispersed, the States have a noticeably larger "effective" (that is, somewhat developed and populated) territory, which makes the survival of the surviving climate less difficult. However, a Russian nuclear salvo is more than enough to bring the enemy to the Central African state- provided that the main part of its nuclear arsenal is not destroyed by a preventive strike.
Naturally, All these calculations come from from the surprise attack , without the possibility to take any measures to reduce the damage (evacuation, use of shelters). If they are used, the losses will be much less. In other words, the two key nuclear powers, which possess the vast majority of atomic weapons, are capable of practically wiping each other off the face of the Earth, but not humanity, and, moreover, the biosphere. In fact, it would take at least 100,000 megaton-class warheads to almost completely annihilate humanity.
However, perhaps humanity will be killed by indirect effects - nuclear winter and radioactive contamination? Let's start with the first one.
Myth #3
The exchange of nuclear strikes will give rise to a global decrease in temperature, followed by the collapse of the biosphere.
Reality: politically motivated falsification.
The author of the concept of nuclear winter is Carl Sagan, whose followers were two Austrian physicists and a group of Soviet physicist Alexandrov. As a result of their work, the following picture of a nuclear apocalypse appeared. The exchange of nuclear strikes will lead to massive forest fires and fires in cities. In this case, a "firestorm" will often be observed, which in reality was observed during large city fires - for example, London in 1666, Chicago in 1871, Moscow in 1812. During World War II, Stalingrad, Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and a number of smaller cities were bombed.
The essence of the phenomenon is this. Above the zone of a large fire, the air heats up significantly, and begins to rise. In its place come new masses of air, completely saturated with oxygen supporting combustion. There is an effect of "bellows" or "chimney". As a result, the fire continues until everything that can burn burns out - and at temperatures developing in the "forge" of the firestorm, a lot can burn.
As a result of forest and city fires, millions of tons of soot will go into the stratosphere, which screens solar radiation - with an explosion of 100 megatons, the solar flux at the Earth's surface will be reduced by 20 times, 10,000 megatons - by 40. Nuclear night will come for several months, photosynthesis will stop. Global temperatures in the "ten thousandth" version will fall by at least 15 degrees, on average - by 25, in some areas - by 30-50. After the first ten days, the temperature will begin to rise slowly, but in general, the duration of the nuclear winter will be at least 1-1.5 years. Famine and epidemics will stretch the time of collapse to 2-2.5 years.
Impressive picture, isn't it? The problem is that it's fake. Thus, in the case of forest fires, the model assumes that the explosion of a megaton warhead will immediately start a fire over an area of 1000 square kilometers. Meanwhile, in reality, at a distance of 10 km from the epicenter (an area of 314 square kilometers), only individual foci will already be observed. Real smoke generation during forest fires is 50-60 times less than that stated in the model. Finally, the bulk of soot during forest fires does not reach the stratosphere, and is rather quickly washed out of the lower atmospheric layers.
Similarly, a firestorm in cities requires very specific conditions for its occurrence - flat terrain and a huge mass of easily combustible buildings (Japanese cities in 1945 are wood and oiled paper; London 1666 is mainly wood and plastered wood, and the same applies to old German cities). Where at least one of these conditions was not observed, a firestorm did not arise - for example, Nagasaki, built in a typical Japanese spirit, but located in a hilly area, did not become its victim. In modern cities with their reinforced concrete and brick buildings, a firestorm cannot arise for purely technical reasons. Skyscrapers blazing like candles, drawn by the wild imagination of Soviet physicists, are nothing more than a phantom. I will add that the city fires of 1944-45, as, obviously, earlier ones, did not lead to a significant release of soot into the stratosphere - smoke rose only 5-6 km (stratosphere boundary 10-12 km) and was washed out of the atmosphere in a few days ( "black rain").
In other words, the amount of screening soot in the stratosphere will turn out to be orders of magnitude less than that assumed in the model. At the same time, the concept of nuclear winter has already been tested experimentally. Before Desert Storm, Sagan argued that oil soot emissions from burning wells would lead to a fairly severe cooling on a global scale - a "year without summer" on the model of 1816, when every night in June-July the temperature fell below zero even in the United States . Average world temperatures fell by 2.5 degrees, the consequence was global famine. However, in reality, after the Gulf War, the daily burnup of 3 million barrels of oil and up to 70 million cubic meters of gas, which lasted about a year, had a very local (within the region) and limited effect on the climate.
