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The most powerful explosions in human history (9 photos). “Tsar Bomba”: how the Soviet Union showed “Kuzka’s mother”

October 30, 1961 at the training ground New Earth passed successful tests of the Soviet thermo nuclear bomb AN606 with a capacity of 57 megatons. This power was 10 times greater than the total power of all ammunition that was used during World War II. AN606 is the most destructive weapon in the entire history of mankind.

Place

Nuclear testing in the Soviet Union began in 1949 at the Semipalatinsk test site, located in Kazakhstan. Its area was 18,500 square meters. km. It was removed from places of permanent residence of people. But not so much that one could experience the most powerful weapon. Therefore, nuclear charges of low and medium power were detonated in the Kazakh steppe. They were necessary for debugging nuclear technologies, studying the influence damaging factors for equipment and structures. That is, these were, first of all, scientific and technical tests.

But in conditions of military competition, tests were also necessary in which the emphasis was placed on their political component, on demonstrating the crushing power of the Soviet bomb.

There was also the Totsky training ground in Orenburg region. But it was smaller than Semipalatinsk. And besides, it was located in even more dangerous proximity to cities and villages.

In 1954, they found a place where it was possible to test ultra-high-power nuclear weapons.

This place became the Novaya Zemlya archipelago. It fully met the requirements for the test site where the super-bomb was to be tested. Was as far away as possible from large settlements and communications, and after its closure should have had minimal impact on the subsequent economic activities of the region. It was also necessary to conduct a study of the impact nuclear explosion on ships and submarines.

Islands of Novaya Zemlya the best way satisfied these and other requirements. Their area was more than four times larger than the Semipalatinsk test site and amounted to 85 thousand square meters. km., which is approximately equal to the area of the Netherlands.

The problem of the population that could suffer from explosions was solved radically: 298 indigenous Nenets were evicted from the archipelago, providing them with housing in Arkhangelsk, as well as in the village of Amderma and on the island of Kolguev. At the same time, the migrants were employed, and the elderly were given a pension, despite the fact that there was no length of service they didn't have it.

They were replaced by builders.

The nuclear test site on Novaya Zemlya is by no means an empty field onto which bombers drop their deadly cargo, but a whole complex of complex engineering structures and administrative and economic services. These include experimental scientific and engineering services, energy and water supply services, a fighter aviation regiment, a transport aviation detachment, a division of ships and vessels special purpose, emergency rescue squad, communications center, logistics support units, living quarters.

Three test sites were created at the test site: Black Lip, Matochkin Shar and Sukhoi Nos.

In the summer of 1954, 10 construction battalions were delivered to the archipelago and began building the first site, Black Lip. Builders spent the Arctic winter in canvas tents, preparing Guba for an underwater explosion scheduled for September 1955 - the first in the USSR.

Product

The development of the Tsar Bomba, designated AN602, began simultaneously with the construction of the test site on Novaya Zemlya - in 1955. And it ended with the creation of a bomb ready for testing in September 1961, that is, a month before the explosion.

Development began at NII-1011 of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building (now the All-Russian Scientific Research Institute technical physics, VNIITF), which was located in Snezhinsk Chelyabinsk region. Actually, the institute was founded on May 5, 1955, primarily to implement a grandiose thermonuclear project. And only then his activities spread to the creation of 70 percent of all Soviet nuclear bombs, missiles and torpedoes.

NII-1011 was headed by the scientific director of the institute, Kirill Ivanovich Shchelkin, corresponding member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. Shchelkin, together with a group of leading nuclear scientists, took part in the creation and testing of the first atomic bomb RDS-1. It was he who, in 1949, was the last to leave the tower with a charge installed in it, sealed the entrance and pressed the “Start” button.

Work on the creation of the AN602 bomb, to which the country's leading physicists, including Kurchatov and Sakharov, were involved, proceeded without any particular complications. But the unique power of the bomb required enormous amounts of calculations and design work. And also conducting experiments with smaller charges at the test site - first in Semipalatinsk, and then on Novaya Zemlya.

The initial project involved the creation of a bomb that would certainly break out windows, if not in Moscow, but certainly in Murmansk and Arkhangelsk, and even in northern Finland. Since a capacity exceeding 100 megatons was planned.

Initially, the bomb's operation scheme was three-link. First, a plutonium charge with a power of 1.5 Mt was triggered. He ignited a thermonuclear fusion reaction, the power of which was 50 Mt. The fast neutrons released as a result of the thermonuclear reaction triggered the nuclear fission reaction in the uranium-238 blocks. The contribution of this reaction to the “common cause” was 50 Mt.

This scheme led to an extremely high level of radioactive contamination over a vast area. And there was no need to talk about “the minimal impact of the landfill on the subsequent economic activity of the region after its closure.” Therefore, it was decided to abandon the final phase - uranium fission. But at the same time, the real power of the resulting bomb turned out to be slightly greater than it was based on calculations. Instead of 51.5 Mt, on October 30, 1961, 57 Mt exploded on Novaya Zemlya.

The creation of the AN602 bomb was completed not in Snezhinsk, but in the famous KB-11, located in Arzamas-16. The final revision took 112 days.

The result was a monster weighing 26,500 kg, 800 cm long and a maximum diameter of 210 cm.

