Dmitry Kornev, editor of the Militaryrussia portal, talks about how and where countries around the world conducted nuclear tests
For several decades, nuclear—armed countries — the United States, the USSR, China, and others - conducted nuclear tests, detonating atomic and thermonuclear munitions of various types and capacities. When and what tests were conducted, at which test sites, and which of them were significant and important for the creation of nuclear weapons?
The world's first atomic weapons test was conducted by the United States of America on July 16, 1945. The world's first plutonium atomic bomb was detonated on a tower at a landfill in a deserted area of New Mexico. The explosion power was 21 kilotons. Thus began the atomic age of mankind.
This was followed by the first two combat uses of atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Atomic bombs of the "Kid" cannon type with a capacity of 13 kt and the "Fat Man" implosive type with a capacity of 21 kt were detonated. The cannon-type bomb contained Uranium-235, the two parts of which were "fired" at each other in the gun barrel. Implosive type bombs used plutonium and a shell made of ordinary explosives compressing it (implosion effect). The implosion principle turned out to be somewhat simpler, and most of the first atomic bombs were designed exactly according to this principle. Further, in the 1940s and early 1950s, the United States moved the tests to the Pacific Islands, away from its own territory. It was there that in 1954, on Bikini Atoll, during Operation Castel Bravo, the United States detonated its first thermonuclear bomb with a capacity of 15 megatons. And in the early 1950s, they began operating a nuclear test site in Nevada, where testing continued until it was discontinued in 1992. In total, the United States has completed 1,054 atomic tests.
For the Soviet Union, the issue of possessing the secret of the atomic bomb was of strategic importance. The United States' monopoly on nuclear weapons was unacceptable, and the Soviet Union's atomic bomb program was a top priority. Lavrentiy Beria personally supervised the program. The scientific leadership was carried out by Igor Kurchatov, and the development of the first atomic munitions was led by Yuli Khariton. And despite the fact that the country was devastated by the great war, Soviet scientists accomplished a real feat — by 1949 they had created their own Soviet atomic bomb.
The question arose: where to conduct the tests? There was already an understanding of the destructive power of atomic weapons and it was necessary to choose a territory far from major cities. The Semipalatinsk nuclear test site in Kazakhstan became the first nuclear test site of the USSR. On August 28, 1949, the first Soviet atomic device, the RDS—1 atomic bomb with a capacity of 22 kt, was detonated at the experimental field near Semipalatinsk on the tower. The bomb had an implosive design and was in many ways similar to the American "Fat Man" bomb, which Soviet intelligence received data on back in 1945. Later, Soviet scientists went their own way and more than once overtook the Americans who had started earlier, but it was impossible to make a mistake with the first bomb, and the intelligence data was used.
Following the first RDS-1 bomb, more advanced RDS-2 and RDS-3 were tested at the Semipalatinsk test site in 1951. In 1953, the USSR took the lead in the atomic race, with the detonation of the first Soviet thermonuclear charge developed by a team of physicists led by Andrei Sakharov, the RDS—6s, and immediately in the format of an aircraft bomb. In the United States, a thermonuclear charge was detonated a few months earlier, but there it was an experimental device the size of a two-story house. The second success of 1953 was the test of a more compact RDS-4 bomb, which was noticeably smaller and could be used by front-line aircraft, not just heavy bombers.
By the mid-1950s, it became clear that atomic munitions would be needed not only by rocket scientists and aviators, but also by the Soviet Navy. And for their tests, it was decided to use the deserted islands of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Far North. In 1955, the first test of a compact charge for the 3.5 kt RDS-9 torpedo took place there. Later, tests of the most powerful thermonuclear charges were transferred to Novaya Zemlya, as it became clear that their tests at the test site in Kazakhstan would be dangerous for the population.
The most powerful thermonuclear munition in the history of mankind, the AN602 bomb, which received the nickname "Tsar Bomba", was also detonated at the Novaya Zemlya test site. It was assumed that the capacity of the ammunition would be 100 Mt (100 million tons of TNT). The bomb was dropped from a specially converted Tu-95-202 aircraft. The thermonuclear bomb test was carried out on October 30, 1961. It occurred at an altitude of 10.5 thousand meters, the explosion occurred at an altitude of 4 km in the area of the Matochkin Shar Strait on Novaya Zemlya. The bomb was detonated at 50% power, and the equivalent was 52.5 Mt. It was a great victory that put an end to the nuclear warhead power race. The scientific director of the project, A.D. Sakharov, received the third star of the Hero of Socialist Labor of the USSR for the successful test.
The Tsar Bomba test was a truly impressive event of the 20th century. A huge fireball with a diameter of about 10 km was visible for hundreds of kilometers, and the mushroom cloud rose to a height of 64-67 km and spread over a radius of up to 95 km. The shock wave from the explosion rounded the Earth three times, causing seismic vibrations around the world. At a distance of up to 55 km from the epicenter of the explosion, all buildings were severely damaged — windows and doors were blown out, roofs collapsed, and some buildings collapsed completely. The surface of Novaya Zemlya, where the tests were conducted, has changed significantly: the hills have smoothed out, the relief has become flat.
A total of 715 nuclear tests were carried out in the USSR in 1990.
Great Britain participated in the nuclear race initially on the side of the United States, but later decided to become the owner of national nuclear weapons. In total, the UK conducted 45 nuclear tests from 1952 to 1991. The main test site was originally in the desert in Australia, but later the devices were tested on atolls in the Pacific Ocean and in Nevada in the USA.
France has become the fourth nuclear power and has carried out 210 atomic explosions in the entire test history. The first tests were conducted in the Algerian desert in 1960. Later, atolls in French Polynesia in the Pacific Ocean served as landfills. In 1970, it was at Mururoa Atoll that tests of a French thermonuclear charge with a capacity of about 1 Mt were completed. The last test was conducted in 1996.
In 1996, the last nuclear test was conducted by China, which became the fifth nuclear power on our planet in 1965. Cooperation with the Soviet Union in the 1950s allowed Chinese scientists to create their own bomb as quickly as possible after the break with the USSR in the early 1960s. China conducted atomic explosions in the Lobnor Desert in Inner Mongolia. A total of 45 nuclear tests were carried out.
In September 1996, the 50th Session of the UN General Assembly adopted the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The signatory States committed themselves not to conduct atomic weapon test explosions or any other nuclear explosions for civilian or military purposes anywhere.
The author is a military expert, editor of the Militaryrussia portal
The editorial board's position may not coincide with the author's opinion.