Thus, nuclear winter is impossible even if nuclear arsenals grow back to the level of 1980- X. Exotic options in the style of placing nuclear charges in coal mines with the aim of "consciously" creating conditions for the occurrence of a nuclear winter are also ineffective - it is unrealistic to set fire to a coal seam without collapsing the mine, and in any case, the smoke will turn out to be "low-altitude". Nevertheless, works on the topic of nuclear winter (with even more "original" models) continue to be published, however... The latest surge of interest in them strangely coincided with Obama's initiative for general nuclear disarmament.
The second version of the "indirect" apocalypse is global radioactive contamination.
Myth #4
A nuclear war will lead to the transformation of a significant part of the planet into a nuclear desert, and the territory subjected to nuclear strikes will be useless for the winner due to radioactive contamination.
Let's look at what could potentially create it. Nuclear weapons with a capacity of megatons and hundreds of kilotons are hydrogen (thermonuclear). The main part of their energy is released due to the fusion reaction, during which radionuclides do not arise. However, such munitions still contain fissile materials. In a two-phase thermonuclear device, the nuclear part itself acts only as a trigger that starts the thermonuclear fusion reaction. In the case of a megaton warhead, this is a low-yield plutonium charge with a yield of about 1 kiloton. For comparison, the plutonium bomb that fell on Nagasaki had the equivalent of 21 kt, while only 1.2 kg of fissile material out of 5 burned out in a nuclear explosion, the rest of the plutonium "dirt" with a half-life of 28 thousand years simply scattered around the surroundings, introducing additional contribution to radioactive contamination. More common, however, are three-phase munitions, where the fusion zone, "charged" with lithium deuteride, is enclosed in a uranium shell, in which a "dirty" fission reaction occurs, amplifying the explosion. It can even be made from uranium-238 unsuitable for conventional nuclear weapons. However, due to weight limitations in modern strategic munitions, limited amounts of the more effective uranium-235 are preferred. Nevertheless, even in this case, the amount of radionuclides released during the air explosion of a megaton munition will exceed the level of Nagasaki not by 50, as it should be, based on the power, but by 10 times.
At the same time, due to the predominance of short-lived isotopes, the intensity of radioactive radiation falls rapidly - decreasing after 7 hours by 10 times, 49 hours - by 100, 343 hours - by 1000 times. Further, it is by no means necessary to wait until the radioactivity drops to the notorious 15-20 microroentgens per hour - people have been living for centuries without any consequences in territories where the natural background exceeds the standards hundreds of times. So, in France, the background in some places is up to 200 mcr/h, in India (the states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu) - up to 320 mcr/h, in Brazil, on the beaches of the states of Rio de Janeiro and Espirito Santo, the background ranges from 100 to 1000 mcr/h h (on the beaches of the resort town of Guarapari - 2000 mkr / h). In the Iranian resort Ramsar, the average background is 3000, and the maximum is 5000 microroentgen / h, while its main source is radon - which implies a massive intake of this radioactive gas into the body.
As a result, for example, the panic predictions that were heard after the bombing of Hiroshima ("vegetation will be able to appear only in 75 years, and in 60-90 - people will be able to live"), to put it mildly, did not come true. The surviving population was not evacuated, but did not die out completely and did not mutate. Between 1945 and 1970, the number of leukemias among survivors of the bombing exceeded the norm by less than twice (250 cases versus 170 in the control group).
Let's take a look at the Semipalatinsk test site. In total, 26 ground (the dirtiest) and 91 air nuclear explosions were produced on it. Most of the explosions were also extremely "dirty" - the first Soviet nuclear bomb (the famous and extremely unsuccessfully designed Sakharov "sloika") was especially distinguished, in which, out of 400 kilotons of total power, no more than 20% fell on the fusion reaction. Impressive emissions were also provided by the "peaceful" nuclear explosion, with the help of which Lake Chagan was created. What does the result look like?