The dimensions and weight of the bomb were determined already in 1955. In order to get it into the air, it was necessary to significantly modernize the largest bomber at that time, the Tu-95. And this, too, was not an easy job, since the standard Tu-95 could not lift the Tsar Bomba into the air; with the aircraft weighing 84 tons, it could only carry 11 tons of combat load. The fuel share was 90 tons. In addition, the bomb did not fit in the bomb bay. Therefore, the fuselage fuel tanks had to be removed. And also replace the beam bomb holders with more powerful ones.

Work on modernizing the bomber, called the Tu-95 V and manufactured in a single copy, took place from 1956 to 1958. Flight tests continued for another year, during which the technique of dropping a mock-up bomb of the same weight and dimensions was tested. In 1959, the aircraft was recognized as fully satisfying the requirements for it.

Result

The main result, as planned, was political and exceeded all expectations. The explosion of previously unknown force produced a very strong impression on leaders Western countries. He forced us to take a more serious look at the capabilities of the Soviet military-industrial complex and somewhat reduce our militaristic ambitions.

The events of October 30, 1961 developed as follows. Early in the morning, two bombers took off from a distant airfield - a Tu-95 B with the AN602 product on board and a Tu-16 with research equipment and film and photographic equipment.

At 11:32 a.m., the commander of the Tu-95, Major Andrei Egorovich Durnovtsev, dropped a bomb from an altitude of 10,500 meters. The major returned to the airfield as a lieutenant colonel and Hero of the Soviet Union.

The bomb, having descended by parachute to a level of 3700 meters, exploded. By this time, the planes had managed to move 39 kilometers away from the epicenter.

Test leaders - Minister of Medium Engineering E.P. Slavsky and Commander-in-Chief missile forces Marshal K.S. Moskalenko - at the time of the explosion they were on board the Il-14 at a distance of more than 500 kilometers. Despite the cloudy weather, they saw a bright flash. At the same time, the plane was clearly shaken by the shock wave. The minister and marshal immediately sent a telegram to Khrushchev.

One of the groups of researchers, from a distance of 270 kilometers from the point of the explosion, saw not only a bright flash through protective dark glasses, but even felt the impact of the light pulse. In an abandoned village - 400 kilometers from the epicenter - they were destroyed wooden houses, and the stone ones lost their roofs, windows and doors.

The mushroom from the explosion reached a height of 68 kilometers. At the same time, the shock wave, reflected from the ground, prevented the ball of plasma from descending to the ground, which would have incinerated everything in a vast space.

The various effects were monstrous. The seismic wave circled three times Earth. The light radiation was capable of causing third degree burns at a distance of 100 km. The roar from the explosion was heard within a radius of 800 km. Due to ionizing effects, radio interference was observed in Europe for more than an hour. For the same reason, communication with two bombers was lost for 30 minutes.

The test turned out to be surprisingly clean. Radioactive radiation within a radius of three kilometers from the epicenter two hours after the explosion was only 1 milliroentgen per hour.

The Tu-95B, despite the fact that it was 39 kilometers from the epicenter, was thrown into a dive by the shock wave. And the pilot was able to regain control of the plane only after losing 800 meters of altitude. The entire bomber, including the propellers, was painted with white reflective paint. But upon inspection, it was discovered that the paint had faded in fragments. And some structural elements even melted and became deformed.

In conclusion, it should be noted that the AN602 case could also accommodate a 100-megaton filling.

Panic covered not only the “decaying West”, but also Soviet scientists, horrified by what they had done. “Tsar Bomba”, aka “Kuzka’s Mother”, aka “Ivan”, aka “Product 602”, still remains the most powerful explosive device that humanity has ever experienced.

It took seven long years of research, design and development to wipe the noses of the capitalists terrible weapon. The creation of a hitherto unprecedented 100-megaton superbomb (for comparison: the power of the largest American hydrogen bomb at that time reached “only” 15 megatons, which was already thousands of times more powerful than bombs, dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) was studied by a group of scientists led by Igor Kurchatov.

In fact, they could have tested a superbomb already in the late 1950s, but they were in no hurry to frighten obvious and imaginary opponents due to the short-term thaw that gripped the cold hearts of the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev and American President Dwight Eisenhower. Blizzard in the early 1960s cold war swirled with new strength: a U-2 reconnaissance plane was shot down near Sverdlovsk, there was unrest in divided Berlin, the revolution in Cuba led to an acute confrontation with the United States.

The last, active phase of work on superweapons entered in the summer of 1961, after the Soviet leader learned about the possibility of creating a 100-megaton thermonuclear bomb by a group already headed by Andrei Sakharov. The leader could not ignore the unprecedented prospects and gave the go-ahead - give them a bomb by the 22nd Congress of the CPSU, that is, by October.

Today, physicists who participated in those events claim that with their work they wanted to stop nuclear war. It is unknown what motives they were really guided by then, but Sakharov wrote a note to Khrushchev in which he spoke out against testing a super-powerful bomb during the current moratorium on testing nuclear weapons. The First Secretary called all the fears and doubts “slobbering,” and at the end of the summer he could not stand it and threatened his capitalist enemies with a 100-megaton bomb. They didn’t make a secret of it.

