The most terrible weapon created by mankind is the nuclear bomb. Here are some facts from the history of testing this terrible invention.
Trinity Nuclear Device Outdoor Wiring, First-Ever Nuclear Weapon Test - atomic bomb... At the time of this photograph, the device was being prepared for its detonation, which took place on July 16, 1945. We can say that the history of tests began with this photo. nuclear bombs.
Silhouette of Los Alamos Director Robert Oppenheimer, who oversees the final assembly of the device at Trinity Proving Ground in July 1945.
Jumbo, a 200 ton steel canister designed to recover the plutonium used in the Trinity test, but the explosives originally used were unable to cause a chain reaction. In the end, the Jumbo was not used to recover plutonium, but it was installed near the epicenter to assess the impact of the explosion. It has survived, but its tower has disappeared. 
The expanding fireball and shockwave from the Trinity explosion, 0.25 seconds after the July 16, 1945 explosion.
The fireball begins to rise, and the world's first atomic mushroom cloud begins to form, pictured nine seconds after Trinity exploded on July 16, 1945.
The US military oversees the explosion during Operation Crossroads Baker on Bikini Atoll (Marshall Islands) on July 25, 1946. This was the fifth nuclear explosion since the previous two were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
First underwater atomic bomb explosion test, a massive column of water rises from the sea, Bikini Atoll, Pacific Ocean, July 25, 1946.
A huge mushroom cloud rises over Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands on July 25, 1946. Dark spots in the foreground are ships that have been positioned near the site of the explosion to test what the atomic bomb can do to a fleet of warships.
On November 16, 1952, a B-36H bomber dropped an atomic bomb over north point Runit Islands in Enewetak Atoll, resulting in a 500 kiloton explosion - part of a test under codename Ivy.
Operation Greenhouse took place in the spring of 1951, consisting of four explosions at the Pacific Ocean proving grounds. This photograph of the third test, George, May 9, 1951, the first thermonuclear bomb, has a yield of 225 kilotons.
In the photo there is a nuclear ball (one millisecond after the explosion). During the Tumbler-Snapper tests in 1952, a nuclear bomb was planted 90 meters above the Nevada desert.
Complete destruction of house number 1, located at a distance of 1070 meters from the epicenter, destroyed by a nuclear explosion, March 17, 1953, Yucca Flat at the Nevada test site. The time from the first to the last image is 2.3 seconds. The camera was in a 5 cm lead sheath, which protected it from radiation. The only source of light was the explosion itself from the nuclear bomb.
1 photo. During the Doorstep test during the major Operation Upshot-Knothole, dummies sit at a dining room table at number two, March 15, 1953.
2 photos. After the explosion, the mannequins are scattered around the room, their "meal" was interrupted atomic explosion March 17, 1953.
1 photo. A mannequin lying on a bed, on the second floor of house number 2, is ready to experience the effects of an atomic explosion, at a test site near Las Vegas, Nevada, March 15, 1953, at a distance of 1.5 miles, there is a steel tower 90 meters high on which a bomb will detonate ... The purpose of the tests is to show civil defense officials what will happen in an American city if it is subjected to an atomic attack.
1 photo. Mannequins representing a typical American family, gathered in the living room of house No. 2 on March 15, 1953.
Operation Upshot-Knothole, BADGER Event, 23 kilotons, April 18, 1953, Nevada Proving Ground.
US nuclear artillery test, conducted by the US military in Nevada on May 25, 1953. A 280mm nuclear projectile was fired 10 km into the desert from an M65 Atomic Cannon, detonating in the air, about 152 meters above the ground, with a yield of 15 kilotons. 
Test explosion hydrogen bomb during Operation Redwing over Bikini Atoll, May 20, 1956.
The flash of an exploded nuclear warhead by an air-to-air missile is shown as bright sun in the eastern sky at 7:30 am on July 19, 1957 at Indian Air Force Springs, about 30 miles from the point of detonation.
The photo shows the tail section of the airship navy USA, shown below is the Stokes cloud at the Nevada Proving Grounds on August 7, 1957. The airship was in free flight over five miles from epicenter. The airship was unmanned and was used as a dummy.
Observers view atmospheric phenomena during the test thermonuclear bomb Hardtack I, Pacific Ocean, 1958.
2 photos pertaining to a series of over 100 nuclear test explosions in Nevada and The Pacific in 1962
The Fishbowl Bluegill bomb explodes in the atmosphere, 30 miles above the Pacific Ocean (photo above), October 1962.
Another photo from a series of over 100 nuclear test explosions in Nevada and the Pacific in 1962.
The Sedan crater was formed with a 100 kiloton bomb buried under 193 meters of earth, displacing 12 million tonnes of earth. Crater 97 meters deep and 390 meters in diameter, July 6, 1962
(3 photos) The explosion of the French atomic bomb on the Mururoa atoll, French polynesia... 1971 year.