At the site of the explosion of the notorious puff, there is a funnel overgrown with absolutely normal grass. No less banal, despite the veil of hysterical rumors hovering around, looks like the nuclear lake Chagan. In the Russian and Kazakh press, one can come across passages like this. “It is curious that the water in the “atomic” lake is clean, and there are even fish there. However, the edges of the reservoir “glow” so much that their radiation level is actually equated to radioactive waste. At this point, the dosimeter shows 1 microsievert per hour, which is 114 times more than normal." In the photograph of the dosimeter attached to the article, 0.2 microsievert and 0.02 milliroentgen appear, that is, 200 microroentgen / h. As shown above, compared to Ramsar, Kerala and Brazilian beaches, this is a somewhat pale result. The especially large carp found in Chagan cause no less horror among the public - however, the increase in the size of living creatures in this case is due to completely natural reasons. However, this does not prevent enchanting publications with stories about lake monsters hunting bathers and stories of "eyewitnesses" about "grasshoppers the size of a cigarette pack."
Approximately the same thing could be observed on the Bikini Atoll, where the Americans blew up a 15-megaton munition (however, a "clean" single-phase one). "Four years after the tests of the hydrogen bomb on the Bikini Atoll, scientists who examined the 1.5-kilometer crater formed after the explosion discovered something completely different from what they expected to see under water: instead of a lifeless space, large corals 1 m high and with a trunk diameter of about 30 cm bloomed in the crater , many fish swam - the underwater ecosystem was completely restored" . In other words, the prospect of life in a radioactive desert with soil and water poisoned for many years does not threaten humanity even in the worst case.
On the whole, the one-time destruction of mankind, and even more so of all forms of life on Earth, with the help of nuclear weapons is technically impossible. At the same time, ideas about the "sufficiency" of several nuclear charges to inflict unacceptable damage on the enemy, and the myth about the "uselessness" for the aggressor of the territory subjected to a nuclear attack, and the legend about the impossibility nuclear war as such, because of the inevitability of a global catastrophe, even if the retaliatory nuclear strike turns out to be weak. Victory over an enemy that does not have nuclear parity and a sufficient number of nuclear weapons is possible - without a global catastrophe and with significant benefits.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb of such magnitude that it would have been too large for military use. And this event had far-reaching consequences of various kinds. That very morning, October 30, 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 bomber took off from the Olenya air base on the Kola Peninsula, in the far north of Russia.
This Tu-95 was a specially improved version of an aircraft that had entered service a few years earlier; a large, sprawling, four-engine monster that was supposed to carry an arsenal of Soviet nuclear bombs.
During that decade, there were huge breakthroughs in Soviet nuclear research. Second World War put the US and the USSR in the same camp, but the post-war period was replaced by a cold in relations, and then their freezing. And the Soviet Union, which was faced with the fact of rivalry from one of the world's largest superpowers, had only one choice: to join the race, and quickly.
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, known as "Joe-1" in the West, in the remote steppes of Kazakhstan, assembling it from the work of spies who had infiltrated the American atomic bomb program. During the years of intervention, the test program quickly took off and began, and during its course, about 80 devices were blown up; in 1958 alone, the USSR tested 36 nuclear bombs.
But nothing compares to this ordeal.
The Tu-95 carried a huge bomb under its belly. It was too large to fit inside the aircraft's bomb bay, where such munitions were normally carried. The bombs were 8 meters long, about 2.6 meters in diameter and weighed more than 27 tons. Physically, she was very similar in form to the "Kid" and "Fat Man" dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki fifteen years earlier. In the USSR, she was called both "Kuzkina's mother" and "Tsar Bomba", and the last name was well preserved for her.
The Tsar bomb was not the most common nuclear bomb. It was the result of a feverish attempt by Soviet scientists to create the most powerful nuclear weapon and thereby support Nikita Khrushchev's ambition to make the world tremble at the might of Soviet technology. It was more than a metal monster, too big to fit even the largest aircraft. It was the destroyer of cities, the ultimate weapon.
This Tupolev, painted bright white to reduce the effect of a bomb flash, has reached its destination. New Earth, a sparsely populated archipelago in the Barents Sea, above the frozen northern reaches of the USSR. The pilot of the Tupolev, Major Andrey Durnovtsev, delivered the aircraft to the Soviet test site at Mityushikha to an altitude of about 10 kilometers. A small advanced Tu-16 bomber was flying nearby, ready to film the impending explosion and take air samples from the explosion zone for further analysis.
In order for two aircraft to have a chance of surviving - and there were no more than 50% of them - the Tsar Bomba was equipped with a giant parachute weighing about a ton. The bomb was supposed to slowly descend to a predetermined height - 3940 meters - and then explode. And then, two bombers will be already 50 kilometers from it. This should have been enough to survive the explosion.
