Soviet atomic bomb project - wikipedia Soviet atomic bomb project Soviet atomic bomb project Russian physicists Andrei Sakharov ( left ) and Igor Kurchatov, who led the program to success. Operational scope Operational R&D Location Atomgrad, Semipalatinsk, Chagan Lake Planned by NKVD, NKGB GRU, MGB, PGU Date 1940 -- 49 Executed by Soviet Union Outcome The successful development of nuclear weapons. The Soviet atomic bomb project ( Russian : Советский проект атомной бомбы, Sovetskiy proyekt atomnoy bomby ) was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during World War II. Although the Soviet scientific community discussed the possibility of an atomic bomb throughout the 1930s, going as far as to making a concrete proposal to develop such weapon in 1940, the full - scale program was initiated only in response to the intelligence reports collected by Soviet intelligence through their spy ring in the United States on the secretive Manhattan Project. Because of the conspicuous silence of the scientific publications on the subject of fission by German, American, and British scientists, Russian physicist Georgy Flyorov suspected that the Allied powers had secretly been developing a `` superweapon '' since 1939. Flyorov wrote a letter to Stalin urging him to start this program in 1942. Initial efforts were slowed due to the German invasion of the Soviet Union and remained largely composed of the intelligence knowledge gained from the spy rings working in the U.S. ' Manhattan Project in 1943. After learning of the atomic bombings of Japanese cities that officially ended World War II in 1945, the program was aggressively pursued, mainly through effective intelligence gathering about the German weapon project and the American Manhattan Project. The Russian efforts also rounded up captured German scientists to join their program, and relied heavily on knowledge passed by the spy ring to the Russian intelligence agencies. On 29 August 1949, the Soviet Union secretly conducted its first successful weapon test ( First Lightning ), based on the U.S. design at the Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. Contents 1 Early efforts 1.1 Background origins and roots 1.2 World War II and accelerated feasibility 2 Organization and administration 3 Espionage 3.1 Soviet atomic ring 3.2 Soviet intelligence management in Manhattan Project 4 Initial thermonuclear bomb designs 5 Logistical problems 6 Important Soviet nuclear tests 6.1 RDS - 1 6.2 RDS - 2 6.3 RDS - 3 6.4 RDS - 4 6.5 RDS - 5 6.6 RDS - 6 6.7 RDS - 9 6.8 RDS - 37 6.9 Tsar Bomba ( RDS - 220 ) 6.10 Chagan 7 Secret cities 8 Environmental and public health effects 9 See also 10 References 10.1 Bibliography 11 External links Early efforts Background Origins and roots Main articles : Timeline of Russian inventions and technology records and History of the periodic table I.V. Kurchatov at the Radium Institute, ca. 1930s. As early as 1910 in Russia, independent research was being conducted on radioactive elements by several Russian scientists. Despite the hardship faced by the Russian academy of sciences during the national revolution in 1917, followed by the violent civil war in 1922, the Russian scientists had made remarkable efforts towards the advancement of physics research in the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Before the first revolution in 1905, the mineralogist Vladimir Vernadsky had made a number of public calls for a survey of Russia 's uranium deposits but none were heeded. However, such early efforts were independently and privately funded by various organizations until 1922 when the Radium Institute in Petrograd ( now Saint Petersburg ) opened and industrialized the research. From the 1920s until the late 1930s, Russian physicists had been conducting joint research with their European counterparts on the advancement of atomic physics at the Cavendish Laboratory run by a British physicist, Ernest Rutherford, where Georgi Gamov and Pyotr Kapitsa had studied and researched. Influential research towards the advancement of nuclear physics was guided by Abram Ioffe, who was the director at the Leningrad Physical - Technical Institute ( LPTI ), having sponsored various research program at various technical schools in the Soviet Union. The discovery of the neutron by the British physicist James Chadwick further provided promising expansion of the LPTI 's program, with the operation of the first cyclotron to energies of over 1 MeV, and the first `` splitting '' of the atomic nucleus by John Cockcroft and Ernest Walton. Russian physicists began pushing the government, lobbying in the interest of the development of science in the Soviet Union, which had received little interest due to the upheavals created during the Russian revolution and the February Revolution. Earlier research was directed towards the medical and scientific exploration of radium, that could be retrieved from borehole water from the Ukhta oilfields. In 1939, German chemist Otto Hahn reported his discovery of fission, achieved by the splitting of uranium with neutrons that produced the much lighter element barium. This eventually led to the realization among Russian scientists, and their American counterparts, that such reaction could have military significance. The discovery excited the Russian physicists, and they began conducting their independent investigations on nuclear fission, mainly aiming towards power generation, as many were skeptical of possibility of creating an atomic bomb anytime soon. Early efforts were led by Yakov Frenkel ( a physicist specialised on condensed matter ), who did the first theoretical calculations on continuum mechanics directly relating the kinematics of binding energy in fission process in 1940. Georgy Flyorov 's and Lev Rusinov 's collaborative work on thermal reactions concluded that 3 - 1 neutrons were emitted per fission only days after similar conclusions had been reached by the team of Frédéric Joliot - Curie. World War II and accelerated feasibility Main articles : Eastern Front ( World War II ) and Russo - German War After a strong lobbying of Russian scientists, the Soviet government did initially set up a commission that was to address the `` uranium problem '' and investigate the possibility of chain reaction and Isotope separation. The Uranium Problem Commission was ineffective due to the German invasion of Soviet Union that eventually limited the focus on research as Russia became engaged in a bloody conflict along the Eastern Front for next four years. The Soviet atomic weapons program had no significance and most work was unclassified as the papers were continuously published as public domain on academic journals. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet leader, had mostly disregarded the atomic knowledge possessed by the Russian scientists and had most of the scientists working in the metallurgy and mining industry or serving in the Soviet Armed Forces technical branches during the World War II 's eastern front in 1940 -- 42. In 1940 -- 42, Georgy Flyorov, a Russian physicist serving as an officer in the Soviet Air Force, noted that despite progress in other areas of physics, the German, British, and American scientists had ceased publishing papers on nuclear science ; clearly they each had active secret research programs. In April 1942, Flyorov directed two classified letters to Stalin, warning him of the consequences of the development of atomic weapons : ``... the results will be so overriding ( that ) it wo n't be necessary to determine who is to blame for the fact that this work has been neglected in our country. '' The second letter, by Flyorov and Konstantin Petrzhak, highly emphasized the importance of a `` uranium bomb '' : `` it is essential to manufacture a uranium bomb without a delay. '' Upon reading the Flyorov letters, Stalin immediately pulled Russian physicists from their respective military services and authorized an atomic bomb project, under engineering physicist Anatoly Alexandrov and nuclear physicist Igor V. Kurchatov. For this purpose, the Laboratory No. 2 near Moscow was established under Kurchatov. At the same time, Flyorov was moved to Dubna, where he established the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions, focusing on synthetic elements and thermal reactions. In late 1942, the State Defense Committee officially delegated the program to the Soviet Army, with major wartime logistical efforts later being supervised by Lavrentiy Beria, the head of NKVD. In 1945, the Arzamas 16 site near Moscow was established under Yakov Zel'dovich and Yuli Khariton who performed calculations on nuclear combustion theory, alongside Isaak Pomeranchuk. Despite early and accelerated efforts, it was reported by historians that efforts on building a bomb using weapon - grade uranium seemed hopeless to Russian scientists. Igor Kurchatov had harboured doubts working towards the uranium bomb, made progress on a bomb using weapon - grade plutonium after British data was provided by the NKVD. The situation dramatically changed when the Soviet Union learned of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, which eventually led to the unilateral surrender of Japan to the United States, ending the war in Asia. Immediately after the atomic bombing, the Soviet Politburo took control of the atomic bomb project by establishing a special committee to oversee the development of nuclear weapons as soon as possible. On 9 April 1946, the Council of Ministers created the KB -- 11 Design Bureau that worked towards mapping the first nuclear weapon design, primarily based on American approach and detonated with weapon - grade plutonium. From this point, the work on the program was carried out quickly, resulting in the first nuclear reactor near Moscow on 25 October 1946. Organization and administration From 1941 -- 46, the Soviet Union 's Ministry of Foreign Affairs handled the logistics of the atomic bomb project, with Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov controlling the direction of the program. However, Molotov proved to be a weak administrator, and the program stagnated. In contrast to American military administration in their atomic bomb project, the Russians ' program was directed by political dignitaries such as Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, Georgii Malenkov, and Mikhail Pervukhin -- there were no military members. After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the program 's leadership changed, when Stalin appointed Lavrentiy Beria on 22 August 1945. Beria is noted for leadership that helped the program to its final implementation. Beria understood the necessary scope and dynamics of research. This man, who was the personification of evil to modern Russian history, also possessed the great energy and capacity to work. The scientists who met him could not fail to recognize his intelligence, his will power, and his purposefullness. They found him first - class administrator who could carry a job through to completion... -- Yulii Khariton, The First War of Physics : The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939 - 1949 The new Committee, under Beria, retained Georgii Malenkov and added Nikolai Voznesensky and Boris Vannikov, People 's Commissar for Armament. Under the administration of Beria, the NKVD co-opted atomic spies of the Soviet Atomic Spy Ring into the Western Allied program, and infiltrated the German nuclear program. Espionage Soviet atomic ring Main articles : Nuclear espionage and Atomic spies The atomic and industrial espionages in the United States by American sympathisers of communism who were controlled by their rezident Russian officials in North America greatly aided the speed of the Soviet atomic project from 1942 -- 54. Willingness of sharing classified information to Soviet Union by recruited American communist sympathizers increased when the Soviet Union faced possible defeat