In 1961 the Soviet Union tested a nuclear bomb so powerful that it would be too big for use in military conditions. And this event was far-reaching implications of a different sort. Thus on the morning of 30 October 1961, a Soviet Tu-95 went up from the base of the Reindeer on the Kola Peninsula, in the far North of Russia.
This Tu-95 was specially improved version of the aircraft, entered the service a few years earlier; a large, widely ramified, four-engine monster that was to carry the nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union.
In the ten years of the Soviet nuclear research was a huge breakthrough. World war II put the US and the USSR in one camp, but the post-war period gave way to cold in the relationship, and then freezing. And the Soviet Union, which was faced with the fact of rivalry one of the largest superpowers the world had only one choice: to join the race, and fast.
29 August 1949 the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, known as “Joe-1” in the West – in the distant steppes of Kazakhstan, bringing him the results of the work of spies infiltrated the American program of the atomic bomb. Over the intervening years the test program quickly took off and began its course was blown about 80 devices; only in 1958, the Soviet Union tested nuclear bombs 36.
But nothing was compared to this test.
Tu-95 carried a huge bomb under the belly. She was too big to be fit inside the bomb Bay of the aircraft, which usually carried such munitions. The bombs were 8 metres long, with a diameter of 2.6 meters and weighing more than 27 tons. Physically, she was very similar in shape to “the Kid” and “Fat man” dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in fifteen years before. In the USSR it was called “gruel”, and “Tsar bomb”, and the last name of her well preserved.
The Tsar bomb was no ordinary nuclear bomb. It was the result of feverish attempts of scientists of the USSR to create the most powerful nuclear weapons and thereby to support the efforts of Nikita Khrushchev to make the world tremble with the power of Soviet technology. It was more than a metal monster, too big to fit even in the largest aircraft. It was a destroyer of cities, the ultimate weapon.
This “Tupolev”, painted in bright white color to reduce the effect of flash bomb reached its destination. New Earth, a sparsely populated archipelago in the Barents sea, North over the frozen edges of the USSR. The pilot of “Tupolev”, major Andrew durnovtsev, dostbil aircraft on a Soviet site on Mityushikha to a height of about 10 kilometers. Small advanced Tu-16 flying around, ready to shoot the coming explosion and make the air intakes from the blast zone for further analysis.
Below the two aircraft had chances to survive – but it was more like 50% — Tsar bomb was equipped with a giant parachute weighing about a ton. The bomb was slow to descend to a predetermined altitude 3940 meters and then explode. And then, two bombers are already in 50 kilometers from it. That should be enough to survive the blast.
The Tsar bomb detonated at 11:32 Moscow time. On a place of explosion formed a fireball with a width of almost 10 kilometers. The fireball rose above by its own shock wave. The flash was visible from a distance of 1000 miles from everywhere.
Mushroom cloud explosion rose to a height of 64 miles, and his hat was bigger until it went to 100 kilometers from edge to edge. Surely the sight was indescribable.
For New Lands, the consequences were catastrophic. In the Northern village 55 km away from the epicenter of the explosion, all houses were completely destroyed. It was reported that in the Soviet areas hundreds of kilometers from the area of the explosion was damage to all varieties of the house collapsed, the roof sagged, the glass flew, the door crashed. The radio is not working within the hour.
“Tupolev” Durnovtseva lucky; the blast of the Tsar Bomba has led to the fact that the giant bomber has fallen to 1000 feet before the pilot was able to regain control of it.
A Soviet cameraman, who witnessed the detonation, said the following:
“Clouds under the plane and at a distance from it illuminated the powerful flash. The sea of light spread under the hatch and even clouds began to glow and became transparent. This time our plane was caught between two cloud layers and down below in the crevice bloomed huge, bright, orange ball. The ball was powerful and majestic as a Jupiter. Slowly and quietly he snuck up. Piercing the thick layer of clouds it kept growing. It seemed to have sucked the entire Earth. The spectacle was fantastic, unreal, supernatural.”
The Tsar bomb released an incredible energy – it is now estimated at 57 megatons or 57 million tons of TNT equivalent. This is 1500 times more than was released by both bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and 10 times more powerful than all the munitions expended during the Second world war. Sensors registered the blast wave of the bomb that walked the Earth not once, not twice, but three.
Such an explosion is impossible to keep secret. The US had a spy plane a few dozen kilometers from the explosion. It was a special optical device, bhangemeter useful to calculate power remote nuclear explosions. The data of this plane, codenamed Speedlight – used Group assessment of foreign weapons to calculate the results of the secret test.
