Underground nuclear explosions: how they are arranged and why. Peaceful nuclear explosions

"Peaceful Atom" is not only nuclear power plants that provide electricity. In 1950–80 more than 150 "peaceful" industrial explosions were carried out: to create reservoirs and canals, stimulate sources of oil and gas, extinguish fires, and even turn rivers back. Why did the governments of the USA and the USSR subsequently abandon this idea?

Chagan is a lake in Kazakhstan created by the Chagan nuclear tests on January 15, 1965. Nuclear explosions were carried out for the national economy. In the future, it was planned to create in Kazakhstan with the help of nuclear explosions about 40 artificial reservoirs with a total volume of 120-140 million m³. In such deep reservoirs with a melted bottom and a small surface of evaporation, it was planned to accumulate spring water runoff.

But the idea looked quite reasonable: we take a nuclear bomb (or a lot of nuclear bombs) - and blow it up in order to, say, lay a canal, create an artificial reservoir, a dam, destroy an iceberg, extract more oil, get an underground storage .... It was believed that such use would save a lot of effort and time at relatively low cost. So there is nothing surprising in the fact that such explosions were actually carried out, and in very large quantities.

The perfectly round dot on the map is Lake Chagan, formed as a result of the first Soviet industrial underground nuclear explosion in 1965. It was not possible to make a reservoir - even 35 years later, the radiation level on the shore exceeded the natural background by 200 times.

USA

The Americans are thinking about the peaceful use nuclear weapons sometime in the 1950s. As usual, many mega-projects were proposed for what the power of the atom could be used for. One of them suggested the use of nuclear bombs to expand the Panama Canal, or create an alternative to it - the so-called. "atomic canal" that would pass through Nicaragua. Another, by Edward Teller, proposed the construction of an artificial harbor in Alaska, which would require the detonation of five hydrogen bombs.

For some unknown reason, the local population did not really like this idea and, as a result, the whole idea was safely buried.

There was also a project to create a canal that would fill the Qattara depression with the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. At one time, this idea was actively promoted by the Americans as an alternative to the Aswan Dam. In 1964, the good German engineer Friedrich Bassler joined the project and proposed using 213 1.5-megaton bombs to create a 80-kilometer canal.

Hydroelectric turbines would be installed in this canal. Since the area of the basin is 20,000 km2, it was believed that the water from it would evaporate faster than it would be filled, which would ensure the uninterrupted operation of the structure for many decades.

So it is not surprising that trials soon began to assess how realistic the use of this technology is. They went down in history under the name Operation Plowsher (or, if translated, Operation Plow - the name was clearly chosen with meaning). In 1962, a Sedan test was carried out at the Nevada test site, during which a 104 kiloton bomb was detonated at a depth of 194 meters. As a result of the explosion, 11 million tons of soil were ejected and a crater 100 meters deep and about 390 meters in diameter was formed, which is now on the US Register of Historic Places.

And everything would be fine, but the explosion was not at all as clean as expected: a cloud formed that spread radioactive fallout throughout the country. This was a big blow to the positions of those who proposed the use of nuclear bombs to create engineering structures.

Feel yourself in the epicenter - the cavity left after the explosion of a three-kiloton charge at a depth of 350 meters. The arrow points to the unfortunate suicide bomber.

Operation Plowsher also explored whether nuclear weapons could be used to boost oil and gas production. The idea is to break the formation with the help of a nuclear explosion and increase the flow of the produced fluid (gas, water, condensate, oil or a mixture of them) to the bottom of the well.

In total, three tests were carried out - the first two (1967 and 1973) showed that a nuclear explosion could indeed contribute to an increase in production. However, the resulting gas contained elevated level radiation. Despite all the assurances of companies that the use of such gas is not hazardous to health, and its radioactivity after purification will exceed the natural background by only 1%, it soon became clear that nuclear gas in the United States has absolutely no commercial prospects.

In 1973, the third and final test in this series was carried out, in which three nuclear charges were detonated at a depth of 2 kilometers. It ended in failure - firstly, the gas was still radioactive, and secondly, the formed cavities did not connect as planned, and it was not possible to stimulate gas production.

This explosion was the last in a series of peaceful ones in the United States. In total, 27 tests were carried out between 1962 and 1973, in which 33 nuclear devices were detonated. The conclusions were disappointing: despite all efforts, the explosions led to too much radioactive contamination of both the detonation site itself and the surrounding areas, which made the use of nuclear bombs for some engineering work unacceptable. In 1977 Operation Plowshare was finally closed.

USSR

As for the country of the Soviets, let them begin to carry out peaceful (or, as they were called, industrial) explosions later than in the United States, but unlike overseas comrades, this process was put on a very grand scale.

