Inventor of the atomic bomb. So who invented the hydrogen bomb? or worse than bandits - scientists

In August 1942, a secret “Metallurgical Laboratory” opened in a former school building in the town of Los Alamos, New Mexico, not far from Santa Fe. Robert Oppenheimer was appointed head of the laboratory.

It took the Americans three years to solve the problem. In July 1945, the first atomic bomb was detonated at the test site, and in August two more bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It took seven years for the birth of the Soviet atomic bomb - the first explosion was carried out at the test site in 1949.

The American team of physicists was initially stronger. Only 12 Nobel laureates, present and future, took part in the creation of the atomic bomb. And the only future Soviet Nobel laureate, who was in Kazan in 1942 and who was invited to take part in the work, refused. In addition, the Americans were helped by a group of British scientists sent to Los Alamos in 1943.

Nevertheless, in Soviet times it was argued that the USSR solved its atomic problem completely independently, and Kurchatov was considered the “father” of the domestic atomic bomb. Although there were rumors about some secrets stolen from the Americans. And only in the 90s, 50 years later, one of the main figures then - - spoke about the significant role of intelligence in accelerating the lagging Soviet project. And American scientific and technical results were obtained by those who arrived in the English group.

So Robert Oppenheimer can be called the “father” of bombs created on both sides of the ocean - his ideas fertilized both projects. It is wrong to consider Oppenheimer (like Kurchatov) only as an outstanding organizer. His main achievements are scientific. And it was thanks to them that he became the scientific director of the atomic bomb project.

Robert Oppenheimer was born in New York on April 22, 1904. In 1925 he received a diploma from Harvard University. For a year he interned with Rutherford at the Cavendish Laboratory. In 1926 he moved to the University of Göttingen, where in 1927 he defended his doctoral dissertation under the guidance of Max Born. In 1928 he returned to the USA. From 1929 to 1947, Oppenheimer taught at two leading American universities - the University of California and the California Institute of Technology.

Oppenheimer studied quantum mechanics, the theory of relativity, elementary particle physics, and carried out a number of works on theoretical astrophysics. In 1927, he created the theory of interaction of free electrons with atoms. Together with Born, he developed the theory of the structure of diatomic molecules. In 1930 he predicted the existence of the positron.

In 1931, together with Ehrenfest, he formulated the Ehrenfest-Oppenheimer theorem, according to which nuclei consisting of an odd number of particles with spin ½ should obey Fermi-Dirac statistics, and those consisting of an even number should obey Bose-Einstein statistics. Investigated the internal conversion of gamma rays.

In 1937, he developed the cascade theory of cosmic showers, in 1938 he first calculated a model of a neutron star, and in 1939, in his work “On irreversible gravitational compression,” he predicted the existence of “black holes.”

Oppenheimer wrote several popular science books: Science and Common Knowledge (1954), The Open Mind (1955), and Some Reflections on Science and Culture (1960).

The emergence of atomic (nuclear) weapons was due to a mass of objective and subjective factors. Objectively, the creation of atomic weapons came thanks to the rapid development of science, which began with fundamental discoveries in the field of physics in the first half of the twentieth century. The main subjective factor was the military-political situation, when the states of the anti-Hitler coalition began a secret race to develop such powerful weapons. Today we will find out who invented the atomic bomb, how it developed in the world and the Soviet Union, and also get acquainted with its structure and the consequences of its use.

Creation of the atomic bomb

From a scientific point of view, the year of creation of the atomic bomb was the distant 1896. It was then that the French physicist A. Becquerel discovered the radioactivity of uranium. Subsequently, the chain reaction of uranium began to be seen as a source of enormous energy, and became the basis for the development of the most dangerous weapons in the world. However, Becquerel is rarely remembered when talking about who invented the atomic bomb.

Over the next few decades, alpha, beta and gamma rays were discovered by scientists from different parts of the Earth. At the same time, a large number of radioactive isotopes were discovered, the law of radioactive decay was formulated, and the beginnings of the study of nuclear isomerism were laid.

In the 1940s, scientists discovered the neuron and the positron and for the first time carried out the fission of the nucleus of a uranium atom, accompanied by the absorption of neurons. It was this discovery that became a turning point in history. In 1939, French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie patented the world's first nuclear bomb, which he developed with his wife out of purely scientific interest. It was Joliot-Curie who is considered the creator of the atomic bomb, despite the fact that he was a staunch defender of world peace. In 1955, he, along with Einstein, Born and a number of other famous scientists, organized the Pugwash movement, whose members advocated peace and disarmament.

Rapidly developing, atomic weapons have become an unprecedented military-political phenomenon, which makes it possible to ensure the safety of its owner and reduce to a minimum the capabilities of other weapons systems.

How does a nuclear bomb work?

Structurally, an atomic bomb consists of a large number of components, the main ones being the body and automation. The housing is designed to protect automation and nuclear charge from mechanical, thermal, and other influences. Automation controls the timing of the explosion.

It includes:

Emergency explosion.
Cocking and safety devices.
Power supply.
Various sensors.

Transportation of atomic bombs to the site of attack is carried out using missiles (anti-aircraft, ballistic or cruise). Nuclear ammunition can be part of a landmine, torpedo, aircraft bomb and other elements. Various detonation systems are used for atomic bombs. The simplest is a device in which the impact of a projectile on a target, causing the formation of a supercritical mass, stimulates an explosion.

Nuclear weapons can be of large, medium and small caliber. The power of the explosion is usually expressed in TNT equivalent. Small-caliber atomic shells have a yield of several thousand tons of TNT. Medium-caliber ones already correspond to tens of thousands of tons, and the capacity of large-caliber ones reaches millions of tons.

Principle of operation

The principle of operation of a nuclear bomb is based on the use of energy released during a nuclear chain reaction. During this process, heavy particles are divided and light particles are synthesized. When an atomic bomb explodes, a huge amount of energy is released over a small area in the shortest period of time. That is why such bombs are classified as weapons of mass destruction.

There are two key areas in the area of a nuclear explosion: the center and the epicenter. At the center of the explosion, the process of energy release directly occurs. The epicenter is the projection of this process onto the earth or water surface. The energy of a nuclear explosion, projected onto the ground, can lead to seismic tremors that spread over a considerable distance. These tremors cause harm to the environment only within a radius of several hundred meters from the point of explosion.

Damaging factors

Atomic weapons have the following destruction factors:

Radioactive contamination.
Light radiation.
Shock wave.
Electromagnetic pulse.
Penetrating radiation.

The consequences of an atomic bomb explosion are disastrous for all living things. Due to the release of a huge amount of light and heat energy, the explosion of a nuclear projectile is accompanied by a bright flash. The power of this flash is several times stronger than the sun's rays, so there is a danger of damage from light and thermal radiation within a radius of several kilometers from the point of the explosion.

Another dangerous damaging factor of atomic weapons is the radiation generated during the explosion. It lasts only a minute after the explosion, but has maximum penetrating power.

The shock wave has a very strong destructive effect. She literally wipes out everything that stands in her way. Penetrating radiation poses a danger to all living beings. In humans, it causes the development of radiation sickness. Well, an electromagnetic pulse only harms technology. Taken together, the damaging factors of an atomic explosion pose a huge danger.

First tests

Throughout the history of the atomic bomb, America showed the greatest interest in its creation. At the end of 1941, the country's leadership allocated a huge amount of money and resources to this area. Robert Oppenheimer, who is considered by many to be the creator of the atomic bomb, was appointed project manager. In fact, he was the first who was able to bring the scientists' idea to life. As a result, on July 16, 1945, the first atomic bomb test took place in the desert of New Mexico. Then America decided that in order to completely end the war it needed to defeat Japan, an ally of Nazi Germany. The Pentagon quickly selected targets for the first nuclear attacks, which were supposed to become a vivid illustration of the power of American weapons.