The history of nuclear bomb tests in the photo
Koh Kambaran. Pakistan decided to conduct its first tests of nuclear charges in the province of Baluchistan. The charges were placed in an adit dug in Mount Koh Kambaran and detonated in May 1998. Locals hardly ever visit this area, with the exception of a few nomads and herbalists.
Maralinga. The area in southern Australia, where atmospheric tests of nuclear weapons took place, was once considered local residents sacred. As a result, twenty years after the end of the tests, a second operation was organized to clean up Maralinga. The first was carried out after the final test in 1963. 
Pohran. In the Indian empty Tar of the state of Rajasthan, on May 18, 1974, an 8 kiloton bomb was tested. In May 1998, five charges were detonated at the Pohran test site, including a thermonuclear charge of 43 kilotons. 
Bikini Atoll. The Marshall Islands in the Pacific Ocean is home to Bikini Atoll, where the United States actively conducted nuclear tests. Other explosions rarely hit the film, but these were filmed quite often. Still - 67 tests in the interval from 1946 to 1958. 
Christmas Island. Christmas Island, also known as Kiritimati, stands out for the fact that both Britain and the United States tested atomic weapons on it. In 1957, the first British hydrogen bomb was detonated there, and in 1962, as part of the Dominic Project, the United States is testing 22 charges there. 
Lop Nor. At the site of a dried-up salt lake in western China, about 45 warheads were detonated, both in the atmosphere and underground. The tests were discontinued in 1996. 
Mururoa. The atoll in the South Pacific experienced a lot - more precisely, 181 French nuclear weapons tests from 1966 to 1986. The last charge got stuck in an underground mine and, when it exploded, formed a crack several kilometers long. After this, the tests were terminated. 
New earth.
Archipelago in the North Arctic Ocean chosen for nuclear tests September 17, 1954. Since then, 132 nuclear explosions have been carried out there, including the test of the most powerful hydrogen bomb in the world - the 58-megaton Tsar Bomb. 
Semipalatinsk. From 1949 to 1989, at least 468 nuclear tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site. So much plutonium has accumulated there that from 1996 to 2012 Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States carried out a secret operation to search for and collect and dispose of radioactive materials. They managed to collect about 200 kg of plutonium. 
Nevada. The Nevada Proving Ground, which has existed since 1951, breaks all records - 928 nuclear explosions, of which 800 are underground. Given that the test site is located only 100 kilometers from Las Vegas, mushrooms were considered a completely normal part of entertainment for tourists half a century ago. 
In December 1946, the first experimental nuclear reactor, which required 45 tons of uranium to operate. To launch an industrial reactor required to obtain plutonium, another 150 tons of uranium were needed, which were accumulated only by the beginning of 1948.
Test launches of the reactor began on June 8, 1948 near Chelyabinsk, but at the end of the year there was a serious accident, due to which the reactor was shut down for 2 months. At the same time, manual disassembly and assembly of the reactor was carried out, during which thousands of people were irradiated, including members of the Soviet leadership who participated in the liquidation of the accident. atomic project Igor Kurchatov and Avraamy Zavenyagin. The 10 kilograms of plutonium necessary for the manufacture of an atomic bomb were obtained in the USSR by the middle of 1949.
The test of the first domestic atomic bomb RDS-1 was carried out on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site. In place of the tower with the bomb, a crater with a diameter of 3 meters and a depth of 1.5 meters was formed, covered with melted sand. After the explosion, it was allowed to be 2 kilometers from the epicenter and no more than 15 minutes due to high level radiation.
In 25 meters from the tower there was a building made of reinforced concrete structures, with an overhead crane in the hall for installing a plutonium charge. The structure was partially destroyed, the structure itself survived. Out of 1538 experimental animals, 345 died as a result of the explosion, some animals imitated soldiers in the trenches.
The T-34 tank and field artillery were slightly damaged within a radius of 500-550 meters from the epicenter, and at a distance of up to 1500 meters, all types of aircraft received significant damage. At a distance of a kilometer from the epicenter and then every 500 meters, 10 Pobeda cars were installed, all 10 cars burned down.
At a distance of 800 meters, two residential 3-storey buildings, built 20 meters from each other, in such a way that the first screened the second, were completely destroyed, residential panel and log houses of urban type were completely destroyed within a radius of 5 kilometers. Most of the damage was received from shock wave... The railway and highway bridges located at 1,000 and 1,500 meters, respectively, were twisted and thrown 20-30 meters away from their place.
The wagons and cars located on the bridges, half-burnt, were scattered across the steppe at a distance of 50-80 meters from the installation site. Tanks and cannons were overturned and mangled, the animals were carried away. The tests were found to be successful.