The tests were carried out in the framework of the so-called. Program number 7. In total, 124 industrial nuclear explosions were carried out in the USSR (however, some sources give even higher numbers). With the help of them, the USSR created underground storage facilities for storing gas condensate, funnels for reservoirs, tried to build a dam and work out the technology for turning rivers. Many explosions were undertaken as part of seismic exploration of the subsoil.

The first Soviet industrial explosion was the Chagan test conducted in Kazakhstan in 1965. His goal was to create an artificial reservoir for the needs of agriculture and irrigation of fields. Explosion of 170-kiloton hydrogen bomb led to the formation of crows with a diameter of 430 meters and a depth of 100 meters. After that, a channel was created that connected the channel of the Chagan River with this funnel. Thus, Lake Chagan, also known as the “atomic lake”, was born.

Bathing in the atomic lake man - Minister of Medium Machine Building Yefim Slavsky. Good PR, as they say now.

I don't think I need to say why not the best reservoir came out of the nuclear funnel. Even as of 2000, the level of radiation on the coast exceeded the natural background from 60 to 200 times, depending on the place of measurement.

A special Soviet know-how was the use of nuclear bombs to eliminate burning gas wells. In 1963, an accident occurred at the Urta-Bulak field in Uzbekistan, as a result of which a 70-meter flare flared up. Attempts to extinguish it by conventional means failed. It's no joke, 12 million cubic meters of gas burned there in a day.

In the end, to extinguish the torch, it was decided to use the last resort. An inclined adit was drilled to the well channel, in which a nuclear charge was laid at a depth of 1500 meters. 23 seconds after the detonation, the torch that had been burning for 1064 days finally went out.

But this successful case, in my opinion, is rather an exception. For example, an attempt in 1972 to put out a burning field in the Kharkov region ended in failure. It was extinguished later by traditional methods. In 1981, an attempt was made to extinguish the Kumzhinskoye field. However, instead of eliminating the emergency release, there was a multiplication of rock breaks and places of condensate discharges. After that, the field was mothballed, the release of gas from the bottom is still observed.

As part of the Sai-Utyos experiment in 1969-1970, three underground thermonuclear explosions were carried out in Kazakhstan with the aim of “forming failed funnels not connected with the explosion cavity” - i.e. to build reservoirs. However, even if in two cases out of three funnels were created, it is difficult to call the test results a success. The fracturing of the obtained rocks led to the fact that water did not linger in the funnels.

In 1971, a triple nuclear explosion was carried out in the Perm region (project "Taiga"), the purpose of which was to refine the technology and begin the creation of the Pechoro-Kama Canal. In total, it was planned to use 250 nuclear bombs for its construction. But according to the results of the first test, it turned out that it would not be possible to create a channel in this way, and therefore the project was soon quickly curtailed. In addition to solid residual radiation, three unused wells remained at the site of the explosions, giving rise to a bunch of legends about nuclear bombs forgotten there.

Ended in failure and an attempt to create a dam in Yakutia. It was planned to carry out eight nuclear explosions, which were supposed to swell the earth, but already the first test (1974) led to an emergency. The idea was abandoned, and the funnel was covered away from sin.

A number of explosions were aimed at creating underground storage facilities - but even with them everything was not too smooth. For example, in 1980-1984 in Astrakhan region 15 underground nuclear explosions were carried out (Vega project). At first everything was fine, but after a couple of years, the 13 vaults created in this way began to decrease in volume. A year later, only seven of them were in operation. Soon their use also ceased. The authors of the idea believed that the boundaries of the cavities remaining after the explosions should have been glazed, but, apparently, groundwater penetrated into them, which first dissolved the radioactive residues, and then began to bring them to the surface.

An attempt to create gas condensate storage facilities in Taimyr in the same way was also unsuccessful. Underground cavities turned out to be smaller than calculated and were never used.

In 1979, a 0.3 kiloton charge was detonated at the Yunkom mine in Donbass in order to relieve stress in the coal mass and thereby increase the safety of miners. Opinions of specialists on the question of whether the explosion led to at least some positive effect differ.

The last explosion under Program No. 7 in the USSR was carried out in 1988. The following year, 1989, a moratorium was introduced on all types of atomic tests. In general, of the entire Soviet peaceful nuclear program, the greatest return with the least risk to environment brought explosions used for seismic exploration and intensification of oil production. Attempts to create something with the help of nuclear bombs, to use it for engineering purposes, were not very successful from a practical point of view. I'm not talking about the numerous cases when, in the course of these very peaceful explosions, serious radioactive contamination of the area occurred.

This is of course trite, but in my opinion the reason for such failures is very simple: the nuclear bomb was created to destroy people, and not as a fine-tuning tool for creating and arranging the world for the better.