during the German invasion in World War II. The Russian intelligence network in the United Kingdom also played a vital role in setting up the spy rings in the United States when the Russian State Defense Committee approved resolution 2352, in September 1942. For this purpose, the spy Harry Gold, controlled by Semyon Semyonov, was used for a wide range of espionage that included industrial espionage in the American chemical industry and obtaining sensitive atomic information that were handed over to him by the British physicist Klaus Fuchs. Knowledge and further technical information that were passed by the American Theodore Hall, a theoretical physicist, and Klaus Fuchs had a significant impact on the direction of Russian development of nuclear weapons. Leonid Kvasnikov, a Russian chemical engineer turned KGB officer, was assigned for this special purpose and moved to New York City to coordinate such activities. Anatoli Yatzkov, another NKVD official in New York, was also involved in obtaining sensitive information gathered by Sergei Kournakov from Saville Sax. The existence of Russian spies were exposed by the U.S. Army 's secretive Venona project in 1943. For example, Soviet work on methods of uranium isotope separation was altered when it was reported, to Kurchatov 's surprise, that the Americans had opted for the Gaseous diffusion method. While research on other separation methods continued throughout the war years, the emphasis was placed on replicating U.S. success with gaseous diffusion. Another important breakthrough, attributed to intelligence, was the possibility of using plutonium instead of uranium in a fission weapon. Extraction of plutonium in the so - called `` uranium pile '' allowed bypassing of the difficult process of uranium separation altogether, something that Kurchatov had learned from intelligence from the Manhattan project. Soviet intelligence management in Manhattan project Main articles : History of Soviet and Russian espionage in the United States and History of Soviet espionage In 1945, the Soviet intelligence obtained rough blueprints of the first U.S. atomic device. Alexei Kojevnikov has estimated, based on newly released Soviet documents, that the primary way in which the espionage may have sped up the Soviet project was that it allowed Khariton to avoid dangerous tests to determine the size of the critical mass : `` tickling the dragon 's tail, '' as it was called in the U.S., consumed a good deal of time and claimed at least two lives ; see Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin. The published Smyth Report of 1945 on the Manhattan Project was translated into Russian, and the translators noted that a sentence on the effect of `` poisoning '' of Plutonium - 239 in the first ( lithograph ) edition had been deleted from the next ( Princeton ) edition by Groves. This change was noted by the Russian translators, and alerted the Soviet Union to the problem ( which had meant that reactor - bred plutonium could not be used in a simple gun - type bomb like the proposed Thin Man ). One of the key pieces of information, which Soviet intelligence obtained from Fuchs, was a cross-section for D-T fusion. This data was available to top Soviet officials roughly three years before it was openly published in the Physical Review in 1949. However, this data was not forwarded to Vitaly Ginzburg or Andrei Sakharov until very late, practically months before publication. Initially both Ginzburg and Sakharov estimated such a cross-section to be similar to the D-D reaction. Once the actual cross-section become known to Ginzburg and Sakharov, the Sloika design become a priority, which resulted in a successful test in 1953. In the 1990s, with the declassification of Soviet intelligence materials, which showed the extent and the type of the information obtained by the Soviets from US sources, a heated debate ensued in Russia and abroad as to the relative importance of espionage, as opposed to the Soviet scientists ' own efforts, in the making of the Soviet bomb. The vast majority of scholars agree that whereas the Soviet atomic project was first and foremost a product of local expertise and scientific talent, it is clear that espionage efforts contributed to the project in various ways and most certainly shortened the time needed to develop the atomic bomb. Comparing the timelines of H - bomb development, some researchers came to the conclusion that the Soviets had a gap in access to classified information regarding the H - bomb at least between late 1950 and some time in 1953. Earlier, e.g., in 1948, Fuchs gave the Soviets a detailed update of the classical super progress, including an idea to use lithium, but did not explain it was specifically lithium - 6. Teller accepted the fact that `` classical super '' scheme was infeasible by 1951, following results obtained by various researchers ( including Stanislaw Ulam ) and calculations performed by John von Neumann in late 1950. Yet the research for the Soviet analogue of `` classical super '' continued until December 1953, when the researchers were reallocated to a new project working on what later became a true H - bomb design, based on radiation implosion. This remains an open topic for research, whether the Soviet intelligence was able to obtain any specific data on Teller - Ulam design in 1953 or early 1954. Yet, Soviet officials directed the scientists to work on a new scheme, and the entire process took less than two years, commencing around January 1954 and producing a successful test in November 1955. It also took just several months before the idea of radiation implosion was conceived, and there is no documented evidence claiming priority. It is also possible that Soviets were able to obtain a document lost by John Wheeler on a train in 1953, which reportedly contained key information about thermonuclear weapon design. Initial thermonuclear bomb designs This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( March 