On August 6, 1945, the US atomic bomb, cynically called "Little Boy", was dropped on the city of Hiroshima. The shot turned out to be simply perfect - the bomb exploded at an altitude of 200 meters from the ground, due to which its blast wave caused horrific damage to the city. In areas far from the center, coal stoves were overturned, leading to severe fires.

The bright flash was followed by a heat wave, which in 4 seconds managed to melt the tiles on the roofs of houses and incinerate telegraph poles. The heat wave was followed by a shock wave. The wind, which swept through the city at a speed of about 800 km/h, demolished everything in its path. Of the 76,000 buildings located in the city before the explosion, about 70,000 were completely destroyed. A few minutes after the explosion, rain began to fall from the sky, large drops of which were black. The rain fell due to the formation of a huge amount of condensation, consisting of steam and ash, in the cold layers of the atmosphere.

People who were affected by the fireball within a radius of 800 meters from the point of the explosion turned to dust. Those who were a little further from the explosion had burned skin, the remains of which were torn off by the shock wave. Black radioactive rain left incurable burns on the skin of survivors. Those who miraculously managed to escape soon began to show signs of radiation sickness: nausea, fever and attacks of weakness.

Three days after the bombing of Hiroshima, America attacked another Japanese city - Nagasaki. The second explosion had the same disastrous consequences as the first.

In a matter of seconds, two atomic bombs destroyed hundreds of thousands of people. The shock wave practically wiped Hiroshima off the face of the earth. More than half of the local residents (about 240 thousand people) died immediately from their injuries. In the city of Nagasaki, about 73 thousand people died from the explosion. Many of those who survived were subjected to severe radiation, which caused infertility, radiation sickness and cancer. As a result, some of the survivors died in terrible agony. The use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki illustrated the terrible power of these weapons.

You and I already know who invented the atomic bomb, how it works and what consequences it can lead to. Now we will find out how things were with nuclear weapons in the USSR.

After the bombing of Japanese cities, J.V. Stalin realized that the creation of a Soviet atomic bomb was a matter of national security. On August 20, 1945, a committee on nuclear energy was created in the USSR, and L. Beria was appointed head of it.

It is worth noting that work in this direction has been carried out in the Soviet Union since 1918, and in 1938, a special commission on the atomic nucleus was created at the Academy of Sciences. With the outbreak of World War II, all work in this direction was frozen.

In 1943, USSR intelligence officers transferred from England materials from closed scientific works in the field of nuclear energy. These materials illustrated that the work of foreign scientists on the creation of an atomic bomb had made serious progress. At the same time, American residents contributed to the introduction of reliable Soviet agents into the main US nuclear research centers. The agents passed on information about new developments to Soviet scientists and engineers.

Technical task

When in 1945 the issue of creating a Soviet nuclear bomb became almost a priority, one of the project leaders, Yu. Khariton, drew up a plan for the development of two versions of the projectile. On June 1, 1946, the plan was signed by senior management.

According to the assignment, the designers needed to build an RDS (special jet engine) of two models:

RDS-1. A bomb with a plutonium charge that is detonated by spherical compression. The device was borrowed from the Americans.
RDS-2. A cannon bomb with two uranium charges converging in the gun barrel before reaching a critical mass.

In the history of the notorious RDS, the most common, albeit humorous, formulation was the phrase “Russia does it itself.” It was invented by Yu. Khariton’s deputy, K. Shchelkin. This phrase very accurately conveys the essence of the work, at least for RDS-2.

When America learned that the Soviet Union possessed the secrets of creating nuclear weapons, it began to desire a rapid escalation of preventive war. In the summer of 1949, the “Troyan” plan appeared, according to which on January 1, 1950 it was planned to begin military operations against the USSR. Then the date of the attack was moved to the beginning of 1957, but with the condition that all NATO countries join it.

Tests

When information about America's plans arrived through intelligence channels in the USSR, the work of Soviet scientists accelerated significantly. Western experts believed that atomic weapons would be created in the USSR no earlier than 1954-1955. In fact, the tests of the first atomic bomb in the USSR took place already in August 1949. On August 29, an RDS-1 device was blown up at a test site in Semipalatinsk. A large team of scientists took part in its creation, headed by Igor Vasilievich Kurchatov. The design of the charge belonged to the Americans, and the electronic equipment was created from scratch. The first atomic bomb in the USSR exploded with a power of 22 kt.

Due to the likelihood of a retaliatory strike, the Trojan plan, which involved a nuclear attack on 70 Soviet cities, was thwarted. The tests at Semipalatinsk marked the end of the American monopoly on the possession of atomic weapons. The invention of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov completely destroyed the military plans of America and NATO and prevented the development of another world war. Thus began an era of peace on Earth, which exists under the threat of absolute destruction.

"Nuclear Club" of the world

Today, not only America and Russia have nuclear weapons, but also a number of other states. The collection of countries that own such weapons is conventionally called the “nuclear club.”

It includes:

America (since 1945).
USSR, and now Russia (since 1949).
England (since 1952).
France (since 1960).
China (since 1964).
India (since 1974).
Pakistan (since 1998).
Korea (since 2006).

Israel also has nuclear weapons, although the country's leadership refuses to comment on their presence. In addition, there are American nuclear weapons on the territory of NATO countries (Italy, Germany, Turkey, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada) and allies (Japan, South Korea, despite the official refusal).

Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, which owned part of the USSR's nuclear weapons, transferred their bombs to Russia after the collapse of the Union. She became the sole heir to the USSR's nuclear arsenal.

Conclusion

Today we learned who invented the atomic bomb and what it is. Summarizing the above, we can conclude that nuclear weapons today are the most powerful instrument of global politics, firmly entrenched in relations between countries. On the one hand, it is an effective means of deterrence, and on the other, a convincing argument for preventing military confrontation and strengthening peaceful relations between states. Atomic weapons are a symbol of an entire era that require especially careful handling.

The world of the atom is so fantastic that understanding it requires a radical break in the usual concepts of space and time. Atoms are so small that if a drop of water could be enlarged to the size of the Earth, each atom in that drop would be smaller than an orange. In fact, one drop of water consists of 6000 billion billion (6000000000000000000000) hydrogen and oxygen atoms. And yet, despite its microscopic size, the atom has a structure somewhat similar to the structure of our solar system. In its incomprehensibly small center, the radius of which is less than one trillionth of a centimeter, there is a relatively huge “sun” - the nucleus of an atom.

Tiny “planets” - electrons - revolve around this atomic “sun”. The nucleus consists of the two main building blocks of the Universe - protons and neutrons (they have a unifying name - nucleons). An electron and a proton are charged particles, and the amount of charge in each of them is exactly the same, but the charges differ in sign: the proton is always positively charged, and the electron is negatively charged. The neutron does not carry an electrical charge and, as a result, has a very high permeability.

In the atomic scale of measurements, the mass of a proton and neutron is taken as unity. The atomic weight of any chemical element therefore depends on the number of protons and neutrons contained in its nucleus. For example, a hydrogen atom, with a nucleus consisting of only one proton, has an atomic mass of 1. A helium atom, with a nucleus of two protons and two neutrons, has an atomic mass of 4.

The nuclei of atoms of the same element always contain the same number of protons, but the number of neutrons may vary. Atoms that have nuclei with the same number of protons, but differ in the number of neutrons and are varieties of the same element are called isotopes. To distinguish them from each other, a number is assigned to the symbol of the element equal to the sum of all particles in the nucleus of a given isotope.