The Western world shuddered at the mere statement of Nikita Khrushchev. A wave of anti-Soviet movements swept across the United States; a series of videos about protective measures during a nuclear attack were launched on television in the United States; newspapers were full of headlines accusing them of rehearsing the Third World War.

Meanwhile, the creation of “Kuzka’s Mother” went on as usual. Weapons were developed in closed city, V different times known as Kremlev, Arzamas-16 and Sarov. The secret settlement, in which only nuclear physicists lived, was closed from the outside world and was reminiscent of the very communism that was so threatened to be built throughout the planet. They didn’t turn it off here even in the summer hot water, shops were filled with raw smoked sausages, and each family was entitled to spacious free housing almost in heaven. True, the Soviet paradise was strictly guarded by soldiers and barbed wire - it was impossible to come here or leave without permission.

While practical physicists were puzzling over how to make the most destructive weapon in the history of mankind, theorists were coming up with scenarios for its use. And “Ivan,” of course, was intended primarily for the destruction of the “evil empire” represented by the United States.

The question was how to deliver the Tsar Bomba to the territory of the hated enemy. An option was considered Submarine. The bomb was supposed to be detonated off the coast of the United States at a depth of 1 km. The power of the explosion of 100 million tons of TNT should have generated a tsunami half a kilometer high and 10 kilometers wide. After calculations, however, it turned out that America would have been saved by a continental shelf - only structures at a distance of no more than 5 km from the coast would have been in danger.

Even today it sounds fantastic, but physicists seriously considered the possibility of launching a bomb into Earth orbit. It could be directed at the United States directly from space. They say that theoretically the project was quite feasible, although it would have been incredibly expensive.

However, all these were questions of the distant and gloomy future. In the meantime, it was necessary to assemble the bomb itself. “Product 602” had a three-stage design. The first stage nuclear charge had a power of one and a half megatons and was designed to launch a thermo nuclear reaction in the second, the power of which reached 50 megatons. The third stage provided the same amount for the fission of uranium-238 nuclei.

Having calculated the consequences of the explosion of such a charge and the area of subsequent radioactive contamination, they decided to replace the uranium elements in the third stage with lead. Thus, the estimated power of the bomb was reduced to 51.5 megatons.

Khrushchev explained this with his characteristic humor: “If we detonate a bomb with a capacity of 100 million tons where it is needed, it can break our windows too.”

The results of the scientists' work are impressive! The length of the weapon exceeded 8 meters, the diameter was 2, and the weight was 26 tons. There was no suitable crane to transport Ivan, so a separate railway line had to be built directly to the workshop where the bomb was assembled. From there the product set off on its penultimate journey - to the harsh polar Olenegorsk.

Not far from the city, at the Olenya airbase, a Tu-95 specially modified for it was waiting for the “Tsar Bomb”. The weapon did not fit on the plane, so part of the fuselage had to be cut out. To bring “Kuzkina-Mother” under the bomb bay, a pit was dug under it. The bomb still could not completely hide in the bowels of the ship and two-thirds of it was visible outside.

The crew was in great danger. The probability that he would remain completely unharmed as a result of the tests was only 1%. To increase the pilots' chances of survival, the plane was painted with white reflective paint, which was supposed to prevent the Tu-95B from catching fire (this is the name, the first and only, given to the aircraft adapted for transporting Ivan). A parachute the size of half a football field was placed in the tail of the bomb. His mission was to slow down the fall of the projectile to give the crew as much time as possible to escape the affected area.

On the morning of October 30, 1961, on the penultimate day of the XXII Congress of the CPSU, a plane with a terrible cargo took off from the Olenya airfield towards the Sukhoi Nos test site on Novaya Zemlya. At 11:32 a.m. the bomb was dropped from a height of 10.5 km. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 4 km. In the few minutes that the crew had, the plane managed to fly a distance of 45 km.

This, of course, was not enough to avoid feeling the wrath of the “Tsar Bomba” at all. A second after the explosion, a man-made sun blossomed above the earth - the flash could have been seen with simple binoculars even from Mars, and on Earth it was observed at a distance of 1000 km. A few seconds later, the diameter of the dust column of the nuclear mushroom grew to 10 km, and its top entered the mesosphere, rushing upward to 67 km.

Flash explosion

According to the pilots, at first it became unbearably hot in the cockpit. Then the plane was overtaken by the first shock wave, spreading at a speed of more than 1000 km/h. The ship, as if hit by a huge club, was thrown half a kilometer. Radio communication was lost throughout the entire Arctic for almost an hour. Fortunately, no one was hurt from the explosion - the pilots survived.

Observing the first consequences of the explosion, some Soviet physicists were afraid that an irreversible nuclear reaction had begun in the atmosphere - the fiery glow had been blazing for a very long time. Perhaps no one could predict the exact results of the tests. Serious scientists expressed the most ridiculous fears, even to the point that Product 602 would split the planet or melt the ice in the Arctic Ocean.

None of this happened. But the power of the explosion would have been enough to wipe out Washington and a dozen surrounding cities from the face of the Earth, while New York, Richmond and Baltimore would have suffered. Any metropolis could disappear, the center of which would completely evaporate, and the outskirts would turn into small rubble blazing in fire. It’s scary to imagine what the consequences could have been if the power of the explosion had been the initially planned 100 megatons...

