Soviet nuclear bomb origin

The Soviet Union had pretty knowledgeable and capable scientists.


But the nuclear bomb they have sure is made a lot like ours. There is probably only 1 way anyway to make one.



The question: did the Soviets come up with their own research and ideas, especially during the Cold War. Or were the plans and know how stolen by espionage ?

The Soviet Union had pretty knowledgeable and capable scientists.


But the nuclear bomb they have sure is made a lot like ours. There is probably only 1 way anyway to make one.



The question: did the Soviets come up with their own research and ideas, especially during the Cold War. Or were the plans and know how stolen by espionage ? Originally Posted by VitaMan

No they didn't steal anything. The Obama Administration sold them the technology.

The Soviet Union had pretty knowledgeable and capable scientists.


But the nuclear bomb they have sure is made a lot like ours. There is probably only 1 way anyway to make one.



The question: did the Soviets come up with their own research and ideas, especially during the Cold War. Or were the plans and know how stolen by espionage ? Originally Posted by VitaMan

the soviets would have gotten there eventually by themselves but they had help. there were several spies in the Manhattan project, notably a ex-pat German scientist named Klaus Fuchs who passed secrets to the soviets for approximately 7 years. starting in 1942. the value of that data is both invaluable and useless. as far as a mere atomic bomb it was invaluable, for a next step thermonuclear (hydrogen bomb) device it was useless as his and other's (mainly Edward Teller) early theoretical work was incorrect and not until 1951 after he was no longer part of the project did the Teller-Ulam design come about.



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaus_...Soviet_project


Value of data to Soviet project

Hans Bethe once said that Klaus Fuchs was the only physicist he knew to have truly changed history.[45] Because the head of the Soviet project, Lavrenti Beria, used foreign intelligence as a third-party check, rather than giving it directly to the scientists, as he did not trust the information by default, it is unknown whether Fuchs's fission information had a substantial effect. Considering that the pace of the Soviet program was set primarily by the amount of uranium that it could procure, it is difficult for scholars to judge accurately how much time was saved.[64]



According to On a Field of Red, a history of the Comintern (Communist International) by Anthony Cave Brown and Charles B. MacDonald, Fuchs's greatest contribution to the Soviets may have been disclosing how uranium could be processed for use in a bomb. Fuchs gave Gold technical information in January 1945 that was acquired only after two years of experimentation at a cost of $400 million. Fuchs also disclosed the amount of uranium or plutonium the Americans planned to use in each atomic bomb.[65]



Whether the information Fuchs passed relating to the hydrogen bomb would have been useful is still debated. Most scholars agree with Hans Bethe's 1952 assessment, which concluded that by the time Fuchs left the thermonuclear program in mid-1946, too little was known about the mechanism of the hydrogen bomb for his information to be useful to the Soviet Union. The successful Teller-Ulam design was not devised until 1951. Soviet physicists later noted that they could see as well as the Americans eventually would that the early designs by Fuchs and Edward Teller were useless.[66]



Later archival work by the Soviet physicist German Goncharov suggested that Fuchs's early work did not help Soviet efforts towards the hydrogen bomb, but it was closer to the final correct solution than anyone recognised at the time. It also indeed spurred Soviet research into useful problems that eventually provided the correct answer. In any case, it seems clear that Fuchs could not have just given the Soviets the "secret" to the hydrogen bomb since he did not actually know it himself.[67]



In his 2019 book, Trinity: The Treachery and Pursuit of the Most Dangerous Spy in History, Frank Close asserts that "it was primarily Fuchs who enabled the Soviets to catch up with Americans" in the race for the nuclear bomb.[68] The author of the 2020 book Atomic Spy gives his efforts less value. Nancy Thorndike Greenspan suggests that the Soviets would have developed their bomb even without his help, "though probably not until 1951". On the other hand, the earlier development of the Soviet bomb may have had one significant benefit to the world, a balance of power; the author is convinced that this prevented the United States from using their bomb on North Korea.[69]



It is likely that Fuchs's espionage led the U.S. to cancel a 1950 Anglo-American plan to give Britain American-made atomic bombs.[70]

if you say so

if you say so Originally Posted by VitaMan

prove the article inaccurate.

thank you valued poster


btw i intend to see "Oppenheimer" once the hubbub dies down. you?