The question may arise: why does the nucleus of an atom not fall apart? After all, the protons included in it are electrically charged particles with the same charge, which must repel each other with great force. This is explained by the fact that inside the nucleus there are also so-called intranuclear forces that attract nuclear particles to each other. These forces compensate for the repulsive forces of protons and prevent the nucleus from spontaneously flying apart.

Intranuclear forces are very strong, but act only at very close distances. Therefore, the nuclei of heavy elements, consisting of hundreds of nucleons, turn out to be unstable. The particles of the nucleus are in continuous motion here (within the volume of the nucleus), and if you add some additional amount of energy to them, they can overcome the internal forces - the nucleus will split into parts. The amount of this excess energy is called excitation energy. Among the isotopes of heavy elements, there are those that seem to be on the very verge of self-disintegration. Just a small “push” is enough, for example, a simple neutron hitting the nucleus (and it does not even have to accelerate to high speed) for the nuclear fission reaction to occur. Some of these “fissile” isotopes were later learned to be produced artificially. In nature, there is only one such isotope - uranium-235.

Uranus was discovered in 1783 by Klaproth, who isolated it from uranium tar and named it after the recently discovered planet Uranus. As it turned out later, it was, in fact, not uranium itself, but its oxide. Pure uranium, a silvery-white metal, was obtained
only in 1842 Peligo. The new element did not have any remarkable properties and did not attract attention until 1896, when Becquerel discovered the phenomenon of radioactivity in uranium salts. After this, uranium became the object of scientific research and experimentation, but still had no practical use.

When, in the first third of the 20th century, physicists more or less understood the structure of the atomic nucleus, they first of all tried to fulfill the long-standing dream of alchemists - they tried to transform one chemical element into another. In 1934, French researchers, the spouses Frederic and Irene Joliot-Curie, reported to the French Academy of Sciences about the following experience: when bombarding aluminum plates with alpha particles (nuclei of a helium atom), aluminum atoms turned into phosphorus atoms, but not ordinary ones, but radioactive ones, which in turn became into a stable isotope of silicon. Thus, an aluminum atom, having added one proton and two neutrons, turned into a heavier silicon atom.

This experience suggested that if you “bombard” the nuclei of the heaviest element existing in nature - uranium - with neutrons, you can obtain an element that does not exist in natural conditions. In 1938, German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann repeated in general terms the experience of the Joliot-Curie spouses, using uranium instead of aluminum. The results of the experiment were not at all what they expected - instead of a new superheavy element with a mass number greater than that of uranium, Hahn and Strassmann received light elements from the middle part of the periodic table: barium, krypton, bromine and some others. The experimenters themselves were unable to explain the observed phenomenon. Only the following year, physicist Lise Meitner, to whom Hahn reported his difficulties, found the correct explanation for the observed phenomenon, suggesting that when uranium is bombarded with neutrons, its nucleus splits (fissions). In this case, nuclei of lighter elements should have been formed (that’s where barium, krypton and other substances came from), as well as 2-3 free neutrons should have been released. Further research made it possible to clarify in detail the picture of what was happening.

Natural uranium consists of a mixture of three isotopes with masses 238, 234 and 235. The main amount of uranium is isotope-238, the nucleus of which includes 92 protons and 146 neutrons. Uranium-235 is only 1/140 of natural uranium (0.7% (it has 92 protons and 143 neutrons in its nucleus), and uranium-234 (92 protons, 142 neutrons) is only 1/17500 of the total mass of uranium (0 , 006%.The least stable of these isotopes is uranium-235.

From time to time, the nuclei of its atoms spontaneously divide into parts, as a result of which lighter elements of the periodic table are formed. The process is accompanied by the release of two or three free neutrons, which rush at enormous speed - about 10 thousand km/s (they are called fast neutrons). These neutrons can hit other uranium nuclei, causing nuclear reactions. Each isotope behaves differently in this case. Uranium-238 nuclei in most cases simply capture these neutrons without any further transformations. But in approximately one case out of five, when a fast neutron collides with the nucleus of the isotope-238, a curious nuclear reaction occurs: one of the neutrons of uranium-238 emits an electron, turning into a proton, that is, the uranium isotope turns into a more
heavy element - neptunium-239 (93 protons + 146 neutrons). But neptunium is unstable - after a few minutes, one of its neutrons emits an electron, turning into a proton, after which the neptunium isotope turns into the next element in the periodic table - plutonium-239 (94 protons + 145 neutrons). If a neutron hits the nucleus of unstable uranium-235, then fission immediately occurs - the atoms disintegrate with the emission of two or three neutrons. It is clear that in natural uranium, most of the atoms of which belong to the isotope-238, this reaction has no visible consequences - all free neutrons will eventually be absorbed by this isotope.

Well, what if we imagine a fairly massive piece of uranium consisting entirely of isotope-235?

Here the process will go differently: neutrons released during the fission of several nuclei, in turn, hitting neighboring nuclei, cause their fission. As a result, a new portion of neutrons is released, which splits the next nuclei. Under favorable conditions, this reaction proceeds like an avalanche and is called a chain reaction. To start it, a few bombarding particles may be enough.

Indeed, let uranium-235 be bombarded by only 100 neutrons. They will separate 100 uranium nuclei. In this case, 250 new neutrons of the second generation will be released (on average 2.5 per fission). Second generation neutrons will produce 250 fissions, which will release 625 neutrons. In the next generation it will become 1562, then 3906, then 9670, etc. The number of divisions will increase indefinitely if the process is not stopped.

However, in reality only a small fraction of neutrons reach the nuclei of atoms. The rest, quickly rushing between them, are carried away into the surrounding space. A self-sustaining chain reaction can only occur in a sufficiently large array of uranium-235, which is said to have a critical mass. (This mass under normal conditions is 50 kg.) It is important to note that the fission of each nucleus is accompanied by the release of a huge amount of energy, which turns out to be approximately 300 million times more than the energy spent on fission! (It is estimated that the complete fission of 1 kg of uranium-235 releases the same amount of heat as the combustion of 3 thousand tons of coal.)

This colossal burst of energy, released in a matter of moments, manifests itself as an explosion of monstrous force and underlies the action of nuclear weapons. But in order for this weapon to become a reality, it is necessary that the charge consist not of natural uranium, but of a rare isotope - 235 (such uranium is called enriched). It was later discovered that pure plutonium is also a fissile material and could be used in an atomic charge instead of uranium-235.

All these important discoveries were made on the eve of World War II. Soon, secret work on creating an atomic bomb began in Germany and other countries. In the USA, this problem was addressed in 1941. The entire complex of works was given the name “Manhattan Project”.

Administrative management of the project was carried out by General Groves, and scientific management was carried out by University of California professor Robert Oppenheimer. Both were well aware of the enormous complexity of the task facing them. Therefore, Oppenheimer's first concern was recruiting a highly intelligent scientific team. In the USA at that time there were many physicists who emigrated from Nazi Germany. It was not easy to attract them to create weapons directed against their former homeland. Oppenheimer spoke personally to everyone, using all the power of his charm. Soon he managed to gather a small group of theorists, whom he jokingly called “luminaries.” And in fact, it included the greatest specialists of that time in the field of physics and chemistry. (Among them are 13 Nobel Prize laureates, including Bohr, Fermi, Frank, Chadwick, Lawrence.) Besides them, there were many other specialists of various profiles.

The US government did not skimp on expenses, and the work took on a grand scale from the very beginning. In 1942, the world's largest research laboratory was founded at Los Alamos. The population of this scientific city soon reached 9 thousand people. In terms of the composition of scientists, the scope of scientific experiments, and the number of specialists and workers involved in the work, the Los Alamos Laboratory had no equal in world history. The Manhattan Project had its own police, counterintelligence, communications system, warehouses, villages, factories, laboratories, and its own colossal budget.