The work supervisors Lavrenty Beria and Igor Kurchatov were awarded the title of Honorary Citizen of the USSR. A number of scientists who participated in the project - Kurchatov, Flerov, Khariton, Khlopin, Shchelkin, Zeldovich, Bochvar, as well as Nikolaus Riel, became Heroes of Socialist Labor.
All of them were awarded the Stalin Prizes, as well as dachas near Moscow and cars "Pobeda", and Kurchatov - a car "ZIS". The title of Hero of Socialist Labor was also received by one of the leaders of the Soviet defense industry Boris Vannikov, his deputy Pervukhin, Deputy Minister Zavenyagin, as well as 7 more generals of the Ministry of Internal Affairs who were in charge of nuclear facilities. Project manager Beria was awarded the order Lenin.
ON THE PICTURE: The explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb
On August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb with a capacity of 22 kilotons. Like in Hiroshima. American President Truman for a long time he could not believe that "... these Asians could make such a complex weapon as an atomic bomb", and only on September 23, 1949 he announced American people that the USSR tested an atomic bomb.
And Soviet citizens remained in the dark for a long time. International only women's day On March 8, 1950, the Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov, announced that the Soviet Union had an atomic bomb.
Then I found out about it too. But I didn’t think then why they didn’t say anything to us for six months. Why did all people on earth know that the Soviet Union tested an atomic bomb, except for the Soviet ones. Yes, even if he did, he would have decided that Stalin knew better when to say. Probably, it was necessary not only to test the bomb, but also to make it a weapon, to accumulate supplies, to create means of delivery. And now it's all done for sure. Now we are not defenseless against the warmongers of the war - the imperialists.
I was filled with pride. I was proud of our country. For her successes in science. For major achievements in industry. For the creation of modern weapons.
- Now we are not afraid of any threats from warmongers. We now also have an atomic bomb, and they are afraid to attack, because we will answer them.
How was the song sung?
We will say to the enemy: “Do not touch our Motherland,
Otherwise we'll open a crushing fire! "
Help from the site "Boris Yeltsin Presidential Library": http://www.prlib.ru/history/pages/item.aspx?itemid=653
August 29, 1949 at 7 a.m. Moscow time at the Semipalatinsk training ground number 2 of the Ministry Armed Forces the first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was successfully tested.
The first Soviet atomic bomb RDS-1 was created at KB-11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center, VNIIEF) under the scientific supervision of Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov and Yuliy Borisovich Khariton. In 1946, Yu. B. Khariton drew up a technical assignment for the development of an atomic bomb, structurally reminiscent of the American "Fat Man" bomb. The RDS-1 bomb was a plutonium aviation atomic bomb of a characteristic "drop-shaped" shape with a mass of 4.7 tons, a diameter of 1.5 m and a length of 3.3 m.
Before the atomic explosion, the operability of the systems and mechanisms of the bomb when dropped from an aircraft was successfully tested without a plutonium charge. On August 21, 1949, a plutonium charge and four neutron fuses were delivered to the test site by a special train, one of which was to be used to detonate a military product. Kurchatov, in accordance with the instructions of L.P. Beria, gave the order to test the RDS-1 on August 29 at 8 am local time.
On the night of August 29, the charge was assembled, and the final installation was completed by 3 am. During subsequent three o'clock the charge was raised to the test tower, loaded with fuses, and connected to the blasting circuit. Members of the special committee L.P. Beria, M.G. Pervukhin and V.A.Makhnev controlled the course of the final operations. However, due to the worsening weather, it was decided to carry out all the work stipulated by the approved regulations with a shift one hour earlier.
At 6 hours 35 minutes. the operators turned on the power supply of the automation system, and at 6 hours 48 minutes. the test field machine was turned on. Exactly at 7 a.m. on August 29, the first atomic bomb of the Soviet Union was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. In 20 minutes. after the explosion, two tanks equipped with lead shielding were sent to the center of the field to conduct radiation reconnaissance and survey the center of the field.
On October 28, 1949, LP Beria reported to JV Stalin on the results of testing the first atomic bomb. For the successful development and testing of the atomic bomb by Presidium Decree The Supreme Council USSR on October 29, 1949 orders and medals of the USSR was awarded large group leading researchers, designers, technologists; many were awarded the title of laureates Stalin Prize, and the direct developers of the nuclear charge - the title of Hero of Socialist Labor.
The end of part 6 of Book 1 "You will get older, you will become smarter"
Continuation (part 7 "School on Kirochnaya" Book 1) follows:
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Nuclear (or atomic) weapons are explosive weapons based on the uncontrolled fission chain reactions of heavy nuclei and thermonuclear fusion reactions. To carry out a chain reaction of fission, either uranium-235 or plutonium-239 are used, or, in individual cases, uranium-233. Refers to weapons mass destruction along with biological and chemical. The power of a nuclear charge is measured in TNT equivalent, usually expressed in kilotons and megatons.