The Soviet Union had pretty knowledgeable and capable scientists.


But the nuclear bomb they have sure is made a lot like ours. There is probably only 1 way anyway to make one.



The question: did the Soviets come up with their own research and ideas, especially during the Cold War. Or were the plans and know how stolen by espionage ? Originally Posted by VitaMan

I have always understood that espionage led to the Soviet and Chinese atomic weapons. In the end, what the "secret" is . . .is actually knowing for surethat it can be done. and which pathways to enrichment of are blind allys.

There are TWO ways to make an atomic weapon. The easiest way is the "Gun Bomb" where tow sub-critical masses of U-235 are "shot" at each other at high speed to bring about an uncontrolled explosive chain reaction.

The other way, called the implosion method, uses a sub-critical spherical mass of plutonium and crushes it with explosives to initiate the chain rection.

That is how it was done in 1945 and, with refinements, that is how it is done today.

The so-called "Hydrogen Bomb" is a little different, but still uses a plutonium weapon to initiate the fusion reaction.

None of this has been a secret since early on, say 1945, and anyone who wants to make an nuclear bomb uses one of these metods. The hard part seems to be refining the uranium or plutonium to weapons grde".

I suggest that anyone with an interest in this read "
The Making of The Atom Bomb", by Richard Rhodes and Holter Graham.

https://www.amazon.com/Making-of-Ato...ps%2C96&sr=8-1

There was already an Oppenheimer movie in 1989, Fat Man and Little Boy, with Paul Newman seemingly miscast as the General. Not very favorable reviews. Some of the scenes are pathetic.

Waco is more or less correct on this.

According to Sakorof (I know i'm spelling his name wrong), the team of Russian scientist working on the bomb were being guided on the track that lead to success in making it. The team got curious as to how those above knew what they did. Seeing that the handlers did not want to expose how they knew such, told the scientist that another team was working on the bomb.

Side note, Sakorof made a better H bomb than we did.

Waco is more or less correct on this.

According to Sakorof (I know i'm spelling his name wrong), the team of Russian scientist working on the bomb were being guided on the track that lead to success in making it. The team got curious as to how those above knew what they did. Seeing that the handlers did not want to expose how they knew such, told the scientist that another team was working on the bomb.

Side note, Sakorof made a better H bomb than we did. Originally Posted by Precious_b

Andrei Sakharov is who you mean.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrei...uclear_weapons


In mid-1948 he participated in the Soviet atomic bomb project under Igor Kurchatov and Igor Tamm. Sakharov's study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept in August–September 1948.[11] Adding a shell of natural, unenriched uranium around the deuterium would increase the deuterium concentration at the uranium-deuterium boundary and the overall yield of the device, because the natural uranium would capture neutrons and itself fission as part of the thermonuclear reaction. This idea of a layered fission-fusion-fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the sloika, or layered cake.[11] The first Soviet atomic device was tested on August 29, 1949. After moving to Sarov in 1950, Sakharov played a key role in the development of the first megaton-range Soviet hydrogen bomb using a design known as Sakharov's Third Idea in Russia and the Teller–Ulam design in the United States. Before his Third Idea, Sakharov tried a "layer cake" of alternating layers of fission and fusion fuel. The results were disappointing, yielding no more than a typical fission bomb. However the design was seen to be worth pursuing because deuterium is abundant and uranium is scarce, and he had no idea how powerful the US design was. Sakharov realised that in order to cause the explosion of one side of the fuel to symmetrically compress the fusion fuel, a mirror could be used to reflect the radiation. The details had not been officially declassified in Russia when Sakharov was writing his memoirs, but in the Teller–Ulam design, soft X-rays emitted by the fission bomb were focused onto a cylinder of lithium deuteride to compress it symmetrically. This is called radiation implosion. The Teller–Ulam design also had a secondary fission device inside the fusion cylinder to assist with the compression of the fusion fuel and generate neutrons to convert some of the lithium to tritium, producing a mixture of deuterium and tritium.[12][13] Sakharov's idea was first tested as RDS-37 in 1955. A larger variation of the same design which Sakharov worked on was the 50 Mt Tsar Bomba of October 1961, which was the most powerful nuclear device ever detonated.