The main goal of the project was to obtain enough fissile material from which several atomic bombs could be created. In addition to uranium-235, the charge for the bomb, as already mentioned, could be the artificial element plutonium-239, that is, the bomb could be either uranium or plutonium.

Groves and Oppenheimer agreed that work should be carried out simultaneously in two directions, since it was impossible to decide in advance which of them would be more promising. Both methods were fundamentally different from each other: the accumulation of uranium-235 had to be carried out by separating it from the bulk of natural uranium, and plutonium could only be obtained as a result of a controlled nuclear reaction when uranium-238 was irradiated with neutrons. Both paths seemed unusually difficult and did not promise easy solutions.

In fact, how can one separate two isotopes that differ only slightly in weight and chemically behave in exactly the same way? Neither science nor technology has ever faced such a problem. The production of plutonium also seemed very problematic at first. Before this, the entire experience of nuclear transformations was reduced to a few laboratory experiments. Now they had to master the production of kilograms of plutonium on an industrial scale, develop and create a special installation for this - a nuclear reactor, and learn to control the course of the nuclear reaction.

Both there and here a whole complex of complex problems had to be solved. Therefore, the Manhattan Project consisted of several subprojects, headed by prominent scientists. Oppenheimer himself was the head of the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory. Lawrence was in charge of the Radiation Laboratory at the University of California. Fermi conducted research at the University of Chicago to create a nuclear reactor.

At first, the most important problem was obtaining uranium. Before the war, this metal had virtually no use. Now that it was needed immediately in huge quantities, it turned out that there was no industrial method of producing it.

The Westinghouse company took up its development and quickly achieved success. After purifying the uranium resin (uranium occurs in nature in this form) and obtaining uranium oxide, it was converted into tetrafluoride (UF4), from which uranium metal was separated by electrolysis. If at the end of 1941 American scientists had only a few grams of uranium metal at their disposal, then already in November 1942 its industrial production at Westinghouse factories reached 6,000 pounds per month.

At the same time, work was underway to create a nuclear reactor. The process of producing plutonium actually boiled down to irradiating uranium rods with neutrons, as a result of which part of the uranium-238 would turn into plutonium. The sources of neutrons in this case could be fissile atoms of uranium-235, scattered in sufficient quantities among atoms of uranium-238. But in order to maintain the constant production of neutrons, a chain reaction of fission of uranium-235 atoms had to begin. Meanwhile, as already mentioned, for every atom of uranium-235 there were 140 atoms of uranium-238. It is clear that neutrons scattering in all directions had a much higher probability of meeting them on their way. That is, a huge number of released neutrons turned out to be absorbed by the main isotope without any benefit. Obviously, under such conditions a chain reaction could not take place. How to be?

At first it seemed that without the separation of two isotopes, the operation of the reactor was generally impossible, but one important circumstance was soon established: it turned out that uranium-235 and uranium-238 were susceptible to neutrons of different energies. The nucleus of a uranium-235 atom can be split by a neutron of relatively low energy, having a speed of about 22 m/s. Such slow neutrons are not captured by uranium-238 nuclei - for this they must have a speed of the order of hundreds of thousands of meters per second. In other words, uranium-238 is powerless to prevent the beginning and progress of a chain reaction in uranium-235 caused by neutrons slowed down to extremely low speeds - no more than 22 m/s. This phenomenon was discovered by the Italian physicist Fermi, who lived in the USA since 1938 and led the work here to create the first reactor. Fermi decided to use graphite as a neutron moderator. According to his calculations, the neutrons emitted from uranium-235, having passed through a 40 cm layer of graphite, should have reduced their speed to 22 m/s and begun a self-sustaining chain reaction in uranium-235.

Another moderator could be so-called “heavy” water. Since the hydrogen atoms included in it are very similar in size and mass to neutrons, they could best slow them down. (With fast neutrons, approximately the same thing happens as with balls: if a small ball hits a large one, it rolls back, almost without losing speed, but when it meets a small ball, it transfers a significant part of its energy to it - just like a neutron in an elastic collision bounces off a heavy nucleus, slowing down only slightly, and when colliding with the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, it very quickly loses all its energy.) However, ordinary water is not suitable for slowing down, since its hydrogen tends to absorb neutrons. That is why deuterium, which is part of “heavy” water, should be used for this purpose.

In early 1942, under Fermi's leadership, construction began on the first nuclear reactor in history in the tennis court area under the west stands of Chicago Stadium. The scientists carried out all the work themselves. The reaction can be controlled in the only way - by adjusting the number of neutrons participating in the chain reaction. Fermi intended to achieve this using rods made of substances such as boron and cadmium, which strongly absorb neutrons. The moderator was graphite bricks, from which the physicists built columns 3 m high and 1.2 m wide. Rectangular blocks with uranium oxide were installed between them. The entire structure required about 46 tons of uranium oxide and 385 tons of graphite. To slow down the reaction, rods of cadmium and boron were introduced into the reactor.

If this were not enough, then for insurance, two scientists stood on a platform located above the reactor with buckets filled with a solution of cadmium salts - they were supposed to pour them onto the reactor if the reaction got out of control. Fortunately, this was not necessary. On December 2, 1942, Fermi ordered all control rods to be extended and the experiment began. After four minutes, the neutron counters began to click louder and louder. With every minute the intensity of the neutron flux became greater. This indicated that a chain reaction was taking place in the reactor. It lasted for 28 minutes. Then Fermi gave the signal, and the lowered rods stopped the process. Thus, for the first time, man freed the energy of the atomic nucleus and proved that he could control it at will. Now there was no longer any doubt that nuclear weapons were a reality.

In 1943, the Fermi reactor was dismantled and transported to the Aragonese National Laboratory (50 km from Chicago). Was here soon
Another nuclear reactor was built in which heavy water was used as a moderator. It consisted of a cylindrical aluminum tank containing 6.5 tons of heavy water, into which were vertically immersed 120 rods of uranium metal, encased in an aluminum shell. The seven control rods were made of cadmium. Around the tank there was a graphite reflector, then a screen made of lead and cadmium alloys. The entire structure was enclosed in a concrete shell with a wall thickness of about 2.5 m.

Experiments at these pilot reactors confirmed the possibility of industrial production of plutonium.

The main center of the Manhattan Project soon became the town of Oak Ridge in the Tennessee River Valley, whose population grew to 79 thousand people in a few months. Here, the first enriched uranium production plant in history was built in a short time. An industrial reactor producing plutonium was launched here in 1943. In February 1944, about 300 kg of uranium was extracted from it daily, from the surface of which plutonium was obtained by chemical separation. (To do this, the plutonium was first dissolved and then precipitated.) The purified uranium was then returned to the reactor. That same year, construction began on the huge Hanford plant in the barren, bleak desert on the south bank of the Columbia River. Three powerful nuclear reactors were located here, producing several hundred grams of plutonium every day.

In parallel, research was in full swing to develop an industrial process for uranium enrichment.

After considering various options, Groves and Oppenheimer decided to focus their efforts on two methods: gaseous diffusion and electromagnetic.

The gas diffusion method was based on a principle known as Graham's law (it was first formulated in 1829 by the Scottish chemist Thomas Graham and developed in 1896 by the English physicist Reilly). According to this law, if two gases, one of which is lighter than the other, are passed through a filter with negligibly small holes, then slightly more of the light gas will pass through it than of the heavy one. In November 1942, Urey and Dunning from Columbia University created a gaseous diffusion method for separating uranium isotopes based on the Reilly method.