Total blast zone superimposed on Paris

The rehearsal for the end of the world was a great success. The Tsar Bomba was never put into service: in order to use it in combat conditions, they did not come up with a suitable invulnerable carrier - you cannot install such a huge thing on a rocket, and the plane will be shot down long before approaching the target.

After the test was completed, everyone involved received what they deserved. For some - the title of Hero of the USSR, for the military - promotion, for scientists - recognition and generous bonuses. Exactly a year later, the Cuban Missile Crisis broke out, almost pushing the fragile world into the mouth of another world war. A year later, the American president would be shot by Lee Harvey Oswald, and in the fall of 1964 it would come to the removal of Nikita Khrushchev.

What about the people? The people who learned about some kind of “Tsar Bomb” later than the Americans still went to work, saved money and stood in line for Moskvich, got used to casseroles made from crackers, bread cards and other delights of the food crisis. Soviet Union threatened the world with a nuclear club and asked America to sell tens of millions of tons of grain for food.

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August 21st, 2015

The Tsar Bomba is the nickname of the AN602 hydrogen bomb, which was tested in the Soviet Union in 1961. This bomb was the most powerful ever detonated. Its power was such that the flash from the explosion was visible 1000 km away, and the nuclear mushroom rose almost 70 km.

The Tsar Bomba was a hydrogen bomb. It was created in Kurchatov's laboratory. The power of the bomb was such that it would have been enough to destroy 3800 Hiroshimas.

Let's remember the history of its creation...

At the beginning of the “atomic age,” the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a race not only in the number of atomic bombs, but also in their power.

The USSR, which acquired atomic weapons later than its competitor, sought to level the situation by creating more advanced and more powerful devices.

The development of a thermonuclear device codenamed “Ivan” was started in the mid-1950s by a group of physicists led by Academician Kurchatov. The group involved in this project included Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunov and Yuri Smirnov.

During research work scientists also tried to find the limits of the maximum power of a thermonuclear explosive device.

The theoretical possibility of obtaining energy by thermonuclear fusion was known even before World War II, but it was the war and the subsequent arms race that raised the question of creating technical device to practically create this reaction. It is known that in Germany in 1944, work was carried out to initiate thermonuclear fusion by compressing nuclear fuel using charges of conventional explosives - but they were not successful, since it was not possible to obtain the required temperatures and pressures. The USA and the USSR have been developing thermonuclear weapons since the 40s, almost simultaneously testing the first thermonuclear devices in the early 50s. In 1952, the United States exploded a charge with a yield of 10.4 megatons on the Eniwetak Atoll (which is 450 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki), and in 1953, the USSR tested a device with a yield of 400 kilotons.

The designs of the first thermonuclear devices were poorly suited for real combat use. For example, the device tested by the United States in 1952 was a ground-based structure the height of a 2-story building and weighing over 80 tons. Liquid thermonuclear fuel was stored in it using a huge refrigeration unit. Therefore, in the future, serial production of thermonuclear weapons was carried out using solid fuel- lithium-6 deuteride. In 1954, the United States tested a device based on it at Bikini Atoll, and in 1955, a new Soviet thermonuclear bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. In 1957, tests of a hydrogen bomb were carried out in Great Britain.

Design research lasted for several years, and the final stage of development of “product 602” occurred in 1961 and took 112 days.

The AN602 bomb had a three-stage design: the nuclear charge of the first stage (calculated contribution to the explosion power is 1.5 megatons) triggered a thermonuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power - 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated the so-called nuclear “ Jekyll-Hyde reaction" (nuclear fission in uranium-238 blocks under the influence fast neutrons, formed as a result of the thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stage (another 50 megatons of power), so that the total calculated power of AN602 was 101.5 megatons.

However, the initial option was rejected, since in this form the bomb explosion would have caused extremely powerful radiation contamination (which, however, according to calculations, would still have been seriously inferior to that caused by much less powerful American devices).
As a result, it was decided not to use the “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” in the third stage of the bomb and to replace the uranium components with their lead equivalent. This reduced the estimated total power of the explosion by almost half (to 51.5 megatons).

Another limitation for the developers was the capabilities of aircraft. The first version of a bomb weighing 40 tons was rejected by aircraft designers from the Tupolev Design Bureau - the carrier aircraft would not be able to deliver such a cargo to the target.

As a result, the parties reached a compromise - nuclear scientists reduced the weight of the bomb by half, and aviation designers were preparing a special modification of the Tu-95 bomber for it - the Tu-95V.

It turned out that it would not be possible to place a charge in the bomb bay under any circumstances, so the Tu-95V had to carry the AN602 to the target on a special external sling.

In fact, the carrier aircraft was ready in 1959, but nuclear physicists were instructed not to speed up work on the bomb - just at that moment there were signs of a decrease in tension in international relations in the world.

At the beginning of 1961, however, the situation worsened again, and the project was revived.

The final weight of the bomb including the parachute system was 26.5 tons. The product had several names at once - “Big Ivan”, “Tsar Bomba” and “Kuzka’s Mother”. The latter stuck to the bomb after Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s speech to the Americans, in which he promised to show them “Kuzka’s mother.”