2009 ) Early ideas of the fusion bomb came from espionage and internal Soviet studies. Though the espionage did help Soviet studies, the early American H - bomb concepts had substantial flaws, so it may have confused, rather than assisted, the Soviet effort for a nuclear bomb. The designers of early thermonuclear bombs envisioned using an atomic bomb as a trigger to provide the needed heat and compression to initiate the thermonuclear reaction in a layer of liquid deuterium between the fissile material and the surrounding chemical high explosive. The group would realize that a lack of sufficient heat and compression of the deuterium would result in an insignificant fusion of the deuterium fuel. Andrei Sakharov 's study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept which was adding a shell of natural, unenriched uranium around the deuterium would increase the deuterium concentration at the uranium - deuterium boundary and the overall yield of the device, because the natural uranium would capture neutrons and itself fission as part of the thermonuclear reaction. This idea of a layered fission - fusion - fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the sloika, or layered cake. It was also known as the RDS - 6S, or Second Idea Bomb. This second bomb idea was not a fully evolved thermonuclear bomb in the contemporary sense, but a crucial step between pure fission bombs and the thermonuclear `` supers. '' Due to the three - year lag in making the key breakthrough of radiation compression from the United States the Soviet Union 's development efforts followed a different course of action. In the United States they decided to skip the single - stage fusion bomb and make a two - stage fusion bomb as their main effort. Unlike the Soviet Union, the analog RDS - 7 advanced fission bomb was not further developed, and instead, the single - stage 400 - kiloton RDS - 6S was the Soviet 's bomb of choice. The RDS - 6S Layer Cake design was detonated on 12 August 1953, producing a yield of 400 kilotons, about ten times more powerful than any previous Soviet test. Around this time the United States detonated its first super using radiation compression on 1 November 1952, code - named Mike. Though the Mike was about twenty times greater than the RDS - 6S, it was not a design that was practical to use, unlike the RDS - 6S. Following the successful launching of the RDS - 6S, Sakharov proposed an upgraded version called RDS - 6SD. This bomb was proved to be faulty, and it was neither built nor tested. The Soviet team had been working on the RDS - 6T concept, but it also proved to be a dead end. In 1954, Sakharov worked on a third concept, a two - stage thermonuclear bomb. The third idea used the radiation wave of a fission bomb, not simply heat and compression, to ignite the fusion reaction, and paralleled the discovery made by Ulam and Teller. Unlike the RDS - 6S boosted bomb, which placed the fusion fuel inside the primary A-bomb trigger, the thermonuclear super placed the fusion fuel in a secondary structure a small distance from the A-bomb trigger, where it was compressed and ignited by the A-bomb's x-ray radiation. The KB - 11 Scientific - Technical Council approved plans to proceed with the design on 24 December 1954. Technical specifications for the new bomb were completed on 3 February 1955, and it was designated the RDS - 37. The RDS - 37 was successfully tested on 22 November 1955 with a yield of 1.6 megaton. The yield was almost a hundred times greater than the first Soviet atomic bomb six years before, showing that the Soviet Union could compete with the United States. Logistical problems The single largest problem during the early Soviet project was the procurement of uranium ore, as the USSR had no known domestic sources at the beginning of the project. The Soviet F - 1 reactor, which began operation in December 1946, was fueled using uranium confiscated from the remains of the German atomic bomb project. This uranium had been mined in the Belgian Congo, and the ore in Belgium fell into the hands of the Germans after their invasion and occupation of Belgium in 1940 ( although Edgar Sengier sold the rich Shinkolobwe ore from the Congo, some of which was held in America, to America ). Further sources of uranium in the early years of the program were mines in East Germany ( SAG Wismut ), Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania ( near Stei ) and Poland. Boris Pregel sold 0.23 tonnes of uranium oxide to the Soviet Union during the war, with the authorisation of the U.S. Government. Eventually, large domestic sources were discovered in the Soviet Union ( including those now in Kazakhstan ). The uranium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program came from mine production in the following countries, Year USSR Germany Czechoslovakia Bulgaria Poland 1945 14.6 t 1946 50.0 t 15 t 18 t 26.6 t 1947 129.3 t 150 t 49.1 t 7.6 t 2.3 t 1948 182.5 t 321.2 t 103.2 t 18.2 t 9.3 t 1949 278.6 t 767.8 t 147.3 t 30.3 t 43.3 t 1950 416.9 t 1,224 t 281.4 t 70.9 t 63.6 t Important Soviet nuclear tests See also : List of nuclear weapons tests of the Soviet Union RDS - 1 RDS - 1, the first Soviet atomic test was internally code - named First Lightning ( Первая молния, or Pervaya Molniya ) August 29, 1949, and was code - named by the Americans as Joe 1. The design was very similar to the first US `` Fat Man '' plutonium bomb, using a TNT / hexogen implosion lens design. RDS - 2 On September 24, 1951, the 38.3 kiloton device RDS - 2 was tested based on a tritium `` boosted '' uranium implosion device with a levitated core. This test was code named Joe 2 by the CIA. RDS - 3 The mushroom cloud from the first air - dropped bomb test in 1951. This picture is confused with RDS - 27 and RDS - 37 tests. RDS - 3 was the third Soviet atomic bomb. On October 18, 1951, the 41.2 kiloton device was detonated - a boosted weapon using a composite construction of levitated plutonium core