Since natural uranium is a solid, it was first converted into uranium fluoride (UF6). This gas was then passed through microscopic - on the order of thousandths of a millimeter - holes in the filter partition.

Since the difference in the molar weights of the gases was very small, behind the partition the content of uranium-235 increased by only 1.0002 times.

In order to increase the amount of uranium-235 even more, the resulting mixture is again passed through a partition, and the amount of uranium is again increased by 1.0002 times. Thus, to increase the uranium-235 content to 99%, it was necessary to pass the gas through 4000 filters. This took place at a huge gaseous diffusion plant in Oak Ridge.

In 1940, under the leadership of Ernest Lawrence, research began on the separation of uranium isotopes by the electromagnetic method at the University of California. It was necessary to find physical processes that would allow isotopes to be separated using the difference in their masses. Lawrence attempted to separate isotopes using the principle of a mass spectrograph, an instrument used to determine the masses of atoms.

The principle of its operation was as follows: pre-ionized atoms were accelerated by an electric field and then passed through a magnetic field, in which they described circles located in a plane perpendicular to the direction of the field. Since the radii of these trajectories were proportional to the mass, light ions ended up on circles of smaller radius than heavy ones. If traps were placed along the path of the atoms, then different isotopes could be collected separately in this way.

That was the method. In laboratory conditions it gave good results. But building a facility where isotope separation could be carried out on an industrial scale proved extremely difficult. However, Lawrence eventually managed to overcome all difficulties. The result of his efforts was the appearance of calutron, which was installed in a giant plant in Oak Ridge.

This electromagnetic plant was built in 1943 and turned out to be perhaps the most expensive brainchild of the Manhattan Project. Lawrence's method required a large number of complex, not yet developed devices involving high voltage, high vacuum and strong magnetic fields. The scale of the costs turned out to be enormous. Calutron had a giant electromagnet, the length of which reached 75 m and weighed about 4000 tons.

Several thousand tons of silver wire were used for the windings for this electromagnet.

The entire work (not counting the cost of $300 million in silver, which the State Treasury provided only temporarily) cost $400 million. The Ministry of Defense paid 10 million for the electricity consumed by calutron alone. Much of the equipment at the Oak Ridge plant was superior in scale and precision to anything that had ever been developed in this field of technology.

But all these costs were not in vain. Having spent a total of about 2 billion dollars, US scientists by 1944 created a unique technology for uranium enrichment and plutonium production. Meanwhile, at the Los Alamos laboratory they were working on the design of the bomb itself. The principle of its operation was in general terms clear for a long time: the fissile substance (plutonium or uranium-235) had to be transferred to a critical state at the moment of explosion (for a chain reaction to occur, the charge mass should be even noticeably greater than the critical one) and irradiated with a neutron beam, which entailed is the beginning of a chain reaction.

According to calculations, the critical mass of the charge exceeded 50 kilograms, but they were able to significantly reduce it. In general, the value of the critical mass is strongly influenced by several factors. The larger the surface area of the charge, the more neutrons are uselessly emitted into the surrounding space. A sphere has the smallest surface area. Consequently, spherical charges, other things being equal, have the smallest critical mass. In addition, the value of the critical mass depends on the purity and type of fissile materials. It is inversely proportional to the square of the density of this material, which allows, for example, by doubling the density, reducing the critical mass by four times. The required degree of subcriticality can be obtained, for example, by compacting the fissile material due to the explosion of a charge of a conventional explosive made in the form of a spherical shell surrounding the nuclear charge. The critical mass can also be reduced by surrounding the charge with a screen that reflects neutrons well. Lead, beryllium, tungsten, natural uranium, iron and many others can be used as such a screen.

One possible design of an atomic bomb consists of two pieces of uranium, which, when combined, form a mass greater than critical. In order to cause a bomb explosion, you need to bring them closer together as quickly as possible. The second method is based on the use of an inward-converging explosion. In this case, a stream of gases from a conventional explosive was directed at the fissile material located inside and compressed it until it reached a critical mass. Combining a charge and intensely irradiating it with neutrons, as already mentioned, causes a chain reaction, as a result of which in the first second the temperature increases to 1 million degrees. During this time, only about 5% of the critical mass managed to separate. The rest of the charge in early bomb designs evaporated without
any benefit.

The first atomic bomb in history (it was given the name Trinity) was assembled in the summer of 1945. And on June 16, 1945, the first atomic explosion on Earth was carried out at the nuclear test site in the Alamogordo desert (New Mexico). The bomb was placed in the center of the test site on top of a 30-meter steel tower. Recording equipment was placed around it at a great distance. There was an observation post 9 km away, and a command post 16 km away. The atomic explosion made a stunning impression on all witnesses to this event. According to eyewitnesses' descriptions, it felt as if many suns had united into one and illuminated the test site at once. Then a huge fireball appeared over the plain and a round cloud of dust and light began to rise towards it slowly and ominously.

Taking off from the ground, this fireball soared to a height of more than three kilometers in a few seconds. With every moment it grew in size, soon its diameter reached 1.5 km, and it slowly rose into the stratosphere. Then the fireball gave way to a column of billowing smoke, which stretched to a height of 12 km, taking the shape of a giant mushroom. All this was accompanied by a terrible roar, from which the earth shook. The power of the exploding bomb exceeded all expectations.

As soon as the radiation situation allowed, several Sherman tanks, lined with lead plates on the inside, rushed to the area of the explosion. On one of them was Fermi, who was eager to see the results of his work. What appeared before his eyes was a dead, scorched earth, on which all living things had been destroyed within a radius of 1.5 km. The sand had baked into a glassy greenish crust that covered the ground. In a huge crater lay the mangled remains of a steel support tower. The force of the explosion was estimated at 20,000 tons of TNT.

The next step was to be the combat use of the bomb against Japan, which, after the surrender of Nazi Germany, alone continued the war with the United States and its allies. There were no launch vehicles at that time, so the bombing had to be carried out from an airplane. The components of the two bombs were transported with great care by the cruiser Indianapolis to Tinian Island, where the 509th Combined Air Force Group was based. These bombs differed somewhat from each other in the type of charge and design.

The first bomb, “Baby,” was a large-sized aerial bomb with an atomic charge made of highly enriched uranium-235. Its length was about 3 m, diameter - 62 cm, weight - 4.1 tons.

The second bomb - "Fat Man" - with a charge of plutonium-239 was egg-shaped with a large stabilizer. Its length
was 3.2 m, diameter 1.5 m, weight - 4.5 tons.

On August 6, Colonel Tibbets' B-29 Enola Gay bomber dropped "Little Boy" on the major Japanese city of Hiroshima. The bomb was lowered by parachute and exploded, as planned, at an altitude of 600 m from the ground.

The consequences of the explosion were terrible. Even for the pilots themselves, the sight of a peaceful city destroyed by them in an instant made a depressing impression. Later, one of them admitted that at that second they saw the worst thing a person can see.

For those who were on earth, what was happening resembled true hell. First of all, a heat wave passed over Hiroshima. Its effect lasted only a few moments, but was so powerful that it melted even tiles and quartz crystals in granite slabs, turned telephone poles at a distance of 4 km into coal and, finally, incinerated human bodies so much that only shadows remained from them on the asphalt of the pavements or on the walls of houses. Then a monstrous gust of wind burst out from under the fireball and rushed over the city at a speed of 800 km/h, destroying everything in its path. Houses that could not withstand his furious onslaught collapsed as if knocked down. There is not a single intact building left in the giant circle with a diameter of 4 km. A few minutes after the explosion, black radioactive rain fell over the city - this moisture turned into steam condensed in the high layers of the atmosphere and fell to the ground in the form of large drops mixed with radioactive dust.

