Tsar bomb damage radius on the map. Kuzka's mother: the story of the most powerful “Tsar Bomba” in the world

Exactly 51 years ago, Nikita Khrushchev fulfilled his promise and showed the United States and the whole world “Kuzka’s Mother” - October 30, 1961 at 11.35 Moscow time at the nuclear test site of the archipelago New Earth The most powerful explosive device in the history of mankind was detonated. Its name is this thermonuclear aerial bomb received from Khrushchev’s famous promise to show America “Kuzma’s mother”, and she is also called “Tsar Bomba”, as well as some numbers like AN602.

The power of the original version of the bomb, conceived by scientists, was 101.5 megatons. This is 10 thousand times more than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. If such a bomb were detonated over, say, New York, then New York would disappear from the face of the Earth. Its center would simply evaporate (not collapse, but evaporate), and the rest would turn into small rubble in the middle of a giant fire. What would remain of the metropolis would be a melted, smooth surface twenty kilometers in diameter, surrounded by small debris and ash. And all cities located within a radius of 700 kilometers from New York would be destroyed. Philadelphia, for example, is completely, but, say, Boston is a significant part of it.

But when the military began to estimate the scale of damage from testing an explosion of such power, even at a test site that occupied almost the entire Novaya Zemlya archipelago with an area of ​​82,600 sq. km, they became afraid of the consequences. And the completely destroyed training ground, and the inevitably destroyed plane along with the pilots, were not the worst of them. Scientists reluctantly agreed, and in the end it was decided to reduce the estimated total power of the explosion by almost half, to 51.5 megatons.
The bomb was dropped by a Tu-95 bomber from an altitude of 10.5 km. The power of the explosion exceeded the calculated one and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons. The nuclear mushroom of the explosion rose to a height of 67 km, the fireball of the explosion had a radius of 4.6 km. Shock wave circled three times globe, and the resulting ionization of the atmosphere caused interference with radio communications within a radius of hundreds of kilometers. Witnesses felt the shock wave thousands of kilometers away, with radiation potentially causing third-degree burns up to 100 kilometers away. On the ground below the epicenter of the explosion, the temperature was so high that the stones turned to ash. The main part of the cloud was carried aside North Pole, while for a bomb of such power, the radioactivity was quite small - 97% of the power was provided by the thermonuclear fusion reaction, which practically does not create radioactive contamination.
The main purpose of detonating this bomb was to demonstrate the USSR's possession of unlimited weapons of mass destruction. The whole world should have shuddered, and it shuddered - I don’t know about you, but this description still makes me a little uncomfortable.

And finally, from the “Memoirs” of one of the fathers of “Kuzka’s Mother”, laureate Nobel Prize World of Academician Sakharov: “After testing the “big” product, I was worried that there was no good carrier for it (bombers don’t count, they are easy to shoot down) - that is, in a military sense, we were working in vain. I decided that such a carrier could be a large torpedo launched from a submarine. [...] 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, inevitably involves very large casualties.
One of the first people with whom I discussed this project was Rear Admiral F. Fomin* (formerly a combat commander, it seems, Hero of the Soviet Union). He was shocked by the “cannibalistic” nature of the project, and noted in a conversation with me that sailors were accustomed to fighting an armed enemy in open battle, and that the very thought of such mass murder was disgusting to him. I was ashamed and never discussed my project with anyone again."
* So in the text of Sakharov’s Memoirs. In fact, who was in charge then nuclear project from the Navy, Hero of the Soviet Union, Rear Admiral Fomin, name was Pyotr Fomich. And it seems to me that if scientists had given free rein, like Academician Sakharov was at that time, they would have blown up the Earth long ago. Simply because it is interesting from a scientific point of view. But this did not happen largely thanks to the military, such as Admiral Fomin. However, don’t you think it’s a paradox?

Tsar Bomba is the name 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 Soviet Union entered the race not only in numbers atomic bombs, but also in terms of 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 compression nuclear fuel using conventional explosive charges - but they were unsuccessful because they could not obtain the required temperatures and pressures. The USA and the USSR were developing thermo nuclear weapons starting in the 40s, almost simultaneously testing the first thermonuclear devices in the early 50s. In 1952, on the Eniwetak Atoll, the United States exploded a charge with a yield of 10.4 megatons (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.

Designs of the first thermo nuclear devices were poorly adapted 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 on the Bikini Atoll, and in 1955, a new Soviet one was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site. thermonuclear bomb. 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 first stage nuclear charge (calculated contribution to the explosion power was 1.5 megatons) launched a thermo nuclear 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 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.

However, the original option was rejected, since in this form it 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 yield 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-95B.

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 turned out to have 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 calculation point. 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 in 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 large number 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 was used, solid, a compound of deuterium and an isotope of lithium.

