Download or read book The History of the Soviet Atomic Industry written by Arkadii Kruglov and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2002-08-15 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time, readers can discover the numerous pioneers of the Soviet nuclear industry, including the role of scientific supervisors of Russia's nuclear project and the statesmen who coordinated the function of the atomic industry in the former USSR. This is a detailed account, translated to English for the first time, of the development of the atomic industry in the former Soviet Union. It deals with the activities of production facilities, research institutes and design bureaus that designed and manufactured equipment and materials. That material was applied in various fields of atomic science and engineering, but primarily in the construction of atomic weapons. History of Soviet Atomic Industry will be of interest to scientists and engineers in the nuclear industry, as well as historians of science and the post-war Soviet Union.
Download or read book Producing Power written by Sonja D. Schmid and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015-02-06 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of how the technical choices, social hierarchies, economic structures, and political dynamics shaped the Soviet nuclear industry leading up to Chernobyl. The Chernobyl disaster has been variously ascribed to human error, reactor design flaws, and industry mismanagement. Six former Chernobyl employees were convicted of criminal negligence; they defended themselves by pointing to reactor design issues. Other observers blamed the Soviet style of ideologically driven economic and industrial management. In Producing Power, Sonja Schmid draws on interviews with veterans of the Soviet nuclear industry and extensive research in Russian archives as she examines these alternate accounts. Rather than pursue one “definitive” explanation, she investigates how each of these narratives makes sense in its own way and demonstrates that each implies adherence to a particular set of ideas—about high-risk technologies, human-machine interactions, organizational methods for ensuring safety and productivity, and even about the legitimacy of the Soviet state. She also shows how these attitudes shaped, and were shaped by, the Soviet nuclear industry from its very beginnings. Schmid explains that Soviet experts established nuclear power as a driving force of social, not just technical, progress. She examines the Soviet nuclear industry's dual origins in weapons and electrification programs, and she traces the emergence of nuclear power experts as a professional community. Schmid also fundamentally reassesses the design choices for nuclear power reactors in the shadow of the Cold War's arms race. Schmid's account helps us understand how and why a complex sociotechnical system broke down. Chernobyl, while unique and specific to the Soviet experience, can also provide valuable lessons for contemporary nuclear projects.
Download or read book Red Atom written by Paul Josephson and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2005-06-10 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1950s, Soviet nuclear scientists and leaders imagined a stunning future when giant reactors would generate energy quickly and cheaply, nuclear engines would power cars, ships, and airplanes, and peaceful nuclear explosions would transform the landscape. Driven by the energy of the atom, the dream of communism would become a powerful reality. Thirty years later, that dream died in Chernobyl. What went wrong? Based on exhaustive archival research and interviews, Red Atom takes a behind-the-scenes look at the history of the Soviet Union's peaceful use of nuclear power. It explores both the projects and the technocratic and political elite who were dedicated to increasing state power through technology. And it describes the political, economic, and environmental fallout of Chernobyl. A story of big science run amok, Red Atom illuminates the problems that can befall any society heavily invested in large-scale technology.
Download or read book The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago written by Per Högselius and published by Central European University Press. This book was released on 2023-09-10 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The war in Ukraine, with the exposure of nuclear power stations and the danger of atomic warfare, has made the legacy of the Soviet nuclear sector of critical importance. The two authors map the Soviet nuclear industry in a shifting historical context, making sense of a complex socio-technical and environmental history. Taking an innovative approach, this book explores the history of atomic power in the former Soviet Union using the spatial dimensions of the nuclear industry as a point of departure. The key concept is that of the archipelago – a network of nuclear islands and facilities spread throughout the Soviet territory, but mutually reliant on each other and densely connected. The story traces the emergence of nuclear science and technology for military and civilian purposes through to the post-Soviet Russian nuclear corporations as providers of resources and technology. The book explains how nuclear developments in the Soviet Union interacted with processes of environmental and landscape change. The spatial lens offers an analytically fruitful and pedagogically stimulating way to comprehend the nuclear histories of the Soviet Union and its successor states.
Download or read book The Soviet Atomic Project written by Lee G. Pondrom and published by World Scientific Publishing Company. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Wartime Soviet industry -- Development of nuclear physics before the discovery of fission -- Discovery of fission of uranium -- Soviet Union and Stalin's terror 1937-1939 -- Soviet Union and nuclear research 1934-1942 -- The Manhattan Project creates Los Alamos -- Soviet Union creates laboratory #2 -- Soviet espionage and the atomic project -- Players in the drama--Stalin, Beria, and Kurchatov -- Industrial plants move to the Urals -- Soviet Union creates Arzamas-16 -- Uranium and plutonium -- German scientists and the Soviet Project -- Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Range
Download or read book Atomic Developments in the Soviet Union an Atomic Industry Project at Angara Siberia and Uranium Deposits in the Soviet Union two German News Items written by RAND CORP SANTA MONICA CALIF. and published by . This book was released on 1955 with total page 8 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two reports on an atomic industry project at Angara, Siberia, and on uranium deposits in the USSR are presented.