After the rain, a new gust of wind hit the city, this time blowing in the direction of the epicenter. It was weaker than the first, but still strong enough to uproot trees. The wind fanned a gigantic fire in which everything that could burn burned. Of the 76 thousand buildings, 55 thousand were completely destroyed and burned. Witnesses of this terrible catastrophe recalled human torches from which burnt clothes fell to the ground along with rags of skin, and crowds of maddened people covered with terrible burns who rushed screaming through the streets. There was a suffocating stench of burnt human flesh in the air. There were people lying everywhere, dead and dying. There were many who were blind and deaf and, poking in all directions, could not make out anything in the chaos that reigned around them.

The unfortunate people, who were located at a distance of up to 800 m from the epicenter, literally burned out in a split second - their insides evaporated and their bodies turned into lumps of smoking coals. Those located 1 km from the epicenter were affected by radiation sickness in an extremely severe form. Within a few hours, they began to vomit violently, their temperature jumped to 39-40 degrees, and they began to experience shortness of breath and bleeding. Then non-healing ulcers appeared on the skin, the composition of the blood changed dramatically, and hair fell out. After terrible suffering, usually on the second or third day, death occurred.

In total, about 240 thousand people died from the explosion and radiation sickness. About 160 thousand received radiation sickness in a milder form - their painful death was delayed by several months or years. When news of the disaster spread throughout the country, all of Japan was paralyzed with fear. It increased further after Major Sweeney's Box Car dropped a second bomb on Nagasaki on August 9. Several hundred thousand inhabitants were also killed and injured here. Unable to resist the new weapons, the Japanese government capitulated - the atomic bomb ended World War II.

War is over. It lasted only six years, but managed to change the world and people almost beyond recognition.

Human civilization before 1939 and human civilization after 1945 are strikingly different from each other. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most important is the emergence of nuclear weapons. It can be said without exaggeration that the shadow of Hiroshima lies over the entire second half of the 20th century. It became a deep moral burn for many millions of people, both contemporaries of this catastrophe and those born decades after it. Modern man can no longer think about the world the way they thought about it before August 6, 1945 - he understands too clearly that this world can turn into nothing in a few moments.

Modern man cannot look at war the way his grandfathers and great-grandfathers did - he knows for sure that this war will be the last, and there will be neither winners nor losers in it. Nuclear weapons have left their mark on all spheres of public life, and modern civilization cannot live by the same laws as sixty or eighty years ago. No one understood this better than the creators of the atomic bomb themselves.

"People of our planet , wrote Robert Oppenheimer, must unite. The horror and destruction sown by the last war dictate this thought to us. The explosions of atomic bombs proved it with all cruelty. Other people at other times have already said similar words - only about other weapons and about other wars. They weren't successful. But anyone who today would say that these words are useless is misled by the vicissitudes of history. We cannot be convinced of this. The results of our work leave humanity no choice but to create a united world. A world based on legality and humanity."

Oleg Aleksandrovich Lavrentyev, the hero of our story, was born in 1926 in Pskov. Before the war, the guy managed to finish seven classes. Apparently, somewhere towards the end of this process, a book telling about the physics of the atomic nucleus and the latest discoveries in this area fell into his hands.

The 30s of the 20th century were a time of opening new horizons. The existence of neutrinos was predicted in 1930, and the neutron was discovered in 1932. In subsequent years, the first particle accelerators were built. The question arose about the possibility of the existence of transuranium elements. In 1938, Otto Hahn produced barium for the first time by irradiating uranium with neutrons, and Lise Meitner was able to explain what happened. A few months later, she predicted a chain reaction. There was only one step left before the question of an atomic bomb was raised.

It is not surprising that a good description of these discoveries sank into the teenager’s soul. What is somewhat atypical is that this charge remained in her throughout all subsequent troubles. And then there was a war. Oleg Lavrentyev managed to take part in its final stage, in the Baltic states. Then the vicissitudes of his service brought him to Sakhalin. The unit had a relatively good library, and with his allowance Lavrentyev, then already a sergeant, subscribed to the journal “Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk”, which apparently made a considerable impression on his colleagues. The command supported the enthusiasm of its subordinate. In 1948, he lectured on nuclear physics to unit officers, and the following year he received a matriculation certificate, having completed a three-year course in a year at a local evening school for working youth. It is not known what and how they actually taught there, but there is no doubt about the quality of junior sergeant Lavrentiev’s education - he himself needed the result.

As he himself recalled many years later, the idea of the possibility of a thermonuclear reaction and its use to produce energy first came to him in 1948, just when preparing a lecture for officers. In January 1950, President Truman, speaking before Congress, called for the rapid development of the hydrogen bomb. This was in response to the first Soviet nuclear test in August of the previous year. Well, for junior sergeant Lavrentiev this was an impetus for immediate action: after all, he knew, as he thought at that time, how to make this bomb and get ahead of a potential enemy.

The first letter describing the idea, addressed to Stalin, remained unanswered, and no traces of it were subsequently found. Most likely it just got lost. The next letter was sent more reliably: to the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks through the Poronaisky City Committee.

This time the reaction was interested. From Moscow, through the Sakhalin Regional Committee, a command came to provide the persistent soldier with a guarded room and everything necessary for a detailed description of the proposals.

Special work

At this point it is appropriate to interrupt the story about dates and events and turn to the content of the proposals made by the highest Soviet authority.

1. Main ideas.

2. Pilot installation for converting the energy of lithium-hydrogen reactions into electrical energy.

3. Pilot installation for converting the energy of uranium and transuranic reactions into electrical energy.

4. Lithium-hydrogen bomb (design).

Further, O. Lavrentyev writes that he did not have time to prepare parts 2 and 3 in detail and was forced to limit himself to a brief outline; part 1 is also damp (“written very superficially”). In fact, the proposals consider two devices: a bomb and a reactor, while the last, fourth, part - where the bomb is proposed - is extremely laconic, these are just a few phrases, the meaning of which boils down to the fact that everything has already been sorted out in the first part.

In this form, “on 12 sheets,” Larionov’s proposals in Moscow were reviewed by A.D. Sakharov, then still a candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, and most importantly, one of those people who in the USSR of those years were involved in issues of thermonuclear energy, mainly in preparation bombs.

Sakharov highlighted two main points in the proposal: the implementation of the thermonuclear reaction of lithium with hydrogen (their isotopes) and the design of the reactor. In the written, quite favorable review, the first point was briefly stated - this is not suitable.

Not an easy bomb

To introduce the reader into context, it is necessary to make a brief excursion into the real state of affairs. In a modern (and, as far as one can judge from open sources, the basic design principles have remained virtually unchanged since the late fifties) hydrogen bomb, the role of a thermonuclear “explosive” is played by lithium hydride - a solid white substance that reacts violently with water to form lithium hydroxide and hydrogen. The latter property makes it possible to widely use the hydride where it is necessary to temporarily bind hydrogen. A good example is aeronautics, but the list, of course, is not exhaustive.

The hydride used in hydrogen bombs differs in its isotopic composition. Instead of “ordinary” hydrogen, it contains deuterium, and instead of “ordinary” lithium, it contains a lighter isotope with three neutrons. The resulting lithium deuteride, 6 LiD, contains almost everything needed for great illumination. To initiate the process, it is enough to simply detonate a nuclear charge located nearby (for example, around or, conversely, inside). The neutrons produced during the explosion are absorbed by lithium-6, which eventually decays to form helium and tritium. The increase in pressure and temperature as a result of a nuclear explosion leads to the fact that the newly appeared tritium and deuterium, which were initially at the scene of events, find themselves in the conditions necessary for the start of a thermonuclear reaction. Well, that's it, ready.

