The myth of sugar as the father of the hydrogen bomb. The creator of the hydrogen bomb in the USSR was Lavrentiev, not Sakharov

On August 12, 1953, at 7:30 am, the first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site, which had the service name "Product RDS‑6c". It was the fourth Soviet test nuclear weapons.

The beginning of the first work on the thermonuclear program in the USSR dates back to 1945. Then information was received about the research being conducted in the United States on the thermonuclear problem. They were initiated by the American physicist Edward Teller in 1942. Teller's concept of thermonuclear weapons was taken as the basis, which received the name "pipe" in the circles of Soviet nuclear scientists - a cylindrical container with liquid deuterium, which was supposed to be heated by the explosion of an initiating device such as a conventional atomic bomb. Only in 1950, the Americans found that the "pipe" was unpromising, and they continued to develop other designs. But by this time, Soviet physicists had already independently developed another concept of thermonuclear weapons, which soon - in 1953 - led to success.

Andrei Sakharov came up with an alternative scheme for the hydrogen bomb. The bomb was based on the idea of ​​"puff" and the use of lithium-6 deuteride. Developed in KB-11 (today it is the city of Sarov, former Arzamas-16, Nizhny Novgorod region), the RDS-6s thermonuclear charge was a spherical system of layers of uranium and thermonuclear fuel surrounded by a chemical explosive.

To increase the energy release of the charge, tritium was used in its design. The main task in creating such a weapon was to use the energy released during the explosion of an atomic bomb to heat and set fire to heavy hydrogen - deuterium, to carry out thermonuclear reactions with the release of energy that can support themselves. To increase the proportion of "burnt" deuterium, Sakharov proposed to surround the deuterium with a shell of ordinary natural uranium, which was supposed to slow down the expansion and, most importantly, significantly increase the density of deuterium. The phenomenon of ionization compression of thermonuclear fuel, which became the basis of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb, is still called "saccharization".

According to the results of work on the first hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov received the title of Hero of Socialist Labor and laureate of the Stalin Prize.

"Product RDS-6s" was made in the form of a transportable bomb weighing 7 tons, which was placed in the bomb hatch of the Tu-16 bomber. For comparison, the bomb created by the Americans weighed 54 tons and was the size of a three-story house.

To assess the destructive effects of the new bomb, a city was built at the Semipalatinsk test site from industrial and administrative buildings. In total, there were 190 different structures on the field. In this test, for the first time, vacuum intakes of radiochemical samples were used, which automatically opened under the action of a shock wave. In total, 500 different measuring, recording and filming devices installed in underground casemates and solid ground structures were prepared for testing the RDS-6s. Aviation and technical support of tests - measurement of the pressure of the shock wave on the aircraft in the air at the time of the explosion of the product, air sampling from the radioactive cloud, aerial photography of the area was carried out by a special flight unit. The bomb was detonated remotely, by giving a signal from the remote control, which was located in the bunker.

It was decided to make an explosion on a steel tower 40 meters high, the charge was located at a height of 30 meters. The radioactive soil from previous tests was removed to a safe distance, special facilities were rebuilt in their own places on old foundations, a bunker was built 5 meters from the tower to install equipment developed at the Institute of Chemical Physics of the USSR Academy of Sciences, which registers thermonuclear processes.

Military equipment of all types of troops was installed on the field. During the tests, all experimental structures within a radius of up to four kilometers were destroyed. The explosion of a hydrogen bomb could completely destroy a city 8 kilometers across. The environmental consequences of the explosion were horrendous: the first explosion accounted for 82% of strontium-90 and 75% of caesium-137.

The power of the bomb reached 400 kilotons, 20 times more than the first atomic bombs in the USA and the USSR.

The work on the creation of the hydrogen bomb was the world's first intellectual "battle of wits" on a truly global scale. The creation of the hydrogen bomb initiated the emergence of completely new scientific areas - the physics of high-temperature plasma, the physics of ultrahigh energy densities, and the physics of anomalous pressures. For the first time in the history of mankind, mathematical modeling was used on a large scale.