On the territory of the European part of the country, an underground nuclear explosion was carried out under the code name "Globus-1" 25-30 km from Kineshma and Zavolzhsk, Ivanovo Region. Among the locals, this place is called "drilling" or "black hole". The purpose of the explosion was seismic sounding of the earth's crust at great depths along the Vorkuta-Kineshma profile (in a straight line - about 1500 km) and the study of the bowels, which made it possible to identify oil reserves in the Vologda and Kostroma regions. It was the first in a series of similar underground explosions.

Preparations for it were carried out in strict secrecy, only the first secretary of the regional committee of the CPSU knew about the upcoming tests. For the explosion, a well was drilled to a depth of 610 m. A charge of 2.3 kilotons was laid at the bottom, which was concreted, but, as it turned out, not quite strong. A special cement plug up to hundreds of meters long in the well is made in order to avoid the release of radionuclides and harmful substances to the surface of the earth. With strict observance of the entire technological process, the consequences of an underground explosion are insignificant, infection occurs only underground.

An accident occurred near the village of Galkino immediately after the nuclear explosion. At the 18th minute after the explosion, a gas-water fountain arose one meter from the charging shaft with the removal of radioactive sand and water. For 10 days, radioactive emissions spread east along the Shacha River (about 10 km downstream it flows into the Volga). Water and soil were contaminated with isotopes of cesium-137 and strontium-90. The cause of the accident was poor-quality cementing of the charging well annulus. The negligence of specialists led to tragic consequences.

It is impossible to get to the Globus-1 training ground in autumn - the roads are washed out. The dead place is visited only by sanitary doctors and local residents. Employees of the regional center of the State Sanitary and Epidemiological Supervision have been working on this object since the first information about the explosion was received. In the course of regular expeditions, it was possible to establish one more place of release of radionuclides to the surface 56 m south of the well. In 1977, gamma radiation of 1.5 thousand micro-roentgens was recorded, in 1999 - already 3.5 thousand, and in 2000 - 8 thousand micro-roentgens. At a depth of 50 cm, the radiation intensity reaches 20-45 thousand, while the normal radiation background is only 14 microroentgens. Elements of caesium-137 and strontium with a half-life of 30 years, as well as plutonium with a half-life of 24,000 years, were found in water and soil. Soil activity for these elements exceeded the average norm for the region by 17,000 times. All this indicates that Globus-1 will be dangerous for 48 thousand years. Doctors for one trip there gain a dose 10 times more than the allowable annual dose.

The first two explosions, on the surface of the earth and below it at a depth of 5 m, took place during Operation Buster-Jangle on October 19 and 29, 1951. Then the damaging effect of such explosions was studied. The first "real" underground test was Plumbob Rainier - on September 19, 1957, a charge of 1.7 kt was blown up at a depth of 290 m. In September 1961 - April 1962, the first "underground" operation Nougat took place. In the USSR, the first underground test took place on October 11, 1961. From 1962, further testing took place exclusively underground.

Crater formation.

As a result of an underground explosion, various options for the formation of a crater are possible, depending on the depth of occurrence and the power of the charge. For example, with a high charge power, a classic funnel-shaped crater may appear.
Sedan test, USA 1962. Depth - 200 m, power - 104 kt. The explosion removed about 8 million tons of soil, forming a crater 410 m wide, 100 m deep.

Test in the USSR Chagan, 1965. Depth - 178 m, thickness - 140 kt. Crater with a diameter of 408, a depth of 100 meters. A lake later formed on the site of the crater.

Or a crater may appear from the sagging soil, if the depth of occurrence is large enough.
An explosion on the surface of the earth forms a very small crater, mainly due to the compaction of the earth below the epicenter. In this case, most of the energy is dissipated in the atmosphere, due to its reflection from the ground. Already at a shallow depth of explosion, a larger and deeper crater is formed. This is due to the reflection of part of the energy from the upper layers of the soil and the ejection of the crushed earth by hot gases up and away from the funnel.

The amount of soil ejected from the crater also depends on the depth of occurrence. With an increase in the mass of the earth thrown up, the horizontal component of the speed of its movement decreases, thus. most of the soil falls back into the crater. At a certain depth, called the optimal depth of occurrence (ODD), the best compromise between ejection and return of soil is reached - then the crater reaches its maximum depth. The depth of such occurrence depends on the type of soil and varies for a charge of 1 kt from 50 m for sedimentary rocks to 43 m for stony soil.

The development of an explosion at the OGZ proceeds as follows.

Initially, an initial cavity is formed and the shock wave propagates towards the surface and in all directions. As soon as it reaches the surface, the earth immediately begins to rise up and immediately begins to slow down under the influence of gravity. Since the surface of the earth is under atmospheric pressure, the pressure in the shock wave drops to almost zero and a rarefaction wave goes into the ground. Moving in the ground, the rarefaction wave creates tension in it until the soil strength threshold is exceeded, then its layers separate and fly up.