A
B
IN
G
D In compressed and heated lithium-6 deuteride, a fusion reaction occurs; the emitted neutron flux initiates the tamper splitting reaction. The fireball expands..." alt=" A Warhead before explosion; the first step is at the top, the second step is at the bottom. Both components of a thermonuclear bomb.
B The explosive detonates the first stage, compressing the plutonium core to a supercritical state and initiating a fission chain reaction.
IN During the cleavage process in the first stage, an X-ray pulse occurs, which propagates along the inside of the shell, penetrating the polystyrene foam filler.
G The second stage contracts due to ablation (evaporation) under the influence of X-rays, and the plutonium rod inside the second stage goes into a supercritical state, initiating a chain reaction, releasing enormous amounts of heat.
D In compressed and heated lithium-6 deuteride, a fusion reaction occurs; the emitted neutron flux initiates the tamper splitting reaction. The fireball expands..." src="/sites/default/files/images_custom/2017/07/bombh_explosion-ru.svg.png">!}

A Warhead before explosion; the first step is at the top, the second step is at the bottom. Both components of a thermonuclear bomb.
B The explosive detonates the first stage, compressing the plutonium core to a supercritical state and initiating a fission chain reaction.
IN During the cleavage process in the first stage, an X-ray pulse occurs, which propagates along the inside of the shell, penetrating the polystyrene foam filler.
G The second stage contracts due to ablation (evaporation) under the influence of X-rays, and the plutonium rod inside the second stage goes into a supercritical state, initiating a chain reaction, releasing enormous amounts of heat.
D In compressed and heated lithium-6 deuteride, a fusion reaction occurs; the emitted neutron flux initiates the tamper splitting reaction. The fireball expands...

/ © Wikipedia

This path is not the only one, much less mandatory. Instead of lithium deuteride, you can use ready-made tritium mixed with deuterium. The problem is that both of them are gases that are difficult to contain and transport, let alone stuff into a bomb. The resulting design is quite suitable for explosion in tests, such were produced. The only problem is that it is impossible to deliver it to the “addressee” - the size of the structure completely excludes this possibility. Lithium deuteride, being a solid, provides an elegant way around this problem.

What is stated here is not at all difficult for us living today. In 1950, this was a top secret, to which an extremely limited circle of people had access. Of course, the soldier serving on Sakhalin was not included in this circle. At the same time, the properties of lithium hydride in themselves were not a secret; any person more or less competent, for example in matters of aeronautics, knew about them. It is no coincidence that Vitaly Ginzburg, the author of the idea of using lithium deuteride in a bomb, usually answered the question about authorship in the spirit that in general it was too trivial.

The design of the Lavrentiev bomb in general terms repeats that described above. Here we also see an initiating nuclear charge and an explosive made from lithium hydride, and its isotopic composition is the same - it is deuteride of the light lithium isotope. The fundamental difference is that instead of the reaction of deuterium with tritium, the author assumes the reaction of lithium with deuterium and/or hydrogen. Clever Lavrentyev guessed that the solid substance was more convenient to use and suggested using 6 Li, but only because its reaction with hydrogen should provide more energy. To select a different fuel for the reaction, data was required on the effective cross sections of thermonuclear reactions, which the conscript soldier, of course, did not have.

Let's say that Oleg Lavrentyev would be lucky again: he guessed the desired reaction. Alas, even this would not make him the author of the discovery. The bomb design described above had been in development for more than a year and a half by that time. Of course, since all the work was surrounded by complete secrecy, he could not know about them. In addition, the design of a bomb is not only a layout of explosives, it also involves a lot of calculations and design subtleties. The author of the proposal could not fulfill them.

It must be said that complete ignorance of the physical principles of the future bomb was then characteristic of much more competent people. Many years later, Lavrentyev recalled an episode that happened to him a little later, already in his student days. The vice-rector of Moscow State University, who taught physics to the students, for some reason decided to talk about the hydrogen bomb, which, in his opinion, was a system for watering enemy territory with liquid hydrogen. And what? Freezing enemies is a nice thing to do. The student Lavrentyev, who was listening to him, who knew a little more about the bomb, involuntarily burst out an impartial assessment of what he heard, but there was nothing to respond to the caustic remark of the neighbor who heard her. Don't tell her all the details he knows.

What has been said apparently explains why the “Lavrentiev bomb” project was forgotten almost immediately after it was written. The author demonstrated remarkable abilities, but that was all. The thermonuclear reactor project had a different fate.

The design of the future reactor in 1950 seemed to its author to be quite simple. Two concentric (one inside the other) electrodes will be placed in the working chamber. The internal one is made in the form of a mesh, its geometry is calculated in such a way as to minimize contact with the plasma as much as possible. A constant voltage of about 0.5–1 megavolt is applied to the electrodes, with the inner electrode (grid) being the negative pole and the outer one being the positive pole. The reaction itself takes place in the middle of the installation and positively charged ions (mainly reaction products) flying out through the grid, moving further, overcome the resistance of the electric field, which ultimately turns most of them back. The energy they expended to overcome the field is our gain, which is relatively easy to “remove” from the installation.

The reaction of lithium with hydrogen is again proposed as the main process, which again is not suitable for the same reasons, but this is not noteworthy. Oleg Lavrentyev was the first person to come up with the idea of isolating plasma using some fields. Even the fact that in his proposal this role is, generally speaking, secondary - the main function of the electric field is to obtain the energy of particles flying out of the reaction zone - does not change the meaning of this fact.

As Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov subsequently repeatedly stated, it was a letter from a sergeant from Sakhalin that first gave him the idea of using a field to contain plasma in a thermonuclear reactor. True, Sakharov and his colleagues preferred to use a different field - a magnetic one. In the meantime, he wrote in the review that the proposed design is most likely unrealistic, due to the impossibility of making a mesh electrode that would withstand work under such conditions. But the author still needs to be encouraged for his scientific courage.

Soon after sending the proposals, Oleg Lavrentyev is demobilized from the army, goes to Moscow and becomes a first-year student at the physics department of Moscow State University. Available sources say (in his words) that he did this completely independently, without the patronage of any authorities.

The “authorities”, however, monitored his fate. In September, Lavrentyev meets with I.D. Serbin, an official of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and the recipient of his letters from Sakhalin. On his instructions, he describes his vision of the problem again, in more detail.

At the very beginning of the next year, 1951, freshman Lavrentyev was summoned to the USSR Minister of Measuring Instrumentation Makhnev, where he met the minister himself and his reviewer A.D. Sakharov. It should be noted that the department headed by Makhnev had a rather abstract attitude towards measuring instruments; its real purpose was to support the USSR nuclear program. Makhnev himself was the secretary of the Special Committee, the chairman of which was the all-powerful at that time L.P. Beria. Our student met him a few days later. Sakharov was again present at the meeting, but almost nothing can be said about his role in it.

According to the memoirs of O.A. Lavrentiev, he was preparing to tell the dignitary about the bomb and the reactor, but Beria seemed not to be interested in this. The conversation was about the guest himself, his achievements, plans and relatives. “It was a show,” summarized Oleg Alexandrovich. - He wanted, as I understood, to look at me and, perhaps, at Sakharov, what kind of people we were. Apparently the opinion was favorable.”

The result of the “lookout” was indulgences that were unusual for a Soviet freshman. Oleg Lavrentiev was given a personal scholarship, a separate room (albeit small - 14 sq. m.), and two personal teachers in physics and mathematics. He was exempt from tuition fees. Finally, the delivery of the necessary literature was organized.