The Tsar bomb was detonated at 11:32 Moscow time. A fireball almost 10 kilometers wide formed at the site of the explosion. The fireball rose higher under the influence of its own shock wave. The flash was visible from a distance of 1000 kilometers from everywhere.
The mushroom cloud at the site of the explosion grew 64 kilometers in height, and its hat expanded until it spread 100 kilometers from edge to edge. The sight must have been indescribable.
For Novaya Zemlya, the consequences were catastrophic. In the village of Severny, 55 kilometers from the epicenter of the explosion, all the houses were completely destroyed. It was reported that in the Soviet regions, hundreds of kilometers from the zone, the explosions caused damage of all kinds - houses collapsed, roofs sagged, windows flew out, doors were broken. The radio was out of service for an hour.
"Tupolev" Durnovtsev was lucky; the blast wave of the Tsar Bomba caused the giant bomber to fall 1,000 meters before the pilot could regain control of it.
One Soviet operator who witnessed the detonation recounted the following:
“The clouds under the plane and at a distance from it were illuminated by a powerful flash. The sea of light parted under the hatch and even the clouds began to glow and became transparent. At that moment, our plane was between two layers of clouds and below, in the crevice, a huge, bright, orange ball bloomed. The ball was powerful and majestic, like. Slowly and quietly he crept up. Having broken through a thick layer of clouds, it continued to grow. It seemed to suck the whole earth. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”
The Tsar Bomba released incredible energy - now it is estimated at 57 megatons, or 57 million tons of TNT equivalent. This is 1,500 times more than the two bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 10 times more powerful than all the munitions used during World War II. The sensors registered the blast wave of the bomb, which circumnavigated the Earth not once, not twice, but three times.
Such an explosion cannot be kept secret. The United States had a spy plane a few dozen kilometers from the explosion. It contained a special optical device, the bhangemeter, useful for calculating the strength of distant nuclear explosions. Data from this aircraft - codenamed Speedlight - was used by the Foreign Arms Evaluation Panel to calculate the results of this clandestine test.
International condemnation was not long in coming, not only from the United States and Great Britain, but also from the USSR's Scandinavian neighbors such as Sweden. The only bright spot in this mushroom cloud was that since the fireball did not touch the Earth, there was surprisingly little radiation.
Everything could be different. Initially, the Tsar Bomba was conceived twice as powerful.
One of the architects of this formidable device was the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov, a man who would later become world famous for his attempts to rid the world of the very weapons he helped create. He was a veteran of the Soviet atomic bomb program from the very beginning and became part of the team that created the first atomic bombs for the USSR.
Sakharov began work on a multilayer fission-fusion-fission device, a bomb that creates additional energy from nuclear processes in its core. This involved wrapping deuterium, a stable isotope of hydrogen, in a layer of unenriched uranium. Uranium was supposed to capture neutrons from burning deuterium and also start a reaction. Sakharov called her "puff". This breakthrough allowed the USSR to create the first hydrogen bomb, a device much more powerful than the atomic bombs had been a few years before.
Khrushchev instructed Sakharov to come up with a bomb that was more powerful than all the others that had already been tested by that time.
The Soviet Union needed to show that it could beat the US in the race nuclear weapons, according to Philip Coyle, former head of US nuclear weapons testing under President Bill Clinton. He spent 30 years helping build and test nuclear weapons. “The US was way ahead because of the work they had done preparing the bombs for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then they did a lot of atmospheric tests before the Russians did their first.”
“We were ahead and the Soviets were trying to do something to tell the world that they were worth reckoning with. The Tsar Bomba was primarily meant to make the world stop and recognize the Soviet Union as an equal,” says Coyle.
The original design - a three-layer bomb with uranium layers separating each stage - would have had a yield of 100 megatons. 3000 times more than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union had already tested large devices in the atmosphere, equivalent to several megatons, but this bomb would have become simply gigantic compared to those. Some scientists began to believe that it was too big.
With such a huge force, there would be no guarantee that a giant bomb would not fall into a swamp in the north of the USSR, leaving behind a huge cloud of radioactive fallout.
This is what Sakharov feared, in part, says Frank von Hippel, a physicist and head of the Department of Public and international relations Princeton University.
“He was really worried about the amount of radioactivity the bomb could create,” he says. “And the genetic implications for future generations.”
"And that was the beginning of the journey from bomb designer to dissident."
Before the tests began, the layers of uranium that were supposed to disperse the bomb to incredible power were replaced by layers of lead, which reduced the intensity of the nuclear reaction.