and a uranium - 235 shell. Code named Joe 3 in the USA, this was the first Soviet air - dropped bomb test. Released at an altitude of 10 km, it detonated 400 meters above the ground. RDS - 4 RDS - 4 represented a branch of research on small tactical weapons. It was a boosted fission device using plutonium in a `` levitated '' core design. The first test was an air drop on August 23, 1953, yielding 28 kilotons. In 1954, the bomb was also used during Snowball exercise in Totskoye, dropped by Tu - 4 bomber on the simulated battlefield, in the presence of 40,000 infantry, tanks, and jet fighters. The RDS - 4 comprised the warhead of the R - 5M, the first medium - range ballistic missile in the world, which was tested with a live warhead for the first and only time on February 5, 1956 RDS - 5 RDS - 5 was a small plutonium based device, probably using a hollow core. Two different versions were made and tested. RDS - 6 RDS - 6, the first Soviet test of a hydrogen bomb, took place on August 12, 1953, and was nicknamed Joe 4 by the Americans. It used a layer - cake design of fission and fusion fuels ( uranium 235 and lithium - 6 deuteride ) and produced a yield of 400 kilotons. This yield was about ten times more powerful than any previous Soviet test. When developing higher level bombs, the Soviets proceeded with the RDS - 6 as their main effort instead of the analog RDS - 7 advanced fission bomb. This led to the third idea bomb which is the RDS - 37. RDS - 9 A much lower - power version of the RDS - 4 with a 3 - 10 kiloton yield, the RDS - 9 was developed for the T - 5 nuclear torpedo. A 3.5 kiloton underwater test was performed with the torpedo on September 21, 1955. RDS - 37 The first Soviet test of a `` true '' hydrogen bomb in the megaton range was conducted on November 22, 1955. It was dubbed RDS - 37 by the Soviets. It was of the multi-staged, radiation implosion thermonuclear design called Sakharov 's `` Third Idea '' in the USSR and the Teller - Ulam design in the USA. Joe 1, Joe 4, and RDS - 37 were all tested at the Semipalatinsk Test Site in Kazakhstan. Tsar Bomba ( RDS - 220 ) The Tsar Bomba ( Царь - бомба ) was the largest, most powerful nuclear weapon ever detonated. It was a three - stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons. This is equivalent to ten times the amount of all the explosives used in World War II combined. It was detonated on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and was capable of approximately 100 megatons, but was purposely reduced shortly before the launch. Although weaponized, it was not entered into service ; it was simply a demonstrative testing of the capabilities of the Soviet Union 's military technology at that time. The heat of the explosion was estimated to potentially inflict third degree burns at 100 km distance of clear air. Chagan Chagan was a shot in the Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy or Project 7, the Soviet equivalent of the US Operation Plowshare to investigate peaceful uses of nuclear weapons. It was a subsurface detonation. It was fired on January 15, 1965. The site was a dry bed of the Chagan River at the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and was chosen such that the lip of the crater would dam the river during its high spring flow. The resultant crater had a diameter of 408 meters and was 100 meters deep. A major lake ( 10,000 m ) soon formed behind the 20 -- 35 m high upraised lip, known as Chagan Lake or Balapan Lake. The photo is sometimes confused with RDS - 1 in literature. Secret cities Main article : Atomgrads During the Cold War, the Soviet Union created at least nine closed cities, known as Atomgrads, in which nuclear weapons - related research and development took place. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all of the cities changed their names ( most of the original code - names were simply the oblast and a number ). All are still legally `` closed '', though some have parts of them accessible to foreign visitors with special permits ( Sarov, Snezhinsk, and Zheleznogorsk ). Cold War name Current name Established Primary function ( s ) Arzamas - 16 Sarov 1946 Weapons design and research, warhead assembly Sverdlovsk - 44 Novouralsk 1946 Uranium enrichment Chelyabinsk - 40 and later 65 Ozyorsk 1947 Plutonium production, component manufacturing Sverdlovsk - 45 Lesnoy 1947 Uranium enrichment, warhead assembly Tomsk - 7 Seversk 1949 Uranium enrichment, component manufacturing Krasnoyarsk - 26 Zheleznogorsk 1950 Plutonium production Zlatoust - 36 Tryokhgorny 1952 Warhead assembly Penza - 19 Zarechny 1955 Warhead assembly Krasnoyarsk - 45 Zelenogorsk 1956 Uranium enrichment Chelyabinsk - 70 Snezhinsk 1957 Weapons design and research Environmental and public health effects The Soviets started experimenting with nuclear technology in 1943, and first tested a nuclear weapon in August 1949. Many of the fission based devices left behind radioactive isotopes which have contaminated air, water and soil in the areas immediately surrounding, downwind and downstream of the blast site. According to the records that the Russian government released in 1991, the Soviet Union tested 969 nuclear devices between 1949 and 1990. Soviet scientists conducted the tests with little regard for environmental and public health consequences. The detrimental effects that the toxic waste generated by weapons testing and processing of radioactive materials are still felt to this day. Even decades later, the risk of developing various types of cancer, especially that of the thyroid and the lungs, continues to be elevated far above national averages for people in affected areas. Iodine - 131, a radioactive isotope that is a major byproduct of fission - based weapons, is retained in the thyroid gland, and so poisoning of this kind is commonplace in impacted populations. The Soviets set off 214 nuclear bombs in the open air between 1949 and 1962, when the United Nations banned atmospheric