Soon they met the technical leaders of the Soviet atomic program B.L. Vannikov, N.I. Pavlov and I.V. Kurchatov. Yesterday's sergeant, who during his years of service had not seen a single general even from afar, was now talking on equal terms with two at once: Vannikov and Pavlov. True, it was mostly Kurchatov who asked the questions.

It seems very likely that Lavrentyev’s proposals after his acquaintance with Beria were obediently given even too much importance. In the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation there is a proposal addressed to Beria and signed by the above three interlocutors to create a “small theoretical group” to evaluate the ideas of O. Lavrentiev. Whether such a group was created and, if so, with what result, is now unknown.

In May, our hero received a pass to LIPAN - the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the Academy of Sciences, now the Institute. Kurchatova. The strange name at that time was also a tribute to general secrecy. Oleg was appointed as an intern in the electrical equipment department with the task of familiarizing himself with the ongoing work on the MTR (magnetic thermonuclear reactor). As at the university, the special guest was accompanied by a personal guide, “a specialist in gas discharges, Comrade. Andrianov,” says the memo addressed to Beria.

Cooperation with LIPAN was already quite tense. There they designed an installation with plasma confinement by a magnetic field, which later became a tokamak, and Lavrentyev wanted to work on a modified version of an electromagnetic trap, which went back to his Sakhalin thoughts. At the end of 1951, a detailed discussion of his project took place in LIPAN. Opponents found no errors in it and generally recognized the work as correct, but refused to implement it, deciding to “concentrate forces on the main direction.” In 1952, Lavrentiev prepared a new project with refined plasma parameters.

It should be noted that Lavrentiev at that moment thought that his proposal for the reactor was also late, and his colleagues from LIPAN were developing their own idea entirely, which had come to their minds independently and earlier. He learned much later that his colleagues themselves held a different opinion.

Your benefactor has died

On June 26, 1953, Beria was arrested and soon executed. Now one can only guess whether he had any specific plans regarding Oleg Lavrentyev, but the loss of such an influential patron had a very noticeable impact on his fate.

At the university they not only stopped giving me an increased scholarship, but also “reversed” my tuition fees for the past year, essentially leaving me without a livelihood, Oleg Aleksandrovich said many years later. “I made my way to an appointment with the new dean and, in complete confusion, heard: “Your benefactor has died. What do you want? At the same time, my admission to LIPAN was revoked, and I lost my permanent pass to the laboratory, where, according to the previous agreement, I was supposed to undergo pre-graduation practice and subsequently work. If the scholarship was later reinstated, then I never received admission to the institute.

After university, Lavrentyev was never hired to work at LIPAN, the only place in the USSR where thermonuclear fusion was being studied at that time. Now it is impossible, and even pointless, to try to understand whether the reputation of “Beria’s man”, some personal difficulties, or something else is to blame for this.

Our hero went to Kharkov, where a plasma research department was being created at KIPT. There he focused on his favorite topic - electromagnetic plasma traps. In 1958, the C1 installation was launched, finally showing the viability of the idea. The next decade was marked by the construction of several more installations, after which Lavrentiev’s ideas began to be taken seriously in the scientific world.

Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology, modern photo

In the seventies, it was planned to build and launch a large Jupiter installation, which was finally supposed to become a full-fledged competitor to tokamaks and stellarators, built on different principles. Unfortunately, while the new product was being designed, the situation around it changed. To save money, the installation was halved. A redesign of the design and calculations was required. By the time it was completed, the equipment had to be reduced by another third - and, of course, everything had to be recalculated again. The finally launched sample was quite functional, but, of course, it was far from being fully scaled up.

Oleg Aleksandrovich Lavrentyev until the end of his days (he passed away in 2011) continued active research work, published a lot and, in general, was quite successful as a scientist. But the main idea of his life has so far remained untested.

In the 30s of the last century, many physicists worked on creating an atomic bomb. It is officially believed that the United States was the first to create, test and use the atomic bomb. However, recently I read books by Hans-Ulrich von Kranz, a researcher of the secrets of the Third Reich, where he claims that the Nazis invented the bomb, and the world's first atomic bomb was tested by them in March 1944 in Belarus. The Americans seized all the documents about the atomic bomb, the scientists and the samples themselves (there were supposedly 13 of them). So the Americans had access to 3 samples, and the Germans transported 10 to a secret base in Antarctica. Kranz confirms his conclusions by the fact that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the United States there was no news of testing bombs larger than 1.5, and after that the tests were unsuccessful. This, in his opinion, would have been impossible if the bombs had been created by the United States itself.

We are unlikely to know the truth.

In one thousand nine hundred and forty, Enrico Fermi finished working on a theory called the Nuclear Chain Reaction. After this, the Americans created their first nuclear reactor. In one thousand nine hundred and forty-five, the Americans created three atomic bombs. The first was blown up in New Mexico, and the next two were dropped on Japan.

It is hardly possible to specifically name any person that he is the creator of atomic (nuclear) weapons. Without the discoveries of predecessors there would have been no final result. But many people call Otto Hahn, a German by birth, a nuclear chemist, the father of the atomic bomb. Apparently, it was his discoveries in the field of nuclear fission, together with Fritz Strassmann, that can be considered fundamental in the creation of nuclear weapons.

Igor Kurchatov and Soviet intelligence and Klaus Fuchs personally are considered to be the father of Soviet weapons of mass destruction. However, we should not forget about the discoveries of our scientists in the late 30s. Work on uranium fission was carried out by A.K. Peterzhak and G.N. Flerov.

The atomic bomb is a product that was not invented immediately. It took dozens of years of various studies to reach the result. Before specimens were first invented in 1945, many experiments and discoveries were carried out. All scientists who are related to these works can be counted among the creators of the atomic bomb. Besom speaks directly about the team of inventors of the bomb itself, then there was a whole team, it’s better to read about it on Wikipedia.

A large number of scientists and engineers from various industries took part in the creation of the atomic bomb. It would be unfair to name just one. The material from Wikipedia does not mention the French physicist Henri Becquerel, the Russian scientists Pierre Curie and his wife Maria Sklodowska-Curie, who discovered the radioactivity of uranium, and the German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein.

Quite an interesting question.

After reading information on the Internet, I came to the conclusion that the USSR and the USA began working on creating these bombs at the same time.

I think you will read in more detail in the article. Everything is written there in great detail.

Many discoveries have their own parents, but inventions are often the collective result of a common cause, when everyone contributed. In addition, many inventions are, as it were, a product of their era, so work on them is carried out simultaneously in different laboratories. So it is with the atomic bomb, it does not have one single parent.

Quite a difficult task, it is difficult to say who exactly invented the atomic bomb, because many scientists were involved in its appearance, who consistently worked on the study of radioactivity, uranium enrichment, chain reaction of fission of heavy nuclei, etc. Here are the main points of its creation:

By 1945, American scientists had invented two atomic bombs Baby weighed 2722 kg and was equipped with enriched Uranium-235 and Fat man with a charge of Plutonium-239 with a power of more than 20 kt, it had a mass of 3175 kg.

At this time, they are completely different in size and shape.

Work on nuclear projects in the USA and USSR began simultaneously. In July 1945, an American atomic bomb (Robert Oppenheimer, head of the laboratory) was exploded at the test site, and then, in August, bombs were also dropped on the infamous Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The first test of a Soviet bomb took place in 1949 (project manager Igor Kurchatov), but as they say, its creation was made possible thanks to excellent intelligence.

There is also information that the Germans were the creators of the atomic bomb. You can, for example, read about this here..

There is simply no clear answer to this question - many talented physicists and chemists worked on the creation of a deadly weapon capable of destroying the planet, whose names are listed in this article - as we see, the inventor was far from alone.