For the Sedan explosion, the shock wave reached the surface after 240 ms, by which time its velocity had decreased to 32 m/s, the cavity at that time expanded to a radius of 55 m. The rarefaction wave reached the cavity 450 ms after the explosion.
The release of pressure, together with the passage of a rarefaction wave, allows the hot gas in the explosion cavity to accelerate its expansion. After 1.3 s, the gas pressure stops the subsidence of the soil and leads to its acceleration to a speed of 40 m/s within 2 s. A few hundred milliseconds later, the dome of the earth is stretched to its limit and pulverized, allowing gases under high pressure to fill themselves. A few hundred milliseconds later, the gases exit the dome, dragging the crushed earth with them, forming a visible explosion. After a few seconds, the soil that has flown up begins to settle down, back into the funnel, the rest of the soil continues to rise high up. The largest crater is formed when crushing and gas expansion make equal contributions, or due to soil properties, gas expansion predominates.
An explosion at great depths may not cause the ejection of soil from the crater, the matter is limited only to raising the soil at the edges of the crater or the formation of a sagging crater.

The type and structure of the soil has a significant influence here. With sedimentary and sandy rocks, at certain depths, the surface of the earth remains generally unchanged. If the explosion occurs in rocks under a layer of sand, then the cavity formed after the explosion is filled, leaving a sagging crater on the surface. The opposite situation is also possible, when tightly compacted rocks collapse and increase in volume, forming a hill of stone chips on the ground.
A further increase in depth contributes to the absorption of the released energy and reduces the formation of a mine from crushed soil. During the explosion, a cavity is formed, heated to several thousand degrees. At this time, a small hill appears on the surface. Within 5-10 minutes, the temperature drops to a thousand degrees, the pressure inside the cavity decreases, and the cavity is covered with earth, while the hill can subside and be replaced by a sagging crater.

At great depths, the surface of the earth cannot contribute to the formation of a cavity, so it turns out to be round and symmetrical. After about 1 ms, the cavity inflates to 10 m, depressurizing to a million atmospheres. After this, the boundaries of the cavity and the front of the shock wave are separated (it moves forward at a speed of 5 km/s). The expansion continues until the pressure of the gases is equal to the pressure in the surrounding rocks (for a depth of 800 m, this is approximately 45 m). The temperature by that time drops to several thousand degrees and inside there is a significant layer of molten rocks, in which most of the hardly volatile radioactive isotopes remain.

At medium depths, the pressure developed by the upper layers is limited, which allows the shock wave to form a large number of crushed rocks, having a larger volume in relation to solid layers. Thus, the crushed rock fills the original cavity until this increase in volume equals the volume of the original cavity. If an explosion under such conditions is carried out at a shallow depth, an uplift is formed on the surface. Further deepening of the location of the charge leads to the appearance of a sagging crater. At a certain critical depth, the amount of earth that has increased in volume will correspond to the size of the cavity. Even deeper, all changes will remain within the earth. The pressure of the overlying rocks is growing and because of this, the size of the crushed stone shaft is reduced. Finally, deep underground, there remains only a spherical area filled with rock fragments.

Usually, the cavities formed inside the earth do not exist for a long time and rather quickly fall asleep with the upper layers of the soil. However, there are exceptions to this, like this one left after the Nougat Gnome test (3 kt, 380 m).

Bombs that penetrate the ground.
For the destruction of well-fortified underground objects (missile silos, bunkers), an explosion in the air is of little use. So, with a thickness of 20 kt and a height of 30 m, a crater is formed only 2 m deep. A similar explosion, but at a depth of ten meters, will create a crater forty meters deep. An underground explosion, even if produced at a shallow depth, transfers almost all of its energy into a shock wave in the ground.
It is clear that in order to penetrate the ground, the concrete body of the bomb must be long, narrow and very hard. The filling of the bomb must also have a fair amount of strength so as not to collapse from overloads upon impact. The gun uranium charge structure is very well adapted to these requirements, having a small transverse diameter and being resistant to strong impacts. This is the main application of the cannon design, used in the Mk-8 "Elsie" and Mk-11 penetrating bombs.
Currently, the US is armed with B61-11 thermonuclear penetrating bombs. Created on the basis of the B61-7 charge, placed in a durable steel case. The depth of their penetration into the ground is 6-7 meters.

We promised to tell - we are fulfilling, apologizing for the long pause. We thought for a long time how to do the right thing: go straight to the story about the underground nuclear explosion “Gnome” or start with a short preface about the very idea of underground nuclear explosions, where it came from and how it developed. We decided that not everything would be clear without a preface, but the volume of this preface turned out to be the size of a separate note. But the story is really interesting - "help yourself"!