Work on the "RDS-6s product" created a scientific and technical reserve, which was then used in the development of an incomparably more advanced hydrogen bomb of a fundamentally new type - a hydrogen bomb of a two-stage design.

The Sakharov-designed hydrogen bomb not only became a serious counterargument in the political confrontation between the USA and the USSR, but also caused the rapid development of Soviet cosmonautics in those years. It was after successful nuclear tests that OKB Korolev received an important government task to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile to deliver the created charge to the target. Subsequently, the rocket, called the "seven", launched the first artificial satellite of the Earth into space, and it was on it that the first cosmonaut of the planet, Yuri Gagarin, launched.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

7 countries with nuclear weapons form a nuclear club. Each of these states spent millions to create their own atomic bomb. Development has been going on for years. But without the gifted physicists who were assigned to conduct research in this area, nothing would have happened. About these people in today's Diletant selection. media.

Robert Oppenheimer

The parents of the man under whose leadership the world's first atomic bomb was created had nothing to do with science. Oppenheimer's father was a textile trader, and his mother was an artist. Robert graduated early from Harvard, took a course in thermodynamics and became interested in experimental physics.


After several years of work in Europe, Oppenheimer moved to California, where he lectured for two decades. When the Germans discovered the fission of uranium in the late 1930s, the scientist thought about the problem of nuclear weapons. Since 1939, he was actively involved in the creation of the atomic bomb as part of the Manhattan Project and directed the laboratory at Los Alamos.

In the same place, on July 16, 1945, Oppenheimer's "brainchild" was first tested. "I have become death, the destroyer of worlds," said the physicist after the test.

A few months later, atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Oppenheimer has since insisted on the use of atomic energy exclusively for peaceful purposes. Having become a defendant in a criminal case because of his unreliability, the scientist was removed from secret developments. He died in 1967 from cancer of the larynx.

Igor Kurchatov

The USSR acquired its own atomic bomb four years later than the Americans. It was not without the help of scouts, but the merits of the scientists working in Moscow should not be underestimated. Atomic research was led by Igor Kurchatov. His childhood and youth were spent in the Crimea, where he first trained as a locksmith. Then he graduated from the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of the Tauride University, continued to study in Petrograd. There he entered the laboratory of the famous Abram Ioffe.

Kurchatov took over the Soviet nuclear project when he was only 40 years old. Years of painstaking work involving leading experts have brought long-awaited results. The first nuclear weapon in our country called RDS-1 was tested at the test site in Semipalatinsk on August 29, 1949.

The experience accumulated by Kurchatov and his team allowed the Soviet Union to subsequently launch the world's first industrial nuclear power plant, as well as atomic reactor for a submarine and an icebreaker, which no one had been able to do before.

Andrey Sakharov

The hydrogen bomb appeared first in the United States. But the American sample was the size of a three-story house and weighed more than 50 tons. Meanwhile, the RDS-6s product, created by Andrei Sakharov, weighed only 7 tons and could fit on a bomber.

During the war, Sakharov, while in evacuation, graduated with honors from Moscow State University. He worked as an engineer-inventor at a military plant, then entered the FIAN graduate school. Under the leadership of Igor Tamm, he worked in a research group for the development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov came up with the basic principle of the Soviet hydrogen bomb - puff.

Tests of the first Soviet hydrogen bomb took place in 1953

The first Soviet hydrogen bomb was tested near Semipalatinsk in 1953. To assess the destructive capabilities, a city was built on the site from industrial and administrative buildings.

Since the late 1950s, Sakharov devoted much time to human rights activities. He condemned the arms race, criticized the communist government, spoke out for the abolition of the death penalty and against forced psychiatric treatment dissidents. He opposed the entry of Soviet troops into Afghanistan. Andrei Sakharov was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and in 1980 he was exiled to Gorky for his beliefs, where he repeatedly went on hunger strikes and from where he was able to return to Moscow only in 1986.

