29 August 1949 year
The first Soviet atomic bomb, the RDS-1, was tested at the Semipalatinsk test site.
The name originated from the veiled designation of the bomb in government regulations—"special rocket engine." Later, the acronym was expanded to mean "Stalin's rocket engine" or "Russia makes it itself."
The latter was partly a ploy—the rapid catch-up with the US in nuclear weapons production (according to American forecasts, this was not expected to happen until 1952) was achieved thanks to industrial espionage. Secret information was leaked to Soviet agents by specialists who feared a nuclear monopoly or sympathized with the USSR. Some of them came to a bad end—for example, in 1953, the US executed the Rosenberg spouses.
The RDS-1 was structurally similar to the American one. "To the Fat Man" (Fat Man) was the code name for the bomb dropped in 1945 on NagasakiIt was a plutonium-filled implosion bomb, pear-shaped, 3,7 m long, 1,5 m in diameter, weighing 4,6 tons and with a yield of 22 kilotons of TNT.
A plain 170 km from the city was allocated for the test site. SemipalatinskThe experimental field was a circle 20 km in diameter. It was divided into 14 sectors: fortifications, physical defense, civilian structures, various types of weapons, and a biological sector housing experimental animals.
The bomb was installed in the center of a 37,5-meter-tall lattice metal tower. After the explosion, a crater 3 meters in diameter and 1,5 meters deep, covered with a molten glass-like substance, formed where the tower once stood. The radiation level at the center was 0,5 Sv/s (5 μSv/h is considered safe).
Two houses built 800 meters away were completely destroyed. Cars parked 1 km away and then every 500 meters were destroyed—all were destroyed. A T-34 tank 500 meters from the center sustained light damage, while aircraft 1,5 kilometers away sustained significant damage. Of the 1538 experimental animals, 345 died as a result of the explosion.
The tests were classified. But the Americans recorded an explosion. The USSR's possession of nuclear weapons was officially announced. in 1950.