First, let's say a few words about what kind of animal this very "PYaV" is - an underground nuclear explosion, who invented it and why it was needed. However, what is there: if we hear the words "nuclear explosion" - it means that we are talking about the military. Well, they love to “bang”, and this love is old and selfless. Since the time when gunpowder was invented - they are bang so bang, there's no saving. Of course, military affairs are not exactly the topic of our site, but uranium, which, as you know, is the head of everything, is what it is: both fuel and weapons, so it’s worth talking a little about military UNEs.

The military climbed underground with their beloved "strong loaves" not from a good life, but because of military reasons. The first nuclear explosion in the history of mankind took place on July 16, 1945: on this day, the Americans detonated a 21 kiloton plutonium bomb in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico, Operation Trinity - Trinity. Scientists of the Manhattan Project approached such an event very responsibly: the explosion was tracked by all means and instruments available at that time. Scientists watched the explosion, and the generals watched the scientists, and the military gentlemen recorded: these eggheads can record the fact of the explosion from very significant distances. Quite a bit of time passed, and the fixing equipment was already placed on reconnaissance aircraft. For example, the Americans learned about the explosion of our RDS-1 in August 1949 a day later, while they were able to obtain data on the type of bomb, its power and other characteristics.

Harry Truman, US President (1945-1953), Photo: http://archive.vod.umd.edu/

US President Truman "presented" information about our first test explosion to the whole world a couple of weeks later:

"The Soviets mastered the creation of nuclear weapons, what a shame."

The speed of voice acting discouraged Comrade Stalin, but the physicists from the Special Project explained that no spies ran around the laboratories and around the test site, that this information was obtained by scientific and technical methods. Accordingly, for our physicists and the military, this immediately became the start of a program for the rapid development of control and surveillance systems: if the Americans can record our nuclear tests, we must respond in a mirror way. Events then developed many times faster than now, and so much so that one cannot get rid of the assumption that people armed with arithmometers and slide rules thought dozens of times faster than the current owners of incredible gadgets. Already in 1951, it was possible to confidently record an above-ground nuclear explosion at the Semipalatinsk test site from a distance of 700 km - a year and a half and Soviet Union actually received the new kind"troops" - the Special Control Service. Organizationally, the SSK was formalized as a structural unit of the GRU by order of the Minister of Defense R. Ya. Malinovsky on May 13, 1958.

The US military had little doubt that the USSR would be able to record air and ground nuclear tests - and, therefore, receive a lot of information that would instantly cease to be secret. That is why, in fact, they crawled underground - the first UNE was produced by them on November 29, 1951. For those who believed then and believe now that only peace-loving elves with kind eyes live on the other side of the ocean, the information from Pentagon employees, of course, sounded much more beautiful. Well, like this, for example:

"PYaV are carried out only and exclusively for the purpose of preventing the spread of radiation, preventing radioactive contamination of the environment."

Members of the sect of elf-worshippers may continue to believe such texts, but realists are well aware: yes, the warriors didn’t care about any infections, they just had to observe the secrecy regime as much as possible, nothing more.

Yes, seismic exploration has developed by leaps and bounds, but it provides information only about the power of the explosion - of course, if everything is done carefully enough and the radioactive substances formed during the explosion remained underground. Why is it written "neatly enough"? So, excuse me, we are talking about the Americans, but we are aware of how they are remarkably and unmistakably developing various areas of their atomic project.

Well, to finish the "war story" - some statistics. Only two states, the USA and the USSR, produced nuclear explosives in mass quantities, much later India and Pakistan, England and China pulled themselves up with a few explosions, and now, spitting on all international treaties, only frantic North Koreans regularly do this. But “everyone else” didn’t do much weather, but the Americans blew up underground by 38.35 megatons of TNT, the Soviet Union - by 38.0 megatons. Power parity did not mean an equal number of explosions: there were 1.5 times less of ours. It is on these figures that we will stop reviewing purely military UNEs, those who are interested may well find other details on their own. About moratoriums, about the treaty that banned tests in space, in the air, on land and under water, about how the treaty came about that banned all its participants from any tests at all. A big, interesting topic - but not for Geoenergy.

Preparation, Photo: bbc.com

Actually, what is PYAV? They dig a mine with a diameter for a warhead, with a depth, as a rule, from 200 to 800 meters. A charge is lowered into the mine, a cork of loose materials (pebbles, sand, etc.) is organized on top of it, all kinds of measuring equipment are placed above the cork, somewhere aside, at a safe distance - a control point. They rushed, measured everything that was necessary, everything is simple and tasteful. It remains only to understand what is happening underground.

Test, Photo: bbc.com

The explosion leads to the evaporation of underground rock, as a result of which the cavity in which the nuclear charge was located is filled with superheated radioactive gas. Then, as the temperature drops, molten rock accumulates at the bottom of the cavity. A few more hours later, with a drop in temperature and pressure, the cavity collapses, and a crater appears on the surface. This is, if very briefly, without much detail. But the details are so "delicious" that it is worth opening them a little.