Soviet atomic bomb project


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...c_bomb_project


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet...ed_feasibility


In 1945, the Soviet intelligence obtained rough blueprints of the first U.S. atomic device.[38][39] Alexei Kojevnikov has estimated that the primary way in which the espionage may have sped up the Soviet project was that it allowed Khariton to avoid dangerous tests to determine the size of the critical mass.[40] These tests in the U.S., known as "tickling the dragon's tail", consumed a good deal of time and claimed at least two lives; see Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin.



One of the key pieces of information, which Soviet intelligence obtained from Fuchs, was a cross-section for D-T fusion. This data was available to top Soviet officials roughly three years before it was openly published in the Physical Review in 1949. However, this data was not forwarded to Vitaly Ginzburg or Andrei Sakharov until very late, practically months before publication.[citation needed] Initially both Ginzburg and Sakharov estimated such a cross-section to be similar to the D-D reaction. Once the actual cross-section become known to Ginzburg and Sakharov, the Sloika design become a priority, which resulted in a successful test in 1953.



In the 1990s, with the declassification of Soviet intelligence materials, which showed the extent and the type of the information obtained by the Soviets from US sources, a heated debate ensued in Russia and abroad as to the relative importance of espionage, as opposed to the Soviet scientists' own efforts, in the making of the Soviet bomb. The vast majority of scholars[like whom?] agree that whereas the Soviet atomic project was first and foremost a product of local expertise and scientific talent, it is clear that espionage efforts contributed to the project in various ways and most certainly shortened the time needed to develop the atomic bomb.[citation needed]


Yet the research for the Soviet analogue of "classical super" continued until December 1953, when the researchers were reallocated to a new project working on what later became a true H-bomb design, based on radiation implosion. This remains an open topic for research, whether the Soviet intelligence was able to obtain any specific data on Teller-Ulam design in 1953 or early 1954. Yet, Soviet officials directed the scientists to work on a new scheme, and the entire process took less than two years, commencing around January 1954 and producing a successful test in November 1955. It also took just several months before the idea of radiation implosion was conceived, and there is no documented evidence claiming priority. It is also possible that Soviets were able to obtain a document lost by John Wheeler on a train in 1953, which reportedly contained key information about thermonuclear weapon design.

oppenheimer was a commie

Even in the mid 1930’s, there was knowledge of how easily a Fission Bomb could be assembled.

The huge hurdle, and it was a really huge one, was producing fissionable material.

It was out of the question in WW-2 for any other power except the US to be able to produce enough U235, and later Plutonium, to assemble a critical mass. Only the US had the capital and manpower to achieve the feat before the war ended.

Of course, after the war, things changed radically, and quite quickly. The genie was out of the bottle. It wasn’t going back in.

Russian stiff fall apart so make it like America stuff. Smart one.

Even in the mid 1930’s, there was knowledge of how easily a Fission Bomb could be assembled.

The huge hurdle, and it was a really huge one, was producing fissionable material.

It was out of the question in WW-2 for any other power except the US to be able to produce enough U235, and later Plutonium, to assemble a critical mass. Only the US had the capital and manpower to achieve the feat before the war ended.

Of course, after the war, things changed radically, and quite quickly. The genie was out of the bottle. It wasn’t going back in. Originally Posted by Jackie S

if it was so easy to build, why did it other countries so long to build one???

russia with some illegal american help got their bomb in mid-1950s.

china started theirs in the 1950s with some russian help and got their bomb in the mid-1960s.

India also started theirs in 1955 got it in the late 1960s

pakistan started theirs after india blew one up. theirs blew up in late 1970 or early 1980.

North Korea started their program 1950's. got their bomb in early 2000. their first fizzle!

Iran started their program in 1980s. they're still working on it. claiming its for peaceful purposes.

so it looks like they got their bomb with a miniumum of 10 years to maximum of 50 years.