tests worldwide. The billions of radioactive particles released into the air exposed countless people to extremely mutagenic and carcinogenic materials, resulting in a myriad of deleterious genetic maladies and deformities. The majority of these tests took place at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, or STS, located in northeast Kazakhstan. The testing at STS alone exposed hundreds of thousands of Kazakh citizens to the harmful effects, and the site continues to be one of the most highly irradiated places on the planet. When the earliest tests were being conducted, even the scientists had only a poor understanding of the medium - and long - term effects of radiation exposure. In fact, the STS was chosen as the primary site for open - air testing precisely because the Soviets were curious about the potential for lasting harm that their weapons held. Contamination of air and soil due to atmospheric testing is only part of a wider issue. Water contamination due to improper disposal of spent uranium and decay of sunken nuclear - powered submarines is a major problem in the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Although the Russian government states that the radioactive power cores are stable, various scientists have come forth with serious concerns about the 32,000 spent nuclear fuel elements that remain in the sunken vessels. There have been no major incidents other than the explosion and sinking of a nuclear - powered submarine in August 2000, but many international scientists are still uneasy at the prospect of the hulls eroding, releasing uranium into the sea and causing considerable contamination. Although the submarines pose an environmental risk, they have yet to cause serious harm to public health. However, water contamination in the area of the Mayak test site, especially at Lake Karachay, is extreme, and has gotten to the point where radioactive byproducts have found their way into drinking water supplies. It has been an area of concern since the early 1950s, when the Soviets began disposing of tens of millions of cubic meters of radioactive waste by pumping it into the small lake. Half a century later, in the 1990s, there are still hundreds of millions of curies of waste in the Lake, and at points contamination has been so severe that a mere half - hour of exposure to certain regions would deliver a dose of radiation sufficient to kill 50 % of humans. Although the area immediately surrounding the lake is devoid of population, the lake has the potential to dry up in times of drought. Most significantly, in 1967, it dried up and winds carried radioactive dust over thousands of square kilometers, exposing at least 500,000 citizens to a range of health risks. To control dust, Soviet scientists piled concrete on top of the lake. Although this was effective in helping mediate the amount of dust, the weight of the concrete pushed radioactive materials into closer contact with standing underground groundwater. It is difficult to gauge the overall health and environmental effects of the water contamination at Lake Karachay because figures on civilian exposure are unavailable, making it hard to show causation between elevated cancer rates and radioactive pollution specifically from the lake. Contemporary efforts to manage radioactive contamination in the Soviet Union are few and far between. Public awareness of the past and present dangers, as well as the Russian government 's investment in current cleanup efforts, are likely dampened by the lack of media attention STS and other sites have gotten in comparison to isolated nuclear incidents such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Three - Mile Island. The domestic government 's investment in cleanup measures seems to be driven by economic concerns rather than care for public health. The most significant political legislation in this area is a bill agreeing to turn the already contaminated former weapons complex Mayak into an international radioactive waste dump, accepting cash from other countries in exchange for taking their radioactive byproducts of nuclear industry. Although the bill stipulates that the revenue go towards decontaminating other test sites such as Semipalatinsk and the Kona Peninsula, experts doubt whether this will actually happen given the current political and economic climate in Russia. See also Andrei Sakharov Igor Kurchatov Julius and Ethel Rosenberg Arzamas - 16 Chelyabinsk - 70 History of nuclear weapons History of the Soviet Union ( 1927 -- 53 ) Manhattan Project Military history of the Soviet Union Nuclear warfare Nuclear weapon Tsar Bomba Semipalatinsk Test Site Yuli Khariton Yakov Zeldovich Pavel Sudoplatov Klaus Fuchs Theodore Hall Russian Alsos Project - 706 Environmental racism in Europe References Jump up ^ Baggott, Jim ( 2010 ). The First War of Physics : The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939 - 1949 ( googlebooks ). New York : Pegasus Books. ISBN 9781605987699. Retrieved 23 April 2017. ^ Jump up to : Sublette, Carey. `` The Soviet Nuclear Weapons Program ''. nuclearweaponarchive.org. nuclearweaponarchive, part I. Retrieved 21 April 2017. ^ Jump up to : Swift, John. `` The Soviet - American Arms Race ''. www.historytoday.com. History Today. Retrieved 21 April 2017. Jump up ^ http://engine.aviaport.ru/issues/63/page58.html Jump up ^ http://ufn.ru/ru/articles/1963/11/g/ Jump up ^ http://www.kipt.kharkov.ua/ru/bhr.html Jump up ^ http://www.ilt.kharkov.ua/bvi/general/phys_k_r.html Jump up ^ https://day.kyiv.ua/ru/article/panorama-dnya/harkov-1940-atomnaya-prelyudiya Jump up ^ Holloway, ( by ) David ( 1994 ). Stalin and the bomb : the Soviet Union and atomic energy ( 1 ed. ). New Haven : Yale University Press. p. 421. ISBN 0300066643. Retrieved 21 April 2017. Jump up ^ US DOE. `` Manhattan Project : Espionage and the Manhattan Project, 1940 - 1945 ''. www.osti.gov. US DOE. Retrieved 21 April 2017. Jump up ^ Strickland, Jeffrey ( 2011 ). Weird