Consequences, Photo: bbc.com

Yes, one more thing. The Soviet era, in addition to all other victories, accomplishments and shortcomings, had one more characteristic feature. Let's call it conditionally "cloth language": emphatically dry, not even containing any signs of the emotional coloring of what is being described. Here you have - for nostalgia - a wonderful example.

“By the end of the energy release process, all the energy is concentrated in the gas. In a nuclear explosion, the gases usually include the detonation products of the reacted nuclear fuel and the evaporated parts of the charger. Most of these gases are vapors of various metals and other substances with high temperature condensation. The initial thermodynamic parameters of detonation products in a nuclear explosion have higher levels than in explosions of chemical explosives. The temperature reaches several million kelvins, the pressure reaches tens of thousands of GPa.

Now the same, but in normal language. During the explosion of a nuclear charge, which was pushed underground, not only uranium or plutonium, but also the entire shell inside which it was located, turns into radioactive gas. The temperature of the explosion - a few million degrees - makes it instantly evaporate a few more meters (depending on the power of the charge) of the rocks around the charge. For example, they drilled through granite - it will become gas, and in a matter of fractions of a second. And on the rock that was a little further away, all the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion are being beaten, and the shock and heat waves are repeatedly amplified by an additional volume of such gas. The rock around the charge does not prick, does not crumble into sand - it simply evaporates. Beautiful, is not it? This heat stroke is accompanied by all the other charms - gamma radiation, electromagnetic pulse, radiant energy ... Or in the same cloth language:

“... in a nuclear explosion, such peculiar effects take place as a radioactive consequence, ionization, chemical transformation of substances and minerals, evaporation and melting and heating of rocks, intensive disintegration of minerals and rocks, destruction or change of significant sections of rocks and massifs.”

“Intense disintegration of minerals and rocks” sounds especially charming, doesn’t it? The rock and minerals turned into a radioactive gas heated to millions of degrees, another part of the solid rocks melted and flowed in a stream - this is, damn it, “intense disintegration” for us. Okay, "disintegrated", and then what?

“Further on, the blast wave is represented by compression and seismic waves ... During a nuclear explosion, accumulation and formation of undesirable or dangerous concentrations of harmful substances that retain their toxicity for a long time both at the point of explosion, both regionally and globally, depending on the production technology explosion and from the technology of using its effects in various technological chains. This circumstance requires careful consideration of the explosive aftereffect in all areas of the use of nuclear explosive technologies.

Again, a translation from Russian into Russian: a variety of radioactive gases accumulate underground, which strive through rock cracks to seep to the surface, pass into groundwater - this is what is proposed to be “carefully taken into account”. How? How to prevent the risk of such spread? There are no answers, but the result of all these “cloth” reasoning” is this:

“with the help of single or a small number of nuclear explosions, large, sometimes very complex technological objects can be created: lifting tanks, enlarged wells, underground percolators, ore stores, excavations, embankments, etc. … The use of nuclear explosions for national economic purposes requires the development of appropriate technologies, which include the actual technological processes, hardware and machine systems, and organizational and management components.”

"National economic goals" sounds lovely, doesn't it? However, the most interesting thing is that the notion about UNEs for such purposes chronologically first appeared not in the USSR, but in the USA. Our site is ready to tell about the programs of Soviet UNEs for extinguishing fires, for improving the conditions for oil and gas production, for creating reservoirs, tunnels, dams, if there is interest, but not in this article. We were going to tell about the underground nuclear explosion "Gnome" and how it is connected with the storage of spent fuel from "military" reactors in the United States - so we will continue to move in this direction.

We'll have to remember who was a wonderful US citizen, the Hungarian genius of Jewish origin Edward Teller. Genius is not an exaggeration; Teller's contribution to the development of physics is truly enormous. Yes, it was he, in collaboration with Stanislav Ulam, an American of Polish origin, who developed and proposed the design of a thermonuclear bomb.

Theoretical physicist (Hungary / USA), widely known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb", Photo: mithattosun.com

But Teller did a lot for the development of nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, the theory of beta decay, statistical mechanics, scientists still use the results of his research, there are theories that bear his name. Well just wonderful person! Having received US citizenship in 1941, since 1943 he became a member of the Manhattan Project, but practically did not take part in the development of nuclear weapons - he was much more interested in thermonuclear weapons. Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his interest remained purely theoretical: even the economy of such a giant as the United States "did not pull" the development of two such projects at the same time. But he developed the theory to such an extent that after receiving funding for this direction, the Americans were able to create a thermonuclear bomb in just a few years. November 1, 1952 on the Atoll Enewetok (Marshall Islands) explosion rocked, codenamed "Ivy Mike" (Ivy Mike). Yes, the creation of Teller-Ulam could be called a bomb only with a big stretch - a 62-ton product was the size of a three-story house, but the power of the first thermonuclear explosion was amazing: 10.4 megatons! 10 million 400 thousand tons of TNT, 450 times more powerful than the explosion over Nagasaki.