In 1961, Khrushchev quite openly spoke to foreign diplomats about the fact that the Soviet Union was planning to test a super-powerful thermonuclear charge in the near future. On October 17, 1961, the Soviet leader announced the upcoming tests in a report at the XXII Party Congress.

The test site was determined to be the Sukhoi Nos test site on Novaya Zemlya. Preparations for the explosion were completed in last days October 1961.

The Tu-95B carrier aircraft was based at the airfield in Vaenga. Here, in a special room, final preparations for testing were carried out.

On the morning of October 30, 1961, the crew of pilot Andrei Durnovtsev received an order to fly to the test site area and drop a bomb.

Taking off from the airfield in Vaenga, the Tu-95B reached its design point two hours later. Bomb on parachute system was dropped from a height of 10,500 meters, after which the pilots immediately began to move the car away from the dangerous area.

At 11:33 Moscow time, an explosion was carried out at an altitude of 4 km above the target.

The power of the explosion significantly exceeded the calculated one (51.5 megatons) and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons. TNT equivalent.

Operating principle:

The action of a hydrogen bomb is based on the use of energy released during the thermonuclear fusion reaction of light nuclei. It is this reaction that takes place in the depths of stars, where, under the influence of ultra-high temperatures and enormous pressure, hydrogen nuclei collide and merge into heavier helium nuclei. During the reaction, part of the mass of hydrogen nuclei is converted into a large number of energy - thanks to this, stars release huge amounts of energy constantly. Scientists copied this reaction using isotopes of hydrogen - deuterium and tritium, which gave it the name "hydrogen bomb". Initially, liquid isotopes of hydrogen were used to produce charges, and later lithium-6 deuteride, a solid compound of deuterium and an isotope of lithium, was used.

Lithium-6 deuteride is the main component of the hydrogen bomb, thermonuclear fuel. It already stores deuterium, and the lithium isotope serves as the raw material for the formation of tritium. To start a thermonuclear fusion reaction, it is necessary to create high temperature and pressure, and also to isolate tritium from lithium-6. These conditions are provided as follows.

The shell of the container for thermonuclear fuel is made of uranium-238 and plastic, and a conventional nuclear charge with a power of several kilotons is placed next to the container - it is called a trigger, or initiator charge of a hydrogen bomb. During the explosion of the plutonium initiator charge under the influence of powerful X-ray radiation, the container shell turns into plasma, compressing thousands of times, which creates the necessary high pressure and enormous temperature. At the same time, neutrons emitted by plutonium interact with lithium-6, forming tritium. Deuterium and tritium nuclei interact under the influence of ultra-high temperature and pressure, which leads to a thermonuclear explosion.

If you make several layers of uranium-238 and lithium-6 deuteride, then each of them will add its own power to the explosion of a bomb - that is, such a “puff” allows you to increase the power of the explosion almost unlimitedly. Thereby hydrogen bomb can be made of almost any power, and it will be much cheaper than a conventional nuclear bomb of the same power.

Witnesses of the test say that they have never seen anything like this in their lives. The nuclear mushroom of the explosion rose to a height of 67 kilometers, the light radiation could potentially cause third-degree burns at a distance of up to 100 kilometers.

Observers reported that at the epicenter of the explosion, the rocks took a surprisingly flat shape, and the ground turned into some kind of military parade ground. Complete destruction was achieved over an area equal to the territory of Paris.

Ionization of the atmosphere caused radio interference even hundreds of kilometers from the test site for about 40 minutes. The lack of radio communication convinced the scientists that the tests went as well as possible. The shock wave resulting from the explosion of the Tsar Bomba circled the globe three times. The sound wave generated by the explosion reached Dikson Island at a distance of about 800 kilometers.

Despite the heavy clouds, witnesses saw the explosion even at a distance of thousands of kilometers and could describe it.

Radioactive contamination from the explosion turned out to be minimal, as the developers had planned - more than 97% of the power of the explosion was provided by the thermonuclear fusion reaction, which practically did not create radioactive contamination.

This allowed scientists to begin studying the test results on the experimental field within two hours after the explosion.

The explosion of the Tsar Bomba really made an impression on the whole world. She turned out to be more powerful than the most powerful American bomb four times.

There was a theoretical possibility of creating even more powerful charges, but it was decided to abandon the implementation of such projects.

Oddly enough, the main skeptics turned out to be the military. From their point of view, such weapons had no practical meaning. How do you order him to be delivered to the “den of the enemy”? The USSR already had missiles, but they were unable to fly to America with such a load.

Strategic bombers were also unable to fly to the United States with such “luggage.” In addition, they became easy targets for air defense systems.

Atomic scientists turned out to be much more enthusiastic. Plans were put forward to place several super-bombs with a capacity of 200–500 megatons off the coast of the United States, the explosion of which would cause a giant tsunami that would literally wash away America.

Academician Andrei Sakharov, future human rights activist and laureate Nobel Prize peace, put forward another plan. “The carrier could be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. I fantasized that it was possible to develop a direct-flow water-steam nuclear power plant for such a torpedo. jet engine. The target of an attack from a distance of several hundred kilometers should be enemy ports. A war at sea is lost if the ports are destroyed, the sailors assure us of this. The body of such a torpedo can be very durable; it will not be afraid of mines and barrage nets. Of course, the destruction of ports - both by a surface explosion of a torpedo with a 100-megaton charge that “jumped out” of the water, and by an underwater explosion - is inevitably associated with very large casualties,” the scientist wrote in his memoirs.