Nuclear weapons were first tested on July 16, 1945 in the United States at the Trinity test site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. In the same year, the United States used it in Japan in the bombing of the cities of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.
In the USSR, the first test of an atomic bomb - RDS-1 products - was carried out on August 29, 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site in Kazakhstan. The RDS-1 was a "drop-shaped" aeronautical atomic bomb, weighing 4.6 tons, 1.5 m in diameter and 3.7 m long. Plutonium was used as the fissile material. The bomb was detonated at 7.00 local time (4.00 Moscow time) on an assembled metal lattice tower 37.5 m high, located in the center of the experimental field with a diameter of about 20 km. The power of the explosion was 20 kilotons of TNT.
Product RDS-1 (the documents indicated the decoding " jet engine"C") was created in Design Bureau No. 11 (now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF, city of Sarov), which was organized to create an atomic bomb in April 1946. Work on the creation of the bomb was supervised by Igor Kurchatov (scientific supervisor of work on the atomic problem since 1943; organizer of the bomb test) and Julius Khariton (chief designer of KB-11 in 1946-1959).
Research on atomic energy was carried out in Russia (later the USSR) back in the 1920s-1930s. In 1932, a nuclear group was formed at the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute, headed by the director of the institute, Abram Ioffe, with the participation of Igor Kurchatov (deputy head of the group). In 1940, the Uranium Commission of the USSR Academy of Sciences was created, which in September of the same year approved the work program for the first Soviet uranium project. However, with the beginning of the Great Patriotic War most research on the use of atomic energy in the USSR was curtailed or discontinued.
Research on the use of atomic energy resumed in 1942 after receiving intelligence about the deployment of the Americans to create an atomic bomb ("Manhattan Project"): on September 28, an order was issued State Committee Defense (GKO) "On the organization of work on uranium."
On November 8, 1944, the State Defense Committee made a decision to create Central Asia a large uranium mining enterprise based on the deposits of Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. In May 1945, the first mining and processing enterprise in the USSR began to operate in Tajikistan. uranium ores- Combine No. 6 (later Leninabad Mining and Metallurgical Combine).
After the explosions of American atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, by a GKO decree of August 20, 1945, a Special Committee under the GKO headed by Lavrentiy Beria was created to "guide all work on the use of the atomic energy of uranium", including the production of an atomic bomb.
In accordance with the decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR of June 21, 1946, Khariton prepared a "tactical and technical assignment for an atomic bomb", which marked the beginning of full-scale work on the first domestic atomic charge.
In 1947, 170 km west of Semipalatinsk, Object-905 was created for testing nuclear charges (in 1948 it was transformed into a training ground number 2 of the USSR Ministry of Defense, later it became known as Semipalatinsk; in August 1991 it was closed). The construction of the test site was completed by August 1949 for the bomb test.
The first test of the Soviet atomic bomb destroyed the US nuclear monopoly. Soviet Union became the second nuclear power in the world.
The message about the test of nuclear weapons in the USSR was published by TASS on September 25, 1949. And on October 29, a closed resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On rewarding and bonuses for outstanding scientific discoveries and technical advances on the use of atomic energy. "For the development and testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb, six KB-11 workers were awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor: Pavel Zernov (KB director), Julius Khariton, Kirill Shchelkin, Yakov Zeldovich, Vladimir Alferov, Georgy Flerov. designer Nikolai Dukhov received the second Gold Star of the Hero of Socialist Labor, 29 employees of the bureau were awarded the Order of Lenin, 15 - the Order of the Red Banner of Labor, 28 became laureates of the Stalin Prize.
Today, the model of the bomb (its body, the RDS-1 charge and the remote control used to detonate the charge) is kept in the RFNC-VNIIEF Museum of Nuclear Weapons.
In 2009, the UN General Assembly declared August 29 as the International Day against Nuclear Tests.
In total, 2062 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out in the world, which eight states have. The USA accounts for 1,032 explosions (1945-1992). The United States of America is the only country to have used this weapon. The USSR conducted 715 tests (1949-1990). The last explosion took place on October 24, 1990 at the Novaya Zemlya test site. In addition to the USA and the USSR, nuclear weapons were created and tested in Great Britain - 45 (1952-1991), France - 210 (1960-1996), China - 45 (1964-1996), India - 6 (1974, 1998), Pakistan - 6 (1998) and DPRK - 3 (2006, 2009, 2013).
In 1970, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) entered into force. Currently, 188 countries of the world are its participants. The document was not signed by India (in 1998 it introduced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests and agreed to place its nuclear facilities under IAEA control) and Pakistan (in 1998 it introduced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear tests). The DPRK, having signed the agreement in 1985, withdrew from it in 2003.
In 1996, the general cessation of nuclear tests was enshrined in the framework of the international Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). After that nuclear explosions carried out by only three countries - India, Pakistan and the DPRK.