The gigantic size of Teller's first brainchild was due to the fact that deuterium and tritium were used in this product in liquid form: roughly speaking, a giant refrigerator had to be built. But Teller, having proved the possibility of implementing a thermonuclear explosion in practice, proposed further improvement: use . No sooner said than done, because in the 40s and 50s the Yankees lived in the USA, not the Americans. And when testing the Bravo product, codenamed “Shrimp” (1954, Bikini Atoll. The older generation should still remember that Bikinis are not only fashionable beach shorts), a tiny bell sounded: Teller can be wrong, and his mistakes can give very dramatic results. According to his calculations, the "Shrimp" was supposed to give out 6 megatons, but in reality it turned out ... 15. It turned out that lithium-7 deuteride is also involved in a thermonuclear reaction, which Teller simply did not take into account. The result is the most powerful explosion in the history of the US thermonuclear program. A mistake - and the power turned out to be higher not by percentages, but at times.

Other details of Teller's biography are interesting, but they are not particularly relevant to the case. Sat Oppenheimer, supporting accusations of his disloyalty, achieved the miniaturization of thermonuclear bombs and warheads (according to reports, all thermonuclear warheads on American strategic missiles are designed according to the Teller-Ulam scheme), actively supported SDI, published information about the presence of Israel atomic bomb. A wonderful man, but there is simply nowhere to put stigma ... We are more interested in the fact that in the early 50s this gentleman had a new itch - to prove that there could be practical benefits from the atomic program. No, he didn’t even have any attempts to somehow participate in the development of a nuclear power plant - the wrong bird flew, the brain was imprisoned for the wrong thing.

Look again at the "cloth" text:

"The use of nuclear explosions for national economic purposes requires the development of appropriate technologies, including the actual technological processes, hardware and machine systems, and organizational and management components."

Here, word for word, it coincides with the American Operarion Plausher program developed under the leadership of Teller (we often called this project the “Ploughshare program” - just literal translation). For purely economic purposes, Teller and the team intended, with the help of UNEs, to make the inhabitants of California, Nevada and Arizona happy by creating a railway embankment in the Mojave Desert, the inhabitants of Alaska with a large sea harbor, the inhabitants of Panama with a duplicate of the Panama Canal, the citizens of Canada, Teller wanted to help extract oil ...

Pllusher officially launched in 1957, was curtailed in 1973 - by that time, the Americans had completely eaten the initiatives of their leading nuclear physicist to the very end. Where did the Soviet leadership only look, you ask? The KukryNixes drew some pictures, Khrushchev pounded the podium with his shoe - but it was more profitable to support the undertakings of a talented scientist with all his might. Let's go over the projects of the program - let you have a good mood too:

lay a backup channel of the Suez Canal through the territory of ... Israel;
lay a new channel for the Panama Canal: 77 km, width 300 m, depth 150 m using 302 UNEs with a total capacity of 167.5 megatons (!);
build deep-water protected sea harbors in Alaska near Cape Thompson;
to build a deep sea harbor in the northwest of Australia;
build a 160 km long shipping canal to an iron ore deposit in western Australia;
extract oil from bituminous sands in Athabasca (Canada) after their preliminary heating with the help of PYaV;
to build a hydropower complex in the Qattar depression (Northern Africa) due to the inflow of Mediterranean Sea waters through a canal formed with the help of 429 UNEs with a total capacity of 65.9 megatons (!);
crushing ore underground in Connecticut;
build a navigable river channel between the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers in Massachusetts;
build a system of canals and reservoirs in the state of Arizona.

Have you read? No, this is not Zadornov and not a report from the chamber of the house of the mourners, these are plans that the US Atomic Energy Commission seriously considered. The list is not complete - there are many more interesting ideas. Sublunar explosions on our natural satellite, mining of geothermal energy in different parts of the United States, crushing copper ore for its further underground leaching, and so on, so on, so on. A kind of Manilovism of imperial scope, based on the greatest source of energy conquered by man.

But, if someone thinks that Soviet physicists did not respond to these plans with a huge counter fountain of fantasy, we hasten to disappoint. And we were going to create lakes, and build dams, and provide Siberian rivers with a flow to the Central Asian deserts, and extract oil and gas ...

Some kind of total euphoria, interrupted only by rough reality: one PYaV after another did not give the planned results, clouds of radioactive gases burst to the surface over and over again. The Americans were the first to wake up, turning off the Pllusher already in 1973, ours planned and planned something until 1988. But our physicists just had enough plans for intellectual entertainment - to think of it so that only Americans could build a storage facility for radioactive waste from military programs 7 km from the epicenter of the UNE. We are talking about the first in the history of peaceful UNE "Gnome" and the very storage WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Pilot Waste Disposal Plant).