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 blood 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. Thanks to this hydrogen bomb can be made of almost any power, and it will be much cheaper than usual nuclear bomb 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 explosion power was provided by virtually no radioactive contamination thermonuclear fusion reaction.

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 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 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
Yield: 55 megatons of TNT
Mushroom height: 67 km
Mushroom base diameter: 40 km
Diameter fireball: 4.6 km
Distance at which the explosion caused skin burns: 100 km
Explosion visibility distance: 1000 km
The amount of TNT required to equal the power of the Tsar Bomb: a giant TNT cube with a side of 312 meters (the height of the Eiffel Tower).

From Hiroshima to Kazakhstan

In 1943, the United States began implementing the Manhattan Project to create the first weapon of mass destruction in history - the atomic bomb. On July 16, 1945, the Americans conducted their first test at the Alamogordo test site in New Mexico, and on August 6 and 9 they dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Around this time, the USSR began developing its own nuclear weapons.

The first tests of a Soviet nuclear bomb took place in August 1949 in the Semipalatinsk region of the Kazakh SSR. The explosion power of the RDS-1 bomb was 22 kilotons of TNT. In the 1950s, both superpowers began developing a thermonuclear device several times more powerful than an atomic bomb. From 1952 to 1954, first the USA and then the USSR tested such devices. The energy release during the explosion of the American Castle Bravo was 15 thousand kilotons of TNT equivalent. The first Soviet hydrogen bomb RDS-6s was several thousand times inferior in performance to its competitor from the United States.

Spy Powers

By the end of the 1950s, the superpowers were trying to agree on mutual disarmament. However, neither the negotiations between the leaders of the USSR and the USA, nor the discussion of this issue at the XIV and XV sessions General Assembly The UN (1959-1960) did not bring results.

The aggravation of the confrontation between the USA and the USSR was predetermined by a number of events. Firstly, both powers were haunted by the issue related to the status of West Berlin. The USSR was not happy that European countries and the United States stationed its troops in this sector. Nikita Khrushchev demanded the demilitarization of West Berlin. The countries planned to discuss this issue at the Paris Conference in May 1960, but the events of May 1 prevented this. On that day, an American reconnaissance aircraft, piloted by Francis Powers, once again violated USSR airspace. The pilot’s task was to photograph military enterprises, including those related to the nuclear industry. Powers' plane was shot down over Sverdlovsk by a surface-to-air missile.

Subsequent events in the summer of 1961 - the construction of the Berlin Wall and the American military intervention in Cuba to overthrow the socialist regime of Fidel Castro - led to the fact that on August 31, 1961, the Soviet government decided to resume nuclear weapons testing.

"We will have a bomb"

The development of thermonuclear weapons in the USSR has been carried out since 1954 under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov and a group of physicists: Andrei Sakharov, Viktor Adamsky, Yuri Babaev, Yuri Smirnov, Yuri Trutnev and others. By 1959, preparations for the test were completed, but Nikita Khrushchev ordered the launch to be postponed - he hoped to improve relations with the United States. As the events of 1959-1961 showed, Western countries and the American leadership did not want to meet each other halfway. The USSR decided to resume preparations for weapons testing. The power of the created AN602 bomb reached 100 megatons. In the West, due to its enormous size and power, it was nicknamed the Tsar Bomba. She was also known as Kuzka's mother - this name was associated with famous expression Nikita Khrushchev, who at a meeting with US Vice President Richard Nixon promised to show Kuzka’s mother to the West. The bomb did not have an official name. The creators of the thermonuclear device themselves designated it with the code word “Ivan” or simply “product B.”

They decided to conduct the tests at the test site of the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and the bomb itself was assembled at the secret security enterprise Arzamas-16. On July 10, 1961, one of the developers of the bomb, Andrei Sakharov, sent a note to Khrushchev in which he noted that the resumption of nuclear tests threatens to escalate the conflict and bury the idea of ​​a treaty on mutual renunciation of nuclear tests. Khrushchev did not agree with the academician and insisted on continuing preparations for the tests.

September 8, 1961 in an American newspaper The New The York Times published the first reports of the impending explosion. Nikita Khrushchev stated:

“Let those who dream of new aggression know that we will have a bomb equal in power to 100 million tons of trinitrotoluene, that we already have such a bomb and all we have to do is test an explosive device for it.”

• A copy of the “Tsar Bomba”, presented at the exhibition “70 years of the nuclear industry. Chain reaction of success"
• RIA Novosti

“We will not detonate such a bomb”

During September and the first half of October, final preparations for testing the bomb were made in Arzamas-16. At the XXII Congress of the CPSU, Nikita Khrushchev announced a reduction in the power of the bomb by half - to 50 megatons:

“...I would like to say that our tests of new nuclear weapons are also progressing very successfully. We will complete these tests soon. Apparently at the end of October. Finally, we will probably detonate a hydrogen bomb with a capacity 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, because if we detonate it even in the most remote places, then even then we can break out our windows.”