Scientists : the Creators of Quantum Physics. New York : Lulu.com. p. 549. ISBN 9781257976249. Retrieved 21 April 2017. ^ Jump up to : Schmid, Sonja D. ( 2015 ). `` Dual Origins ''. Producing Power : The Pre-Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry ( googlebooks ) ( 1 ed. ). ( S.l. ) : MIT Press. p. 315. ISBN 9780262028271. Retrieved 12 June 2017. Jump up ^ Lente, Dick van ( 2012 ). `` A Conspicuous Silence ''. The Nuclear Age in Popular Media : A Transnational History, 1945 -- 1965 ( googlebooks ). New York : Springer. p. 270. ISBN 9781137086181. Retrieved 12 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Johnson, Paul R. ( 1987 ). Early years of Soviet nuclear physics ( 2 ed. ). U.S. : Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. p. 60. Retrieved 22 April 2017. ^ Jump up to : Richelson, Jeffrey ( 2007 ). `` A Terrifying Prospect ''. Spying on the Bomb : American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea ( googlebooks ). New York : W.W. Norton & Company. p. 600. ISBN 9780393329827. Retrieved 12 June 2017. Jump up ^ Burns, Richard Dean ; Siracusa, Joseph M. ( 2013 ). `` Soviet scientists began Quest ''. A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race : Weapons, Strategy, and Politics ( 2 volumes ) : Weapons, Strategy, and Politics ( googlebooks ). ABC - CLIO. p. 641. ISBN 9781440800955. Retrieved 12 June 2017. Jump up ^ Ponomarev, L.I. ; Kurchatov, I.V. ( 1993 ). `` Quantumalia ''. The Quantum Dice ( googlebooks ). Bristol : CRC Press. p. 250. ISBN 9780750302517. Retrieved 12 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Kelly, Peter ( 8 May 1986 ). `` How the USSR Broke in the Nuclear Club '' ( googlebooks ). New Scientist. Reed Business Information ( 1507 ). Retrieved 12 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Allen, Thomas B. ; Polmar, Norman ( 2012 ). `` Atomic Bomb : Soviet Union ''. World War II : the encyclopedia of the war years 1941 - 1945 ( googlebooks ) ( Dover ed. ). Mineola, N.Y. : Dover Publications. p. 941. ISBN 9780486479620. Retrieved 14 June 2017. Jump up ^ Higham, R. ( 2010 ). `` The Stalin Years : 194653 ''. The Military History of the Soviet Union ( googlebooks ). Springer. p. 400. ISBN 9780230108219. Retrieved 12 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Kean, Sam ( 2010 ). The disappearing spoon and other true tales of madness, love, and the history of the world from the periodic table of the elements ( googlebooks ) ( Sony eReader ed. ). New York : Little, Brown and Co. ISBN 9780316089081. Retrieved 13 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : West, Nigel ; Tsarev, Oleg ( 1999 ). `` Atom Secrets ''. The Crown Jewels : The British Secrets at the Heart of the KGB Archives ( googlebooks ). Yale University Press. ISBN 0300078064. Retrieved 13 June 2017. Jump up ^ Hamilton, William H. ; Sasser, Charles W. ( 2016 ). Night Fighter : An Insider 's Story of Special Ops from Korea to SEAL Team 6. Skyhorse Publishing, Inc. ISBN 9781628726831. Retrieved 13 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Hamblin, Jacob Darwin ( 2005 ). `` I.V. Kurchatov ''. Science in the early twentieth century : an encyclopedia ( googlebooks ). Santa Barbara, Calif. : ABC - CLIO. p. 400. ISBN 9781851096657. Retrieved 13 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Bukharin, Oleg ; Hippel, Frank Von ( 2004 ). `` Making the First Nuclear Weapons ''. Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces ( googlebooks ). MIT Press. p. 695. ISBN 9780262661812. Retrieved 14 June 2017. Jump up ^ Burns, Richard Dean ; Coyle III, Philip E. ( 2015 ). `` Seeking to Prevent Nuclear Proliferation ''. The Challenges of Nuclear Non-Proliferation ( googlebooks ) ( 1 ed. ). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 237. ISBN 9781442223769. Retrieved 15 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Baggott, Jim ( 2011 ). The First War of Physics : The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939 - 1949. Pegasus Books. ISBN 9781605987699. Retrieved 16 June 2017. Jump up ^ Baggott, Jim ( 2011 ). The First War of Physics : The Secret History of the Atom Bomb, 1939 - 1949. Pegasus Books. ISBN 9781605987699. Retrieved 15 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Schwartz, Michael I. ( 1996 ). `` The Russian - A ( merican ) Bomb : The Role of Espionage in the Soviet Atomic Bomb Project '' ( PDF ). J. Undgrad. Sci. Harvard University : Harvard University press. 3 : 108. Retrieved 20 June 2017. There was no `` Russian '' atomic bomb. There only was an American one, masterfully discovered by Soviet spies. '' ^ Jump up to : Haynes, John Earl ( 2000 ). `` Industrial and Atomic Espionage ''. Venona : Decoding Soviet Espionage in America ( googlebooks ). Yale University, TX : Yale University Press. p. 400. ISBN 0300129874. Retrieved 20 June 2017. ^ Jump up to : Romerstein, Herbert ; Breindel, Eric ( 2000 ). The Venona secrets exposing Soviet espionage and America 's traitors. Washington, DC : Regnery Pub. ISBN 9781596987326. Retrieved 21 June 2017. Jump up ^ Powers, Daniel Patrcik Moynihan ( 1999 ). Gid, Richard, ed. Secrecy : the American experience. ( New preface. ed. ). New Haven : Yale University Press. ISBN 0300080794. Jump up ^ http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~jus/0302/schwartz.pdf Jump up ^ The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union by Martin Mccauley Jump up ^ Goncharov. Beginnings of the Soviet H - Bomb Program. ^ Jump up to : Zaloga, Steve ( 17 February 2002 ). The Kremlin 's Nuclear Sword : The Rise and Fall of Russia 's Strategic Nuclear Forces. Smithsonian Books. pp. 32 -- 35. Jump up ^ The American counterpart to this idea was Edward Teller 's Alarm Clock design of August 1946. In August 1990 the Soviet science journal Priroda published a special issue devoted to Andrei Sakharov, which contained more detailed notes on the early fusion bomb than Sakharov 's own memoirs, especially the articles by V.E. Ritus and Yu