Bertrand Goldschmidt

The ideologist of the French nuclear program was Charles de Gaulle, and the creator of the first bomb was Bertrand Goldschmidt. Before the start of the war, the future specialist studied chemistry and physics, joined Marie Curie. The German occupation and the attitude of the Vichy government towards the Jews forced Goldschmidt to stop his studies and emigrate to the United States, where he collaborated first with American and then with Canadian colleagues.


In 1945, Goldschmidt became one of the founders of the French Atomic Energy Commission. The first test of the bomb created under his leadership took place only 15 years later - in the south-west of Algeria.

Qian Sanqiang

The PRC joined the club of nuclear powers only in October 1964. Then the Chinese tested their own atomic bomb with a capacity of more than 20 kilotons. Mao Zedong decided to develop this industry after his first trip to Soviet Union. In 1949, Stalin showed the possibilities of nuclear weapons to the great helmsman.

Qian Sanqiang was in charge of the Chinese nuclear project. A graduate of the Physics Department of Tsinghua University, he went to study in France at public expense. He worked at the Radium Institute of the University of Paris. Qian talked a lot with foreign scientists and did some pretty serious research, but he missed his homeland and returned to China, taking a few grams of radium as a gift from Irene Curie.

At the end of the 30s of the last century, the regularities of fission and decay were already discovered in Europe, and the hydrogen bomb turned from science fiction into reality. The history of the development of nuclear energy is interesting and still represents an exciting competition between the scientific potential of the countries: Nazi Germany, the USSR and the USA. The most powerful bomb that any state dreamed of owning was not only a weapon, but also a powerful political tool. The country that had it in its arsenal actually became omnipotent and could dictate its own rules.

The hydrogen bomb has its own history of creation, which is based on physical laws, namely the thermonuclear process. Initially, it was incorrectly called atomic, and illiteracy was to blame. In the scientist Bethe, who later became a Nobel Prize winner, worked on an artificial source of energy - the fission of uranium. This time was the peak of the scientific activity of many physicists, and among them there was such an opinion that scientific secrets should not exist at all, since initially the laws of science are international.

Theoretically, the hydrogen bomb had been invented, but now, with the help of designers, it had to acquire technical forms. It only remained to pack it in a certain shell and test it for power. There are two scientists whose names will forever be associated with the creation of this powerful weapon: in the USA it is Edward Teller, and in the USSR it is Andrey Sakharov.

In the United States, a physicist began to study the thermonuclear problem as early as 1942. By order of Harry Truman, then the President of the United States, the country's best scientists worked on this problem, they created a fundamentally new weapon of destruction. Moreover, the government's order was for a bomb with a capacity of at least a million tons of TNT. The hydrogen bomb was created by Teller and showed humanity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki its limitless, but destructive abilities.

A bomb was dropped on Hiroshima that weighed 4.5 tons and contained 100 kg of uranium. This explosion corresponded to almost 12,500 tons of TNT. The Japanese city of Nagasaki was destroyed by a plutonium bomb of the same mass, but equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT.

The future Soviet academician A. Sakharov in 1948, based on his research, presented the design of a hydrogen bomb under the name RDS-6. His research went along two branches: the first was called "puff" (RDS-6s), and its feature was an atomic charge, which was surrounded by layers of heavy and light elements. The second branch is the "pipe" or (RDS-6t), in which the plutonium bomb was in liquid deuterium. Subsequently, a very important discovery was made, which proved that the direction of the "pipe" is a dead end.

The principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb is as follows: first, a charge explodes inside the HB shell, which is the initiator of a thermonuclear reaction, as a result, a neutron flash occurs. The process is accompanied by the release high temperature, which is needed for further Neutrons start bombarding the lithium deuteride insert, and it, in turn, under the direct action of neutrons, is split into two elements: tritium and helium. The used atomic fuse forms the components necessary for the synthesis to proceed in the already activated bomb. Here is such a difficult principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb. After this preliminary action, a thermonuclear reaction begins directly in a mixture of deuterium and tritium. At this time, the temperature in the bomb increases more and more, and more and more hydrogen is involved in the fusion. If you follow the time of these reactions, then the speed of their action can be characterized as instantaneous.

Subsequently, scientists began to use not the fusion of nuclei, but their fission. The fission of one ton of uranium creates energy equivalent to 18 Mt. This bomb has tremendous power. The most powerful bomb created by mankind belonged to the USSR. She even got into the Guinness Book of Records. Its blast wave was equal to 57 (approximately) megatons of TNT substance. It was blown up in 1961 in the area of ​​the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

“The other day in the Soviet Union, for test purposes, an explosion of one of the types of a hydrogen bomb was carried out. The test showed that the power of the hydrogen bomb is many times greater than the power of atomic bombs, ”such a message appeared on August 20, 1953 in Pravda.

It was the end of summer, the Soviet people were busy with their daily lives - only a few months had passed since the death of Joseph Stalin, the country was entering a new post-Stalin era. However, the military confrontation between the former allies - the USSR and the USA - did not stop, but flared up with renewed vigor. The world was waiting new war, perhaps more fearsome than the previous ones, and the new formidable weapon was supposed to - so, at least, its creators hoped - to save the world.

The new weapon is the hydrogen bomb, which was worked on by outstanding Soviet physicists. It was named RDS-6. The country has mastered military technologies that until recently seemed unthinkable.

Success in the creation of the hydrogen bomb followed the success in the creation of the atomic bomb, which was tested in the USSR in 1949. But it was impossible to stop - a year later, the US President signed a memorandum on the creation of more powerful and advanced weapons.

The fact that the former allies are working on a thermonuclear program was learned in the USSR from various sources: hints of this appeared both in the open press and were confirmed by intelligence data. True, when one of the Soviet physicists asked the Danish physicist Niels Bohr about the "superbomb", he seemed to not immediately understand what was at stake, and suggested that the creation of a bomb from the "new substance" seemed "unreal" to him.

At the same time, the USSR thought differently - at the end of 1945, after the war, a team of scientists led by the outstanding physicist Yakov Zeldovich wrote the first proposals on thermonuclear topics. This topic was also of interest to the young physicist Andrey, who in 1948 completed his first work on the study of thermonuclear fusion.

In the same year, in his research, Sakharov came up with the first revolutionary ideas, which would later become the basis for the creation of the hydrogen bomb.

It was about the famous Sakharov puff, where cheap uranium 238 was used as one of the main materials for the bomb. The main source of energy release in the puff was the process of fission of U-238 nuclei by thermonuclear neutrons, the scientists wrote.

Sakharov's proposals were reported to the chief political curator of the Soviet atomic project, Lavrenty Beria. He approved the idea, as the scientists very clearly explained to him the principle of the puff. In 1950, Sakharov began working in the team of physicist Igor Tamm on the creation of the first Soviet "superbomb".

Work proceeded at an accelerated pace, as evidenced by the constant reports of scientists to their formidable curator Beria. In November 1952, the United States tested its own hydrogen bomb - its power was 1,000 times greater than the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. However, despite this, the American bomb was useless as a military weapon - it was not suitable for transportation, as it had an enormous weight.

At the same time, the American tests worried Stalin, who showed an active interest in working on the RDS-6 - ironically, the first bomb tests were to take place in March 1953, this was the last month for the Soviet leader.

“For all people on earth, this was the year of the death of Stalin and the important events that followed it, leading to big changes in our country and around the world. For us at the facility, this was also the year of completion of preparations for the first thermonuclear test and the test itself, ”Sakharov himself wrote in his memoirs.