Sakharov told Vice Admiral Pyotr Fomin about his idea. An experienced sailor, who headed the “atomic department” under the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, was horrified by the scientist’s plan, calling the project “cannibalistic.” According to Sakharov, he was ashamed and never returned to this idea.

Scientists and military personnel received generous awards for the successful testing of the Tsar Bomba, but the very idea of super-powerful thermonuclear charges began to become a thing of the past.

Nuclear weapons designers focused on things less spectacular, but much more effective.

And the explosion of the “Tsar Bomba” to this day remains the most powerful of those ever produced by humanity.

Tsar Bomba in numbers:

Weight: 27 tons
Length: 8 meters
Diameter: 2 meters
Power: 55 megatons in TNT equivalent
Nuclear mushroom height: 67 km
Mushroom base diameter: 40 km
Fireball diameter: 4.6 km
Distance at which the explosion caused skin burns: 100 km
Explosion visibility distance: 1 000 km
The amount of TNT needed to equal the power of the Tsar Bomba: a giant TNT cube with a side 312 meters (height of the Eiffel Tower)

sources

http://www.aif.ru/society/history/1371856

http://www.aif.ru/dontknows/infographics/kak_deystvuet_vodorodnaya_bomba_i_kakovy_posledstviya_vzryva_infografika

http://llloll.ru/tsar-bomb

And a little more about the non-peaceful ATOM: for example, and here. And there was also such a thing that there were also The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -

At the beginning of the “atomic age,” the United States and the Soviet Union entered into a race not only in the number of atomic bombs, but also in their power.

The USSR, which acquired atomic weapons later than its competitor, sought to level the situation by creating more advanced and more powerful devices.

The development of a thermonuclear device codenamed “Ivan” was started in the mid-1950s by a group of physicists led by Academician Kurchatov. The team involved in this project included Andrey Sakharov,Victor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Trunov And Yuri Smirnov.

During research, scientists also tried to find the limits of the maximum power of a thermonuclear explosive device.

Design research lasted for several years, and the final stage of development of “product 602” occurred in 1961 and took 112 days.

The AN602 bomb had a three-stage design: the nuclear charge of the first stage (calculated contribution to the explosion power was 1.5 megatons) triggered a thermonuclear reaction in the second stage (contribution to the explosion power was 50 megatons), and it, in turn, initiated the so-called nuclear “ Jekyll-Hyde reaction" (nuclear fission in uranium-238 blocks under the influence of fast neutrons generated as a result of the thermonuclear fusion reaction) in the third stage (another 50 megatons of power), so that the total calculated power of AN602 was 101.5 megatons.

"Product 602"

As a result, it was decided not to use the “Jekyll-Hyde reaction” in the third stage of the bomb and to replace the uranium components with their lead equivalent. This reduced the estimated total power of the explosion by almost half (to 51.5 megatons).

It turned out that it would not be possible to place a charge in the bomb bay under any circumstances, so the Tu-95V had to carry the AN602 to the target on a special external sling.

At the beginning of 1961, however, the situation worsened again, and the project was revived.

Time for “Mother Kuzma”

The final weight of the bomb including the parachute system was 26.5 tons. The product had several names at once - “Big Ivan”, “Tsar Bomba” and “Kuzka’s Mother”. The latter stuck to the bomb after the speech of the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in front of the Americans, in which he promised to show them “Kuzka’s mother.”

The test site was determined to be the Sukhoi Nos test site on Novaya Zemlya. Preparations for the explosion were completed in late October 1961.

The Tu-95B carrier aircraft was based at the airfield in Vaenga. Here, in a special room, final preparations for testing were carried out.

On the morning of October 30, 1961, the crew pilot Andrei Durnovtsev received an order to fly to the test site area and drop a bomb.

Taking off from the airfield in Vaenga, the Tu-95B reached its design point two hours later. The bomb was dropped from a parachute system from a height of 10,500 meters, after which the pilots immediately began to move the car away from the dangerous area.

At 11:33 Moscow time, an explosion was carried out at an altitude of 4 km above the target.

There was Paris - and there is no Paris

The power of the explosion significantly exceeded the calculated one (51.5 megatons) and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons in TNT equivalent.

Despite the heavy clouds, witnesses saw the explosion even at a distance of thousands of kilometers and could describe it.

Radioactive contamination from the explosion turned out to be minimal, as the developers had planned - more than 97% of the explosion power was provided by the thermonuclear fusion reaction, which practically did not create radioactive contamination.

This allowed scientists to begin studying the test results on the experimental field within two hours after the explosion.

Sakharov’s “cannibalistic” project

The explosion of the Tsar Bomba really made an impression on the whole world. It turned out to be four times more powerful than the most powerful American bomb.

There was a theoretical possibility of creating even more powerful charges, but it was decided to abandon the implementation of such projects.

Strategic bombers were also unable to fly to the United States with such “luggage.” In addition, they became easy targets for air defense systems.

