After long hours of work, he'd retire to his home and listen to Beethoven, Mozart, and Borodin. During most of the day, he would labor only a few hundred yards away, constructing his prototype atomic reactor. Several problems stalled the project, especially in uranium mining, isotope separation, and plutonium production and purification. However, by December 1946, Kurchatov demonstrated a working prototype reactor to Beria. It produced only a few watts when demonstrated and Beria was unimpressed.
Atomic energy is servant to Soviet man.
As Kurchatov celebrated his first milestone in Soviet nuclear energy, his country celebrated ten full years of Stalin's sham constitution. Now Kurchatov had to build a bigger reactor to produce the plutonium needed to build the bomb.