Armed with the firm intention of proving the absurdity of the saying "You can't bury talent in the ground," Teller began to dig. The first peaceful UNE was the Gnome explosion (uff, we got it) - Gnome on December 10, 1961. They wanted to take off back in 1958, but here the USSR and the USA had a moratorium on nuclear tests, interrupted due to the Caribbean crisis.

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Underground nuclear explosions are carried out for peaceful purposes for research, despite the fact that they are carried out by the military. This is required for scientific research, and world powers often choose specially prepared test sites outside of them for their tests. For all time has been committed. However, when was the most powerful underground nuclear explosion in history carried out?

How tests were carried out at Amchitka

The strongest underground explosion in history was carried out in the autumn of 1971 - on November 6th. It happened in Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. The test site was the uninhabited island of Amchitka. The power of the charge that was used then was 5 megatons. The purpose of the exercise was to study seismic effects that are carried out in nature without human participation.

Prior to the most powerful underground explosion, the island was used as a site for a number of preliminary seismic surveys of this kind. Amchitka itself, where such a famous event took place, is a large surface ridge. The width of the island in the largest part is 6 km. It has an elongated structure, and its length reaches 68 km. There is no forest strip in the very center of the massif, as it is a mountainous area. Only on the east coast can one find tundra-type vegetation. There are also small ponds and hills covered with mosses. It is for these reasons that scientists chose this area for the experiment.

The island itself was discovered in 1741 by Vitus Bering. He gave it a name in honor of St. Macarius. Traces of human presence in this area were observed at least 2.5 thousand years ago. At the time of opening, people also lived there. It was a tribe of Aleuts who moved from their native places in 1832. The island passed into the possession of the United States of America in 1867, when Alaska was sold.

The first, the most powerful in history, underground nuclear explosion in this area was carried out in 1965. Nuclear tests were planned here three times, the last of which was the most powerful, which took place in 1971. It was named "Kennikin". After that, the military stayed on the island for another two years and left the island in 1973, and only scientists worked on the territory.

How the world's most powerful underground nuclear explosion was carried out

The main purpose of the event was the desire to study the features of seismic waves, as well as the differences between those caused artificially and those that arose naturally. It was also necessary to get an idea of the consequences that causes a super-powerful nuclear explosion carried out underground. The result of the experiment was an earthquake, which can be estimated on the Richter scale at 6.8 points. The soil, located on the surface of the earth, rose to a height of up to 5 meters over almost the entire surface of the impact. A series of landslides occurred on the coastline, which did not lead to a fundamental change in its outline, but significantly changed the condition of the soil. Almost over the entire area of the island, which is more than 300 kilometers, there were shifts in earth layers.

But these are only consequences that concern the island itself. After all, major tragedies should not have happened here, since it is uninhabited. At the same time, a survey of wildlife in the surrounding areas showed that more than two thousand dead seals were found in the Bering Sea as a result of the explosion. Such a result was not predicted even by the most daring expectations of the Atomic Energy Commission, which was the preliminary calculations. This suggests that the effects of a 5-megaton bomb underground are more devastating than a 100-megaton bomb on the surface.

It is worth noting that before the start of the tests, activists held actions to ban explosions in Amchitka. It was they who became the founders of the now famous Greenpeace organization. During the protest against nuclear testing, one of the main ideas of the ban was the contamination of the environment with various radioactive products that remain after the experiment. There was also a fear that an explosion of such power would cause strong earthquakes, and those in turn would cause tidal waves. Thus, an ecological catastrophe could have formed along the entire Pacific coast. The activists decided to swim to the island during the tests in order to attract public attention and interfere with the plans of the military. The ship on which the people were was called Greenpeace, which served as the name of the world famous organization.

Greenpeace's contribution to the preservation of the environment

Despite the fact that all the actions of the activists were not successful in this case, they were able to achieve a ban on other nuclear tests on the island. Indeed, in the future, not a single explosion was carried out in this territory. During the tests, the vessel was located more than 1.5 thousand km from the venue. An attempt to stop such a large action became a sensation for many people who subsequently supported this movement. All the protests of environmentalists led to the fact that in the United States of America nuclear tests were banned on all the islands that are located in the Amchitka region. Today the island has been given over to a bird sanctuary.

Thus, the most powerful underground nuclear explosion became one of the reasons for the emergence of Greenpeace. were no longer held, as scientists assessed the dangers of such events. Therefore, even after more than 40 years, more powerful underground explosions have not been carried out in any country. If the volume of destruction is increased, then there is a possibility of causing major natural disasters that will affect the civilian population, not to mention the damage to nature and environmental pollution by nuclear products.