The Soviet Union created such a powerful weapon that scientists were unwilling to test it at full power. And the problems with this destructive device were not limited to this.
Tu-95 bombers designed to carry nuclear weapons Soviet Union, were designed to carry much lighter weapons. The Tsar Bomba was so large that it could not be placed on a rocket, and so heavy that the planes carrying it would not be able to deliver it to the target and stay with the right amount of fuel for the return. And in general, if the bomb were as powerful as it was intended, the planes might not return.
Even nuclear weapons can be too many, says Coyle, who is now a senior official at the Center for Arms Control in Washington. "It's hard to find a use for it unless you want to destroy very large cities," he says. "It's just too big to use."
Von Hippel agrees. “These things (large free-falling nuclear bombs) were designed so that you could destroy a target from a kilometer away. The direction of movement has changed - towards increasing the accuracy of missiles and the number of warheads.
The tsar bomb led to other consequences. It caused so much concern - five times more than any other test before it - that it led to a taboo against atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in 1963. Von Hippel says Sakharov was particularly concerned about the amount of radioactive carbon-14 that was being released into the atmosphere, an isotope with a particularly long half-life. It was partially mitigated by carbon from fossil fuels in the atmosphere.
Sakharov was worried that the bomb, which would be larger than the tested one, would not be repelled by its own blast wave - like the Tsar Bomba - and would cause global radioactive fallout, spread toxic dirt throughout the planet.
Sakharov became an outspoken supporter of the 1963 partial test ban and an outspoken critic of nuclear proliferation. And in the late 1960s, missile defense which, he rightly believed, would spur a new nuclear arms race. He was increasingly ostracized by the state and went on to become a dissident, who in 1975 was awarded Nobel Prize world and called "the conscience of mankind," says von Hippel.
It seems that the Tsar Bomba caused precipitation of a completely different kind.
According to the BBC
The device will be designed to destroy the fortified naval bases of a potential enemy, a TASS source noted.
The Poseidon unmanned underwater vehicle being created in Russia will be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead with a capacity of up to 2 megatons to destroy enemy naval bases. This was reported to TASS on Thursday by a source in the military-industrial complex.
“It will be possible to install various nuclear charges on the“ torpedo ”of the Poseidon multi-purpose marine system, the maximum power will have a monoblock thermonuclear warhead, similar to the Avagard charge - up to two megatons in TNT equivalent, ”the agency’s interlocutor told TASS.
He specified that the nuclear-powered device would be “primarily designed to destroy the fortified naval bases of a potential enemy.” Thanks to the nuclear power plant, the source said, "Poseidon" will go to the target at an intercontinental range at a depth of more than 1 km at a speed of 60-70 knots (110-130 km / h).
TASS does not have official confirmation of the information provided by the source.
As another source in the defense industry told TASS earlier, the Poseidon will enter the Navy’s combat strength as part of the current armament program for 2018-2027, and a new specialized submarine being built at Sevmash will become its carrier.
"Poseidon"
Russian President Vladimir Putin first spoke about the unmanned underwater vehicle with a nuclear power plant being created in Russia in his address to the Federal Assembly in March of this year. The President then said that these drones can be equipped with both conventional and nuclear weapons and will be able to destroy enemy infrastructure, aircraft carrier groups, and so on.As Commander-in-Chief of the Navy Sergei Korolev later clarified, the new weapon will allow the fleet to decide wide range missions in water areas near enemy territory. According to the commander-in-chief, the main element of the drone, a small-sized nuclear power plant, has already been tested.
Poseidon vehicles, together with carriers - nuclear submarines - are part of the so-called ocean multipurpose system. The drone got its name in the course of an open vote on the website of the Ministry of Defense.
There is a technical term - "impoverishment", that is, a decrease in the concentration of the element we need. What does it mean in the case of HEU, highly enriched uranium? The HEU in a nuclear warhead is metal. How, excuse me, to stuff uranium-238 into it so that the concentration of uranium-235 drops from 90% to 5%? You must admit that this is not the most trivial task, and therefore the question arises: what kind of an angel did Russia so easily sign first the Agreement, and then the HEU-LEU Contract. The answer, as is customary in Mordor, is simple: “but we had it with us.” Under terrible socialism, when we were born on the orders of the party and the government, but thought only in unison and only according to the orders of the Central Committee, weird people in nuclear cities they came up with a technology "in reserve" - such are the "atomic mind games". In the post-Soviet era, these games quickly turned into patents, although the names of the inventors, out of habit, did not appear in the public domain.
