Mobilizing the Atom

I.V. Kurchatov provided scientific supervision of the entire atomic project and personally participated in operations on creating uranium-graphite reactors, beginning with the first atomic reactor in Eurasia — F-1, launched on December 25, 1946, in the Laboratory #2. In the official report to the country’s leaders, Kurchatov wrote, “As a result of heavy and strenuous work performed by the team from July 1943 to December 1946, it became possible, on December 25, 1946, at 1800 hours, to observe, for the first time, the chain selfdeveloping reaction in an implemented supercritical uranium- graphite boiler with practically complete and apparently most rational utilization of all uranium and graphite blocks prepared for this occasion.” An extremely important milestone in the scientist’s biography was engineering and testing the first Soviet atomic bomb that set the start for the development of the country’s nuclear shield. A dangerous weapon, as strange as it sounds, was necessary for keeping peace. Due to the extreme secrecy and urgency of the project, Kurchatov was placed under constant surveillance by the national security organs, Beriya, and personally Stalin. Many years later, academician Alexandrov, recalling those years, said, “Stalin’s word could have fully decided the project’s fate. One gesture by Beriya was sufficient to make anyone of us become history. But Kurchatov was the top of the pyramid. We were very lucky that he combined competence, responsibility, and power.”

The successful test of the new weapon took place early morning on August 29, 1949, at a specially built for this purpose nuclear range in the Semipalatinsk region. The bomb builders have fulfilled their duties. The USA’s monopoly on owning nuclear weapons has ended. Lavrentiy Beriya, as witnesses say, kissed Kurchatov and said, “What a blessing! We could have faced a disaster.” Everyone understood what he meant. The West was shocked: the Soviet Union got nuclear weapons! All of its creators were generously rewarded with various titles and prizes. In addition, they could travel for free anywhere inside the country.

Almost four years later, before the sunrise on August 12, 1953, a thermonuclear explosion shattered the skies above the nuclear range. The first in the world hydrogen bomb was successfully tested. The nuclear weapon was built, but Kurchatov was convinced that nuclear power must serve mankind, not kill it.

“Lively” Interest

Back in 1949, Kurchatov started working on the nuclear power station project. Along with S.M. Feinberg, he was offered the idea of the reactor core construction for this station. N.A. Dollezhal was the project’s chief engineer. On July 27, 1954, the first in the world nuclear power station was launched.

But Kurchatov already set new tasks — to create power a station based on a controlled thermonuclear reaction. However, he did not have time to implement this plan. Kurchatov supervised the construction of a rectilinear thermonuclear installation Orga for researching plasma confinement and its properties. During Kurchatov’s life, the first tokamak units were built at the IAE under L.A. Artsimovich’s supervision, and their operational principles were used as basis for creating the international experimental thermonuclear reactor ITER.

At the same time, Kurchatov started building the first in the USSR nuclear-powered submarine Leninskiy Komsomol (1958) and the first in the world nuclear icebreaker Lenin (1959). This resulted in the appearance of a new field — atomic submarine and surface shipbuilding, a new science with new technologies.

Igor Kurchatov was concerned not only about atomic science issues that were close to him, but seemingly distant topics, such as biology and genetics. He was very worried about the situation in biological science that developed in the late 1940’s — early 1950’s. Along with Alexander Nikolaevich Nesmeyanov, the USSR Academy of Science president, he addressed the government with a presentation on the necessity to develop some of its fields, organized a special biological seminar that involved outstanding scientists. Problems of the reaction of a living cell to nuclear radiation especially interested Kurchatov, who created, at the Institute of Atomic Energy, a special scientific sector for genetics and microorganism selection that later became the basis for the radiobiological department. Scientists of all kinds of specialties worked in this sector: biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, who launched operations in biopolymer physics and molecular genetics. Later, this department got separated from the Institute of Atomic Energy and was transformed into the Institute of Molecular Genetics.