At the same time, preparations were underway for the carrier aircraft. Due to its size - about 8 meters in length and 2 meters in diameter - the bomb did not fit into the Tu-95. In order to still place it on the plane, the designers cut out part of the Tu-95 body and installed a special mount in it. Even so, the bomb was half sticking out of the plane. In the 20th of October, a thermonuclear device was delivered under conditions of strict secrecy from Arzamas-16 to the Olenya airbase on Kola Peninsula, where she was loaded onto a Tu-95.

“The bomb was unusually large”

On the morning of October 30, two planes took off from the air base towards Novaya Zemlya: a Tu-95, the carrier of the Tsar Bomb, and a Tu-16 laboratory plane, which carried documentary filmmakers. The bomb weighed more than 26 tons (its own weight with a parachute), which caused certain difficulties during its transportation. Victor Adamsky recalled:

“Inside the bomb, a worker was sitting up to his chest and soldering something, I had an involuntary comparison with a pilot in a fighter plane - the bomb was so unusually large. Its dimensions amazed the imagination of the designers.”

Two hours after takeoff, the bomb was dropped at an altitude of approximately 10 thousand meters within the Sukhoi Nos nuclear test site. At 11:33 Moscow time, when the parachute system dropped to an altitude of 4.2 thousand meters, the bomb was detonated. A blinding flash followed, and the stem of a nuclear mushroom rose up. The seismic wave from the explosion circled the globe three times. In 40 seconds, the mushroom grew to 30 km, and then grew to 67 km. The carrier aircraft was at that moment approximately 45 km from the drop site. The impact of the light pulse was felt 270 km from the explosion point. Residential buildings in nearby villages were destroyed. Radio communication was lost hundreds of kilometers from the test site. One of the bomb developers, Yuri Trutnev, recalled this:

“The last seconds passed before the explosion... And suddenly communication with the aircraft crew and ground testing services completely stopped. This was a sign that the bomb had gone off. But no one knew exactly what really happened. We had to go through a long 40 minutes of anxiety and anticipation.”

“The spectacle was fantastic”

Only after the planes returned safely to base was the information confirmed that the thermonuclear device had worked. One of the cameramen on board the Tu-16 recalled:

“It’s scary to fly, one might say, on top of a hydrogen bomb! Will it work? Although it is on fuses, but still... And there will be no molecule left! Unbridled power in her, and what! The flight time to the target is not very long, but it drags on... The bomb went and sank in a gray-white mess. Immediately the doors slammed shut. Pilots in afterburner move away from the drop site... Zero! Below the plane and somewhere in the distance, the clouds are illuminated by a powerful flash. This is illumination! Behind the hatch, a sea of ​​light simply spilled out, an ocean of light, and even layers of clouds were highlighted and revealed. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal... at least unearthly.”

The scientists involved in the development of the Tsar Bomb were well aware that it would not be used for military purposes. Testing a device of such power was nothing more than a political action. Julius Khariton, chief designer and scientific director of Arzamas-16, noted:

“Still, it was felt that this was more of a demonstration than the beginning of the use of such powerful nuclear devices. Undoubtedly, Khrushchev wanted to show: the Soviet Union is well versed in the design of nuclear weapons and is the owner of the most powerful charge in the world. It was more a political than a technical action."

The Tsar Bomba had a stunning effect on the leadership of many countries. It remains the most powerful explosive device in history. Japanese Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda sent a telegram to Nikita Khrushchev, where he told him of the indescribable horror and shock this event plunged him into. In the United States, the day after the explosion, an issue of The New York Times newspaper was published, which said that with such actions the Soviet Union wanted to plunge American society into horror and panic.

On August 5, 1963, the USSR, USA and Great Britain signed a treaty banning atmospheric nuclear weapons testing in Moscow. outer space and underwater.

Eduard Epstein

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 higher) 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 intimidate obvious and imaginary opponents because of 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 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 nuclear weapons testing. 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 bursting with raw smoked sausages, and every 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 nuclear charge of the first stage had a power of one and a half megatons and was designed to launch a thermonuclear 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 yield 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 with an area of ​​half football field. 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 bread casseroles, bread cards and other delights of the food crisis. The 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, 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 a technical device for the practical creation of 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, on the Eniwetak Atoll, the United States exploded a charge with a yield of 10.4 megatons (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 actual 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 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.

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 yield 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-95B.

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 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 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. 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.

The power of the explosion significantly exceeded the calculated one (51.5 megatons) and ranged from 57 to 58.6 megatons in 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 amount of energy - thanks to this, stars constantly release huge amounts of energy. 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 temperatures and pressures, as well as to separate 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 shell of the container 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. Thanks to this, a 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. 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.

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 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 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 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 -