Initially, the impoverishment scheme looked like this. Kind people at the Mayak plant and at the Northern Chemical Combine (SKhK) took in their hands vigorous loaves and literally ... planed them to get metal shavings. I don’t know what this “planer” looked like, but the desired result was. This shaving was converted at three of our four centrifuge plants (SCC, the Ural Electrolysis Chemical Plant and the Electrochemical Plant), that is, it was combined with fluorine. The centrifuges received not only "planed" weapons-grade uranium, but also the so-called diluent, which was produced at the Angarsk electrolysis chemical plant. The centrifuges buzzed, roughly speaking, "in the opposite direction", the fuel uranium obtained at the exit went to St. Petersburg, to the "SPb Isotope", where it was loaded onto boats and sent to the States.
But, if you think that this is the end of the technical part, you are in a hurry. What is this "diluent"? We rewind back: we remember how uranium is enriched. The first centrifuge of the cascade receives 99.3% of uranium-238 and 0.7% of the uranium-235 we need. Part of the uranium-238 remained "in place", and the second centrifuge already receives - roughly - 99.2% uranium-238 and 0.8% uranium-235 - and so on. Each time there is more and more uranium-235, until we reach the desired concentration. Now the question is - where does the uranium go, which remained in the very first centrifuge, which was depleted? Where does the uranium go that was left in Centrifuge No. 2, which was depleted? You can’t throw it in the trash, because it’s radioactive. Problem? Yes, and what else! This depleted uranium contains only 0.2-0.3% uranium-235. A kind of “tail” from enrichment. Nuclear scientists were not wiser - "tail" has become a common technical term. And these “tails” have been accumulated near each enrichment plant - the sea is spilled, the bill goes to hundreds of thousands of tons around the world. According to Greenpeace, in 1996 the number of "tails" in some countries was as follows: France - 190 thousand tons, Russia - 500 thousand tons. USA - 740 thousand tons. Well, what to do with such wealth, you ask? The United States, if you remember, liked to indulge in bombs and shells with this very depleted uranium, because until 2005 they considered “tails” to be quite a valuable raw material. The Europeans figured out how to replace fluorine with oxygen in the "tails" - in this form it is more convenient to store them. Since 2005, the United States has repeated the maneuver - uranium fluoride is converted into oxide and stored. And why they keep it - they themselves don’t understand ... What is a “tail”, if on the fingers? Yes, almost 100% uranium-238! Well, no one needs it. It would seem. But there is also the terrible Mordor - waddedly stupid and backward. Since there are already so many technical details, I’ll tell you more at an opportunity, but now briefly: we need it, and only we. Because only in the gas station country is the second fast neutron reactor operating. And in this reactor, uranium-238 burns, gives heat and electricity. Therefore, we do not give our “tails” to anyone, we do not bury them anywhere, we do not destroy them.
Our "tails" lay to themselves and lay - until the signing of HEU-LEU. And here it is required. What for? Because of the American standard for reactor fuel - ASTM C996-96. This standard has strict requirements for the content of uranium isotopes, of which there is a microscopic amount (thousandths of a percent) in the ore: uranium-232, uranium-234 and uranium-236. They are really harmful, here the Americans never lie. Uranium-232 is outrageously radioactive, as are its decay products, and this spoils fuel pellets. Uranium-234 emits alpha particles - you can't get enough staff, sorry. Uranium-236 grabs the neutrons produced during the fission of uranium-235 and dampens the chain reaction. Where does this "happiness" come from? Yes, highly enriched uranium! All of these isotopes are lighter than the main uranium-238 - noticed? This means that while the centrifuges are enriching uranium-235 to 90%, the concentration of this trinity 232/234/236 is also growing. In a edren-loaf, the trinity does not bother anyone - the radioactivity there is already above the head, and in a nuclear explosion, no attempts to slow down the chain reaction simply have time to work. But, if the concentration of uranium-235 falls in the "tails", then the concentration of 232/234/236 in them is also less than in natural uranium. There is only one conclusion - HEU can only be diluted with "tails". We signed the Contract, which means "tails" - to the battle!