A. Romanov Jump up ^ Goncharov. Beginnings. pp. 50 -- 54. Jump up ^ The Super Oralloy bomb was developed in Los Alamos and tested on 15 November 1952 Jump up ^ Details of Soviet weapons designs after 1956 - 57 are generally lacking. A certain amount can be inferred from data about missile warheads, and in recent histories, the two nuclear - warhead development bureaus have begun to cautiously reveal which weapons they designed. Jump up ^ `` Time Magazine '' March 13, 1950 Jump up ^ Zoellner, Tom ( 2009 ). Uranium. London : Penguin Books. p. 45, 55,151 -- 158. ISBN 9780143116721. Jump up ^ Williams, Susan ( 2016 ). Spies in the Congo. New York : Public Affairs. pp. 186 -- 187, 217, 233. ISBN 9781610396547. Jump up ^ Chronik der Wismut, Wismut GmbH 1999 Jump up ^ Andryushin et al, `` Taming the Nucleus '' Jump up ^ `` RDS - 37 nuclear test, 1955 ''. johnstonsarchive.net. Retrieved 20 May 2015. Jump up ^ The yield of the test has been estimated between 50 and 57.23 megatons by different sources over time. Today all Russian sources use 50 megatons as the official figure. See the section `` Was it 50 Megatons or 57 ? '' at `` The Tsar Bomba ( '' King of Bombs `` ) ''. Retrieved 11 May 2006. Jump up ^ DeGroot, Gerard J. The Bomb : A Life. Cambridge, Massachusetts : Harvard University Press, 2005. p. 254. Jump up ^ `` The Soviet Weapons Program -- The Tsar Bomba ''. NuclearWeaponArchive.org. The Nuclear Weapon Archive. 3 September 2007. Retrieved 23 August 2010. ^ Jump up to : Norris, Robert S., and Thomas B. Cochran. `` Nuclear Weapons Tests and Peaceful Nuclear Explosions by the Soviet Union : August 29, 1949 to October 24, 1990. '' Natural Resource Defense Council. Web. 19 May 2013. ^ Jump up to : Goldman, Marvin. `` The Russian Radiation Legacy : Its Integrated Impact and Lessons. '' Environmental Health Perspectives 105.6 ( 1997 ) : 1385 - 91. JSTOR. Web. 22 Apr. 2013. ^ Jump up to : Clay, R ( April 2001 ). `` Cold war, hot nukes : legacy of an era. ''. Environmental Health Perspectives. 109 ( 4 ) : A162 -- A169. ISSN 0091 - 6765. PMC 1240291. PMID 11335195. Jump up ^ Taylor, Jerome ( 10 Sep 2009 ), `` The World 's Worst Radiation Hotspot '', The Independent, Independent Digital News and Media. Bibliography Holloway, David ( 1994 ), Stalin and the Bomb : The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy 1939 -- 1956, Yale University Press, ISBN 0 - 300 - 06056 - 4. Kojevnikov, Alexei ( 2004 ), Stalin 's Great Science : The Times and Adventures of Soviet Physicists, Imperial College Press, ISBN 1 - 86094 - 420 - 5. Rhodes, Richard ( 1995 ), Dark Sun : The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, Simon & Schuster, ISBN 0 - 684 - 80400 - X. External links Collection of Archival Documents on the Soviet Nuclear Program, Wilson Center Digital Archive Ilkaev, RI ( 2013 ), `` Major stages of the Atomic Project '', Phys. Usp., 56 ( 5 ) : 502 -- 509, Bibcode : 2013PhyU... 56... 502I, doi : 10.3367 / UFNe. 0183.201305 h. 0528, Video archive of Soviet Nuclear Testing at sonicbomb.com Kurchatov institute ( official website ) Citizen Kurchatov, PBS. Soviet and Nuclear Weapons History German Scientists in the Soviet Atomic Project Russian Nuclear Weapons Museum ( in English ) Images of Soviet bombs ( in Russian ) -- RDS - 1, RDS - 6, Tsar Bomba, and an ICBM warhead Cold War : A Brief History Annotated bibliography on the Russian nuclear weapons program from the Alsos Digital Library On the Soviet Nuclear Scent - CIA Library Soviet atomic bomb project Sites Semipalatinsk Novaya Zemlya Semey Sukhoy Nos Totskoye Atomgrad Novouralsk Laboratory B Tryokhgorny Snezhinsk Zheleznogors Laboratory No. 2 Administrators Joseph Stalin Vyacheslav Molotov Lavrentiy Beria Boris Vannikov Pavel Fitin Pavel Sudoplatov Georgy Zhukov Mikhail Pervukhin Ivan Serov Scientists Russian Igor Kurchatov Andrei Sakharov Georgii Flerov Pavel Cherenkov Anatoly Alexandrov Oleg Lavrentiev Yulii Khariton Yakov Zel'dovich Yakov Frenkel Nikolay Dollezhal Vitaly Ginzburg Lev Artsimovich Isaak Kikoin Konstantin Petrzhak Rashid Sunyaev Isaak Pomeranchuk German ( Russian Alsos ) Heinz Pose Manfred von Ardenne Ernst Rexer Nikolaus Riehl Saville Sax Gernot Zippe Peter Thiessen Robert Döpel Max Steenbeck Justus Mühlenpfordt Spy ring Morris Cohen Klaus Fuchs Harry Gold David Greenglass Theodore Hall David Greenglass George Koval Rosenbergs Harry Gold Intelligence Intelligence cycle management NKVD NKGB GRU MGB PGU Russian Alsos Soviet Army Russian espionage in the United States Perseus Related Articles K - Project Chagan RDS - 6 RDS - 1 RDS - 37 RDS - 220 Russia and weapons of mass destruction Nuclear weapons and Ukraine Manhattan Project Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy See also : Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union Retrieved from `` https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Soviet_atomic_bomb_project&oldid=806513108 '' Categories : Nuclear weapons program of the Soviet Union Cold War history of the Soviet Union 1943 establishments in the Soviet Union 1949 disestablishments Hidden categories : Wikipedia articles needing clarification from July 2017 All articles with unsourced statements Articles with unsourced statements from March 2013 All articles with specifically marked weasel - worded phrases Articles with specifically marked weasel - worded phrases from April 2016 Articles with unsourced statements from May 2014 Articles needing additional references from March 2009 All articles needing additional references Articles with unsourced statements from March 2008 Articles with unsourced statements from August 2008 Talk Contents About Wikipedia Català Deutsch Español Français Հայերեն Bahasa Indonesia Italiano Polski Português Русский Svenska Türkçe Українська Tiếng Việt Edit links This page was last edited on 22 October 2017, at 14 : 34. 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Question: when did the soviet union explode its first atomic bomb
Answer: 29 August 1949