International condemnation was not long in coming, not only from the US and the UK but also the Scandinavian neighbours of the Soviet Union, such as Sweden. The only bright spot in this mushroom cloud was that since fireball has not touched the Ground, radiation was surprisingly little.
It could be otherwise. Initially, the Tsar bomb was intended to be twice as powerful.
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One of the architects of this dreadful device was the Soviet physicist Andrei Sakharov – the man who would later become world-famous for its attempts to rid the world of the very weapons he helped to create. He was a veteran of the Soviet program to develop nuclear bombs from the beginning and became part of the team that created the first atomic bomb to the Soviet Union.
Sakharov began work on a multi-layered device fission-fusion-fission bomb, which creates additional energy from nuclear processes in its core. This included the wrapping of the deuterium is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a layer of raw uranium. The uranium was to detect the neutrons from the burning of deuterium, and also to start the reaction. Sakharov called it “puff”. This breakthrough allowed the USSR to create the first hydrogen bomb, a device far more powerful than the atomic bomb several years before that.
The Khrushchev ordered Sakharov to come up with a bomb that was more powerful than all the others, already proven by the time.
The Soviet Union had to show that he could outpace the United States in the nuclear arms race, according to Philip Coyle, former head of the nuclear weapons tests in the United States under President bill Clinton. He spent 30 years helping to create and test atomic weapons. “The United States was far ahead because of the work done in preparing the bombs for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then spent a lot of atmospheric testing before the Russian held its first”.
“We were ahead and the Soviets were trying to do something to tell the world that they should be considered. The Tsar bomb was primarily designed to force the world to stop and recognize the Soviet Union as an equal,” says Coyle.
Initial design – layered bomb with uranium layers separating each tier – would have a yield of 100 megatons. 3000 times more than the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The Soviet Union had by that time experienced a large device in the atmosphere, equivalent to several megatons, but that bomb would be just a giant compared to those. Some scientists began to believe that it is too large.
With such a huge force there would be no guarantee that giant bomb will not fall into the swamp on the North of the USSR, leaving behind a huge cloud of radioactive fallout.
Is feared, in part, Sugars, says Frank von Hippel, a physicist and head of the Department of public and international Affairs at Princeton University.
“He was really worried about the amount of radioactivity that the bomb could create, he says. And on the genetic consequences for future generations”.
“And this was the beginning of the journey from designer to bomb dissident”.
Before the tests, the layers of uranium, which were to disperse to a bomb of incredible power, was replaced by a layer of lead, which reduced the intensity of the nuclear reaction.
The Soviet Union created such a powerful weapon that the scientists did not want to test it at full power. And that’s the problem with this destructive device was not limited.
Bombers Tu-95, created for the transfer of nuclear weapons the Soviet Union were designed to transport much more light weapons. The Tsar bomb was so large that it can not be placed on the rocket, and so heavy that the aircraft carrying it would not be able to deliver it to the goal and stay with the right amount of fuel for the return. Anyway, if the bomb is as powerful as it was conceived, the aircraft could not return.
Even nuclear weapons might be too much, says Coyle, who now works as a leading researcher of the Center for arms control in Washington. “It’s hard to find a use for it, unless you want to destroy a very large city,” he says. “It’s just too big to use”.
Von Hippel agrees. “These things (large free-falling nuclear bombs) were designed so that you could destroy the target, being within one kilometre of it. The direction of movement changed in the direction of increasing accuracy of missiles and number of warheads”.
The Tsar bomb led to other consequences. She has caused so much fear – five times more than any other test before it – which led to a taboo on atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons in 1963. Von Hippel says that Sakharov was particularly concerned about the amount of radioactive carbon-14, which was released into the atmosphere – an isotope with an especially long half-life. It was partly obscured by carbon from fossil fuels in the atmosphere.
Sakharov was concerned that the bomb, which will be more tested, you will not start under its own blast – like the Tsar bomb and will cause a global nuclear fallout, spread of toxic dirt across the planet.
Sakharov became an ardent supporter of the ban on partial tests of 1963 and outspoken critic of nuclear proliferation. And at the end of 1960-ies and missile defense, which, as he rightly believed, will spur a new nuclear arms race. He was increasingly ostracized by the state and later became a dissident, which in 1975 was awarded the Nobel peace prize and was called “the conscience of mankind,” says von Hippel.
Looks like the Tsar bomb caused the precipitation of an entirely different kind.
On materials BBC
The Tsar bomb: the atomic bomb, which was too powerful for this world
Ilya Hel