Atomic scientists turned out to be much more enthusiastic. Plans were put forward to place several super-bombs with a capacity of 200-500 megatons off the coast of the United States, the explosion of which was supposed to cause a giant tsunami that would wash away America in the literal sense of the word.

Academician Andrei Sakharov, future human rights activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, put forward a different plan. “The carrier could be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. I fantasized that it was possible to develop a ramjet water-steam nuclear jet engine for such a torpedo. The target of an attack from a distance of several hundred kilometers should be enemy ports. A war at sea is lost if the ports are destroyed, the sailors assure us of this. The body of such a torpedo can be very durable; it will not be afraid of mines and barrage nets. Of course, the destruction of ports - both by a surface explosion of a torpedo with a 100-megaton charge that “jumped out” of the water, and by an underwater explosion - is inevitably associated with very large casualties,” the scientist wrote in his memoirs.

Sakharov spoke about his idea Vice Admiral Pyotr Fomin. An experienced sailor, who headed the “atomic department” under the Commander-in-Chief of the USSR Navy, was horrified by the scientist’s plan, calling the project “cannibalistic.” According to Sakharov, he was ashamed and never returned to this idea.

Scientists and military personnel received generous awards for the successful testing of the Tsar Bomba, but the very idea of super-powerful thermonuclear charges began to become a thing of the past.

Nuclear weapons designers focused on things less spectacular, but much more effective.

And the explosion of the “Tsar Bomba” to this day remains the most powerful of those ever produced by humanity.

55 years ago, on October 30, 1961, the Soviet Union tested at the Novaya Zemlya test site ( Arhangelsk region) the world's most powerful thermonuclear device - an experimental aircraft hydrogen bomb with a capacity of about 58 megatons of TNT ("product 602"; unofficial names: "Tsar Bomba", "Kuzka's Mother"). The thermonuclear charge was dropped from a converted Tu-95 strategic bomber and detonated at an altitude of 3.7 thousand meters above the ground.

Nuclear and thermonuclear

Nuclear (atomic) weapons are based on an uncontrolled chain reaction of fission of heavy atomic nuclei.

To carry out the fission chain reaction, either uranium-235 or plutonium-239 (less commonly, uranium-233) is used. Thermonuclear weapons (hydrogen bombs) involve the use of energy from an uncontrolled nuclear fusion reaction, that is, the transformation of light elements into heavier ones (for example, two atoms of “heavy hydrogen”, deuterium, into one helium atom). Thermonuclear weapons have a greater possible explosion power compared to conventional nuclear bombs.

Development of thermonuclear weapons in the USSR

In the USSR, the development of thermonuclear weapons began in the late 1940s. Andrey Sakharov, Yuli Khariton, Igor Tamm and other scientists at Design Bureau No. 11 (KB-11, known as Arzamas-16; now - Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics, RFNC-VNIIEF; city of Sarov, Nizhny Novgorod region) . In 1949, the first thermonuclear weapon project was developed. The first Soviet hydrogen bomb, RDS-6s, with a yield of 400 kilotons, was tested on August 12, 1953 at the Semipalatinsk test site (Kazakh SSR, now Kazakhstan). Unlike the United States, which tested the first thermonuclear explosive device, Ivy Mike, on November 1, 1952, the RDS-6s was a full-fledged bomb capable of being delivered by bomber. Ivy Mike weighed 73.8 tons and was more like a small factory in size, but the power of its explosion was a record 10.4 megatons at that time.

"Tsar Torpedo"

In the early 1950s, when it became clear that the thermonuclear charge was the most promising in terms of explosion energy power, a discussion began in the USSR about the method of its delivery. Missile weapons was imperfect at that time; The USSR Air Force did not have bombers capable of delivering heavy charges.

Therefore, on September 12, 1952, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Joseph Stalin signed the decree “On the design and construction of object 627” - a nuclear submarine power plant. It was initially assumed that it would carry a torpedo with a T-15 thermonuclear charge with a power of up to 100 megatons, the main target of which would be enemy naval bases and port cities. The main developer of the torpedo was Andrei Sakharov.

Subsequently, in his book “Memoirs,” the scientist wrote that Rear Admiral Pyotr Fomin, who was responsible for Project 627 from the navy, was shocked by the “cannibalistic character” of the T-15. According to Sakharov, Fomin told him “that military sailors are used to fighting an armed enemy in open battle” and that for him “the very thought of such a thing is disgusting.” mass murder"Subsequently, this conversation influenced Sakharov's decision to engage in human rights activities. The T-15 was never put into service due to unsuccessful tests in the mid-1950s, and the Project 627 submarine received conventional, non-nuclear torpedoes.

Heavy duty charge projects

The decision to create an aircraft super-powerful thermonuclear charge was made by the government of the USSR in November 1955. Initially, the development of the bomb was carried out by the Scientific Research Institute No. 1011 (NII-1011; known as Chelyabinsk-70; now the Russian Federal Nuclear Center - the All-Russian Research Institute of Technical Physics named after. Academician E.I. Zababakhin, RFNC-VNIITF; city of Snezhinsk, Chelyabinsk region).