In June 1953, Beria, whose power only grew stronger after Stalin's death, signed a decree on the RDS-6 test program.

And shortly before them, Pravda published a statement by the USSR government, which in modern language can be quite called “trolling”: “The government considers it necessary to report to the Supreme Council that the United States is not a monopoly in the production of the hydrogen bomb either.”

The bomb tests took place at the Semipalatinsk test site - it took place at 7 hours 30 minutes - a powerful explosion of deafening power was heard for many kilometers. “I tore off my glasses and, although I was blinded by the change of darkness into light, I managed to see an expanding huge cloud, under which crimson dust spread. Then the cloud, which turned gray, began to quickly separate from the ground and rise up, swirling and sparkling with orange glimpses. Gradually, it formed, as it were, a “mushroom hat”. It was connected to the ground by a “mushroom stem”, incredibly thick compared to what we are used to seeing in photographs of ordinary atomic explosions,” academician Sakharov describes this terrible and grandiose moment in his memoirs.

Many years later, Sakharov would become one of the symbols of the dissident movement in the USSR and go into exile in Gorky for many years.

However, in criticizing the actions of the Politburo and discussing the problems of the Soviet system, he will always believe that he did the right thing when he became one of the main fathers of the hydrogen bomb:

“Today, thermonuclear weapons have never been used against people in war. My most passionate dream (deeper than anything else) is that this never happens, that thermonuclear weapons deter war but are never used.”

| 10/23/2014 at 01:08

Who actually created the hydrogen bomb instead of Sakharov.

Oleg Lavrentiev, creator of the hydrogen bomb

Oleg Lavrentiev was born in 1926 in Pskov and was probably a child prodigy. In any case, having read the book "Introduction to Nuclear Physics" in the 7th grade, he immediately caught fire with "the blue dream of working in the field of nuclear energy." But the war began. Oleg volunteered for the front. He met the victory in the Baltic states, but further studies again had to be postponed - the soldier had to continue military service in South Sakhalin, just liberated from the Japanese, in the small town of Poronaysk.

In the unit there was a library with technical literature and university textbooks, and Oleg, on his sergeant's allowance, subscribed to the journal "Advances in Physical Sciences".

The idea of ​​a hydrogen bomb and controlled thermonuclear fusion first came to him in 1948, when the command of the unit, which distinguished a capable sergeant, instructed him to prepare a lecture on the atomic problem for the personnel.

Having a few free days for preparation, I rethought all the accumulated material and found a solution to the issues that I had been struggling with for more than one year, - says Oleg Aleksandrovich. - In 1949, in one year, I completed the 8th, 9th and 10th grades of the evening school for working youth and received a matriculation certificate. In January 1950, the American president, speaking before Congress, called on US scientists to complete work on the hydrogen bomb as soon as possible. And I knew how to make a bomb.

Having access only to a school physics textbook, he alone, with the help of only his brains, did what huge teams of highly paid high-browed scientists struggled with, with unlimited means and opportunities on both sides of the ocean.

Having no contact with the scientific world, the soldier, in full agreement with the norms of life at that time, wrote a letter to Stalin. "I know the secret of the hydrogen bomb!" . And soon the command of the unit received an order from Moscow to create working conditions for Sergeant Lavrentiev. He was given a guarded room at the headquarters of the unit, where he wrote his first articles. In July 1950, he sent them by secret mail to the department of heavy engineering of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks.

Lavrentiev described the principle of operation of a hydrogen bomb, where solid lithium deuteride was used as a fuel. This choice made it possible to make a compact charge - quite "on the shoulder" of the aircraft. Note that the first American hydrogen bomb "Mike", tested two years later, in 1952, contained liquid deuterium as a fuel, was as high as a house and weighed 82 tons.

Main question was how to isolate the ionized gas heated to hundreds of millions of degrees, that is, the plasma, from the cold walls of the reactor. No material can withstand such heat. The sergeant proposed a revolutionary solution at that time - a force field could act as a shell for high-temperature plasma. The first option is electric.

