Soviet Union atomic bomb

David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy (New Haven Yale University Press, 1994), pp.83, 104—8, 138, 222-3. British estimates of the date... 

The British had proceeded less expeditiously. The Chiefs of Staff advised in October 1945 that the best defence against atomic bombs was likely to be the deterrent effect that the possession of the means of retaliation would have on a potential aggressor, and in January 1946 they said that a stock in the order of hundreds rather than scores would be necessary to deter a country with widely dispersed industries and population (like the Soviet Union). In December 1945, ministers in the Gen 75 committee approved the construction of the first reactor capable of producing plutonium, and in August 1946 the CAS sent the first requisition for an atomic bomb to the Ministry of Supply. The McMahon Act was amended in October 1950 to allow rather more cooperation between American and British scientists but the first British test did not take place until 3 October 1952, in the hold of a ship off Australia. The first test of a British atomic bomb dropped by an aircraft did not occur until 11 October 1956. 

In the meantime, he refocused his attention on the political arena. He had maintained his antibomb activism through the late 1940s even as the cold war deepened and anticommunist fervor created an atmosphere of distrust and political repression in the United States. As Albert Einstein and other scientists had predicted, in late 1949 the Soviet Union developed its own atomic bomb. At the same time, Mao Zedongs rebels triumphed in China, bringing the world s most populous nation under communist control. Then, in the summer of 1950, communist North Korea invaded South Korea, setting off the Korean War, a bloody conflict that cost the lives of thousands of U.S. troops. 

On April 26, 1986, one of four nuclear reactors exploded more at the Chernobyl power station in Ukraine, a country that used to be a part of the old Soviet Union. The explosion burned for nine days, proving to be the worst nuclear accident in history. The disaster released at least 100 times more radiation than the atom bombs dropped in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Much of the fallout fell close to Chernobyl,... 

During the Chernobyl disaster thirty to forty times the radioactivity of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were released. The main radioactive isotopes from the Chernobyl accident were Cs, Cs, Sr, and Sr. The details of zeolite applications at Chernobyl remain rather obscure because of a secrecy problem still remaining after disintegration of the former Soviet Union. About 500,000 tons of zeolite rocks, mainly containing clinoptilolite, were processed at various deposits in Ukraine, Georgia, and Russia specifically for use at Chernobyl [65]. The majority of the zeolites was used for the construction of protective barriers and for agricultural applications in polluted areas. 

Although the United States and Russia (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics [USSR]) were, formally speaking, allies during World War II, the postwar occupation of Eastern Europe by the USSR behind an iron curtain, its mercurial and murderous Communist leader Joseph Stalin (1879-1953), and the pervasive fear of nuclear weapons contributed to the start of the cold war. The USSR detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949 and the ensuing arms race would dominate the second half of the 20th cenmry. 

Bohr s proposal to enlist the Soviet Union in discussions before the atomic bomb became a reality here slips to the question of whether or not to tell the Soviets the bare facts after the first bomb had been tested but before the second was dropped on Japan. Byrnes thought the answer to that question might depend on how quickly the USSR could duplicate the American accomplishment. The Interim Committee s recording secretary, 2nd Lieutenant R. Gordon Ameson, remembered after the war of this confrontation that Mr. Byrnes felt that this point was a very important one. The veteran of House and Senate cloakrooms was at least as concerned as Henry Stimson to extract a quid pro quo for any exchange of information, as Conant s next comment to Bush demonstrates ... 

An attache at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow warned on December 24 that the U.S.S.R. is out to get the atomic bomb. This has been officially stated. The meager evidence available indicates that great efforts are being made and that super-priority will be given to the enterprise. At home was incomprehension, Herbert York remembers To most. .. of us, Russia was as mysterious and remote as the other side of the moon and not much more productive when it came to really new ideas or inventions. A common joke of the time said that the Russians could not surreptitiously introduce nuclear bombs in suitcases into the United States because they had not yet been able to perfect a suitcase. But if American leaders did not believe the Soviet Union could soon achieve an atomic bomb, what it would do otherwise and what were its motives had become a matter of intense debate within the U.S. government. 

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