Since the end of 1955, under the leadership of the chief designer of the institute, Kirill Shchelkin, work has been carried out on the “product 202” (estimated capacity - approximately 30 megatons). However, in 1958, the country's top leadership closed work in this area.

Two years later, on July 10, 1961, at a meeting with the developers and creators of nuclear weapons, the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev announced the decision of the country's leadership to begin developing and testing a 100-megaton hydrogen bomb. The work was entrusted to KB-11 employees. Under the leadership of Andrei Sakharov, a group of theoretical physicists developed “product 602” (AN-602). A body already manufactured at NII-1011 was used for it.

Characteristics of the Tsar Bomba

The bomb was a streamlined ballistic body with a tail unit.

The dimensions of “product 602” were the same as those of “product 202”. Length - 8 m, diameter - 2.1 m, weight - 26.5 tons.

The estimated charge power was 100 megatons of TNT. But after experts assessed the impact of such an explosion on the environment, it was decided to test a bomb with a reduced charge.

To transport the aerial bomb, the Tu-95 heavy strategic bomber was converted and received the index "B". Due to the impossibility of placing it in the bomb bay of the vehicle, a special device was developed on a suspension, which ensured that the bomb was lifted to the fuselage and secured to three synchronously controlled locks.

The safety of the crew of the carrier aircraft was ensured by a specially designed system of several parachutes near the bomb: exhaust, brake and main with an area of 1.6 thousand square meters. m. They were thrown out of the rear part of the hull one after another, slowing down the fall of the bomb (to a speed of approximately 20-25 m/s). During this time, the Tu-95V managed to fly away from the explosion site to a safe distance.

The leadership of the USSR did not hide its intention to test a powerful thermonuclear device. Nikita Khrushchev announced the upcoming test on October 17, 1961 at the opening of the 20th Congress of the CPSU: I want to say that our tests of new nuclear weapons are going very successfully. We will complete these tests soon. Apparently at the end of October. Finally, we will probably detonate a hydrogen bomb with a yield of 50 million tons of TNT. We said that we have a bomb of 100 million tons of TNT. And that's true. But we will not detonate such a bomb."

The UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on October 27, 1961, in which it called on the USSR to refrain from testing a super-powerful bomb.

Trial

The test of the experimental “product 602” took place on October 30, 1961 at the Novaya Zemlya test site. A Tu-95B with a crew of nine (lead pilot - Andrei Durnovtsev, lead navigator - Ivan Kleshch) took off from the Olenya military airfield on the Kola Peninsula. An aerial bomb was dropped from a height of 10.5 km onto the site of the Northern Island of the archipelago, in the area of the Matochkin Shar Strait. The explosion occurred at an altitude of 3.7 km from the ground and 4.2 km above sea level, for 188 seconds. after the bomb was separated from the bomber.

The flash lasted 65-70 seconds. The “nuclear mushroom” rose to a height of 67 km, the diameter of the hot dome reached 20 km. The cloud retained its shape for a long time and was visible at a distance of several hundred kilometers. Despite the continuous cloud cover, the light flash was observed at a distance of more than 1 thousand km. The shock wave circled the globe three times, due to electromagnetic radiation for 40-50 minutes. Radio communication was interrupted for many hundreds of kilometers from the test site. Nuclear pollution in the area of the epicenter turned out to be small (1 milliroentgen per hour), so research personnel were able to work there without danger to health 2 hours after the explosion.

According to experts, the power of the superbomb was about 58 megatons of TNT. This is approximately three thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped by the United States on Hiroshima in 1945 (13 kilotons).

The test was filmed both from the ground and from the Tu-95V, which at the time of the explosion managed to move more than 45 km away, as well as from an Il-14 aircraft (at the time of the explosion it was at a distance of 55 km). At the latter, the tests were observed by Marshal of the Soviet Union Kirill Moskalenko and Minister of Medium Engineering of the USSR Efim Slavsky.

World reaction to the Soviet superbomb

The demonstration by the Soviet Union of the possibility of creating thermonuclear charges of unlimited power pursued the goal of establishing parity in nuclear testing, primarily with the United States.

After lengthy negotiations, on August 5, 1963 in Moscow, representatives of the USA, USSR and Great Britain signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in outer space, underwater and on the surface of the Earth. From the moment it came into force, the USSR produced only underground nuclear tests. The last explosion was carried out on October 24, 1990 on Novaya Zemlya, after which the Soviet Union announced a unilateral moratorium on nuclear weapons testing. Currently, Russia also adheres to this moratorium.

Creator Awards

In 1962, for the successful testing of the most powerful thermonuclear bomb, crew members of the carrier aircraft Andrei Durnovtsev and Ivan Kleshch were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Eight KB-11 employees were awarded the title of Hero Socialist Labor(of which Andrei Sakharov received it for the third time), 40 employees became laureates of the Lenin Prize.

"Tsar Bomba" in museums

Full-size models of the Tsar Bomb (without control systems and warheads) are stored in the museums of the RFNC-VNIIEF in Sarov (the first domestic museum of nuclear weapons; opened in 1992) and the RFNC-VNIITF in Snezhinsk.

In September 2015, the Sarov bomb was exhibited at the Moscow exhibition “70 years of the nuclear industry. Chain reaction of success” in the Central Manege.

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