I have a suspicion that all of you know that the most terrible animal on the planet is the toad: it strangles so many people ... It strangled our nuclear scientists as well - no hand was raised to take and destroy our "tails" like that. After all, a lot of them were needed: from 1 ton of HEU fuel uranium, as many as 30 tons are obtained. 500 tons of HEU had to be diluted, therefore, it was necessary to chop 14,500 tons of "tails" - and this is the minimum. Why "minimum"? Our nuclear scientists, who played with their minds about the conversion of HEU into LEU, experimentally found out that dilution requires a concentration of uranium-235 of 1.5%. And in our "tails" it is only 0.3%. Therefore, the "tail" must first be enriched to these 1.5%, and only then it should be made with HEU. As these calculations progressed, the weight of the toad increased significantly: the “tails” had to be cut almost to the root ...
I don't know what and how Albert Shishkin (Head of Techsnabexport from 1988 to 1998) told the Americans. Maybe he danced a quadrille or what songs he sang, hung on a pole - this is clearly the most important state secret. But the result exceeded expectations: the Americans were ready to give us their "tails", because 146% believed that we "finally don't have" them. They would have given it, but for this it would have been necessary to change a dozen US laws that prohibited any supply of uranium to Russia. Shishkin, dressed in a kosovorotka, offendedly parted the accordion furs, and even the bear behind his shoulder made a reproachful muzzle: “Well, we thought you were serious people ...”. I don’t know what and how the Americans did with their European partners - they used jiu-jitzu, wrestling, or just the Kama Sutra. But in 1996, the French "Cogema", the French "Eurodiff" and the Anglo-Dutch-German URENCO signed agreements with Techsnabexport on the docking of their "tails" - for 105,000 tons. The price of 1 kg of "tail" was breathtaking - 62 cents, while the average price of natural uranium at that time was $ 85 per kilo. Once again - $0.62 and $85. Apparently, the Kama Sutra was used by the Americans, after all ...
Apparently, shortly after the Europeans and Techsnabexport struck their seals, the Americans were relieved of the worries caused by Albert Shishkin. Greenpeace was noisy, the trees were bending - these guys protested against almost every steamer, every train with depleted uranium coming from Europe to Russia. If you believe their heart-rending cries, Russia has already died out 3-4 times from the frenzied radioactivity, which is still pearling from the “tails”. Well, that is, shells-bombs from depleted uranium of the American military, who hit Yugoslavia, did not irradiate the Americans, and the same depleted uranium at the sites of our enrichment plants mortally hit everyone and everyone from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok ... It’s good that our nuclear scientists are calm people , they did not become distracted by this kind of tantrums.
However, the nuclear scientists had something to do. Obtaining a HEU diluent from the "tails" was patented in Russia (patent RU 2479489, developers - Palkin V.A., Chopin G.V., Gordienko V.S., Belousov A.A., Glukhov N.P., Iovik I. .E., Chernov L.G., Ilyin I.V., patent owner - Angarsk electrolysis chemical plant) immediately after the Americans who arrived in Angarsk recognized that this development was many times better than the best that they had time to come up with in the United States. I must say that the world of scientists is very different from ours: American scientists helped our team of developers to protect this patent in the USA as well. Geopolitical confrontation is one thing, but a good idea is quite another. There were a number of other patents, also protected both in Russia and in the USA, but this one was the key one: the correct composition of the diluent ensured compliance with the requirements of the American uranium fuel quality standard for the content of harmful isotopes. Since 1994, since the signing of the HEU-LEU Contract, the technology has been mastered for less than two years - since 1996, the dilution of HEU began at the Ural Electrolysis Chemical Plant, the first batches of LEU began to cross the ocean. Gradually, the technology and the necessary equipment were mastered by the SCC with ECP, and in Angarsk all the work to obtain the diluent was concentrated. I state in such detail to emphasize once again: the HEU-LEU Contract provided the work for all four of our enrichment plants, thus ensuring both the preservation of People and the opportunity to send all privatizers into the crack - the dollars under the Contract became the airbag of our nuclear project. Let me remind you that at the same time the issue of warheads remaining on the territory of Ukraine was being resolved.
Again, multi-buff, damn it. And we just got to 1996, a very, very remarkable year for the American Centrifuge Project. Bill Clinton, the most secret agent of Rosatom, accomplished a labor feat that turned the abbreviation PAC into the word “pots” by 2015. Where to put the bust of the hero is a debatable question, but it is necessary to put it, and at the expense of the state budget of the Russian Federation, since Clin Blinton clearly deserves it.
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