He did not know that his message was very quickly sent for review to the then Candidate of Sciences, and later Academician and three times Hero of Socialist Labor A. Sakharov, who already in August commented on the idea of ​​controlled thermonuclear fusion: “... I believe that the author puts a very an important and not hopeless problem... I consider it necessary to discuss in detail the draft of Comrade. Lavrentiev. Regardless of the results of the discussion, it is necessary to note the creative initiative of the author right now.”

On March 5, 1953, Stalin dies, on June 26, Beria is arrested and soon shot, and on August 12, 1953, a thermonuclear charge using lithium deuteride is successfully tested in the USSR. Participants in the creation of new weapons receive state awards, titles and prizes, but Lavrentyev, for a reason completely incomprehensible to him, loses a lot overnight.

At the university, not only did they stop giving me an increased scholarship, but they also “turned out” the tuition fee for last year, actually leaving without a livelihood, - says Oleg Aleksandrovich. - I made my way to an appointment with the new dean and, in complete confusion, I heard: “Your benefactor has died. What do you want?"

At the same time, in LIPAN (the only place in the country where controlled thermonuclear fusion was then practiced), my admission was withdrawn, and I lost my permanent pass to the laboratory, where, according to an earlier agreement, I had to undergo undergraduate practice, and subsequently work. If the scholarship was later restored, then I never received admission to the institute.
In other words, they were simply removed from the secret fiefdom. Pushed back, fenced off from him with secrecy. Naive Russian scientist! He could not even imagine that this could be so.

In the spring of 1956, a young specialist arrived in Kharkov with a report on the theory of electromagnetic traps, which he wanted to show to the director of the institute, K. Sinelnikov. Oleg did not know that even before his arrival in Kharkov, Kirill Dmitrievich had already been called by one of the LIPANites, warning that a “scandalist” and “author of confused ideas” were coming to see him. They also called the head of the theoretical department of the institute, Alexander Akhiezer, recommending that Lavrentiev’s work be “hacked to death”. But Kharkiv residents were in no hurry with their assessments. The influence of the powerful Moscow-Arzamas scientific clique could not spread over one and a half thousand kilometers. However, they took an active part - they called, spread rumors, discredited the scientist. How to protect your feeder!
Application for opening
Oleg Alexandrovich found out by chance that he was the first to propose to hold the plasma by the field, having stumbled in 1968 (! 15 years later) in one of the books on the memoirs of I. Tamm (Head Sakharov). His last name was not, only an indistinct phrase about "one military man from the Far East",

The cat smells, (Tamm) whose meat she ate! Tamm and Sakharov understood perfectly well what was happening. What Lavrentiev came up with is the key that opens access to the implementation of the hydrogen bomb in practice. Everything else, the whole theory, has long been known to absolutely everyone, since it was described even in ordinary textbooks. And not only the "brilliant" Sakharov could bring the idea to a material embodiment, but also any techie who has unlimited access to material state resources.

Sakharov became famous for the fact that, under the influence of his beloved wife and her puppeteers, he began to actively destroy the Empire that had nurtured him with his "human rights" activities. the great "humanist" Sakharov at one time suggested to the US president in ~ 1970 (who was then, Nixon, sort of?) to launch a preventive nuclear strike on the USSR because he ... interferes with emigration from the "damned scoop". A. Sakharov, having waited for Gorbachev's "pegestgoyka", treacherously called from high tribunes to break the USSR into 30-40 "small, but civilized" states. It was then that human rights activists created the myth of the "father of the hydrogen bomb."

It's one thing when a well-known human rights activist and dissident is just an unsuccessful scientist who can only "develop creatively." And it is a completely different matter when the "father of the hydrogen bomb" becomes the "father of Russian democracy".
And the human rights activists, at the suggestion of overseas masters of psychological warfare, began to artificially inflate Sakharov's scientific merits, like a frog through a straw.