Download or read book I Am a Hawk written by Viktor Nikitovich Mikhaĭlov and published by . This book was released on 1996 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Restricted Data written by Alex Wellerstein and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2024-04-23 with total page 558 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first full history of US nuclear secrecy, from its origins in the late 1930s to our post–Cold War present. The American atomic bomb was born in secrecy. From the moment scientists first conceived of its possibility to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and beyond, there were efforts to control the spread of nuclear information and the newly discovered scientific facts that made such powerful weapons possible. The totalizing scientific secrecy that the atomic bomb appeared to demand was new, unusual, and very nearly unprecedented. It was foreign to American science and American democracy—and potentially incompatible with both. From the beginning, this secrecy was controversial, and it was always contested. The atomic bomb was not merely the application of science to war, but the result of decades of investment in scientific education, infrastructure, and global collaboration. If secrecy became the norm, how would science survive? Drawing on troves of declassified files, including records released by the government for the first time through the author’s efforts, Restricted Data traces the complex evolution of the US nuclear secrecy regime from the first whisper of the atomic bomb through the mounting tensions of the Cold War and into the early twenty-first century. A compelling history of powerful ideas at war, it tells a story that feels distinctly American: rich, sprawling, and built on the conflict between high-minded idealism and ugly, fearful power.
Download or read book Alsos written by Samuel Goudsmit and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Near the end of World War II, as Allied armies swept across battle-torn Germany and leading scientists at Los Alamos were racing to assemble the atomic bombs America would drop over Japan later that summer, General Leslie Groves, the military head of the Manhattan Project, established Alsos, a unit of scientists, soldiers, and secret agents to find the Nazi Germany’s physicists and technicians working on the development of a German atomic bomb and to determine how far along they were. In this book, Samuel Goudsmit, the Dutch-American physicist who was the scientific leader of the Alsos mission, recounts the mission and its findings. “Alsos is more than a dramatic chronicle of how Goudsmit and his staff accompanied Allied troops in order to ferret out German atomic secrets and round up German scientists who might have been working on a fission bomb. It is also an overview and critique of the German research establishment under Nazi control.” — Albert Moyer,American Scientist “Highly readable and informative... [T]he immediacy of Goudsmit’s experience makes this memoir of enduring value... inspired story-telling that provides in retrospect a great deal of information on the operations of the postwar intelligence teams... An extraordinary book.” — Alan Beyerchen, New Scientist “Samuel Goudsmit... the scientific leader of Alsos... tells the fascinating story of the mission’s work... To the extent that the average citizen is permitted to learn how his servants spend his money for the purpose of insuring his safety, it will be useful for every intelligent American to hear Goudsmit’s story and ponder his views. In any case,Alsos is highly entertaining... Goudsmit’s assessment of Nazi war science is excellent... There are a lot of things in Goudsmit’s book that we had better keep in mind.” — Paul Ridenour, The New York Times “[Goudsmit’s] short memoir is a thrilling combination of detective story and scientific deduction.” — Stephen Budiansky, Wall Street Journal “[Alsos] is the compelling story of what the Germans did [to develop an atomic bomb], what went wrong and why.” — Lee Dembart, Los Angeles Times “For the history of science this chatty little book is surely one of the most important books to emerge from World War II, since it is the account of one of the most absorbing war assignments to fall to the lot of any scientist.” — Henri Guerlac, Isis, A Journal of the History of Science Society
Download or read book The Nuclear Spies written by Vince Houghton and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-15 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did the US intelligence services fail so spectacularly to know about the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities following World War II? As Vince Houghton, historian and curator of the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC, shows us, that disastrous failure came just a few years after the Manhattan Project's intelligence team had penetrated the Third Reich and knew every detail of the Nazi 's plan for an atomic bomb. What changed and what went wrong? Houghton's delightful retelling of this fascinating case of American spy ineffectiveness in the then new field of scientific intelligence provides us with a new look at the early years of the Cold War. During that time, scientific intelligence quickly grew to become a significant portion of the CIA budget as it struggled to contend with the incredible advance in weapons and other scientific discoveries immediately after World War II. As Houghton shows, the abilities of the Soviet Union's scientists, its research facilities and laboratories, and its educational system became a key consideration for the CIA in assessing the threat level of its most potent foe. Sadly, for the CIA scientific intelligence was extremely difficult to do well. For when the Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949, no one in the American intelligence services saw it coming.
Download or read book Stalin and the Bomb written by David Holloway and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 507 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic and “utterly engrossing” study of Stalin’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb during the Cold War by the renowned political scientist and historian (Foreign Affairs). For forty years the U.S.-Russian nuclear arms race dominated world politics, yet the Soviet nuclear establishment was shrouded in secrecy. Then, shortly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, David Holloway pulled back the Iron Curtain with his “marvelous, groundbreaking study” Stalin and the Bomb (The New Yorker). How did the Soviet Union build its atomic and hydrogen bombs? What role did espionage play? How did the American atomic monopoly affect Stalin's foreign policy? What was the relationship between Soviet nuclear scientists and the country's political leaders? David Holloway answers these questions by tracing the dramatic story of Soviet nuclear policy from developments in physics in the 1920s to the testing of the hydrogen bomb and the emergence of nuclear deterrence in the mid-1950s. This magisterial history throws light on Soviet policy at the height of the Cold War, illuminates a central element of the Stalinist system, and puts into perspective the tragic legacy of this program―environmental damage, a vast network of institutes and factories, and a huge stockpile of unwanted weapons.
Download or read book Making The Russian Bomb written by Thomas B. Cochran and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-04-15 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Natural Resources Defense Council once again provides the definitive account of the current status of Russian nuclear weapons. Taking advantage of previously unavailable information the authors describe the origins, growth, and decline of the massive Soviet nuclear weapons production complex-the places involved in the recent headline-making epi
Download or read book Science in Russia and the Soviet Union written by Loren R. Graham and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: By the 1980s the Soviet scientific establishment had become the largest in the world, but very little of its history was known in the West. What has been needed for many years in order to fill that gap in our knowledge is a history of Russian and Soviet science written for the educated person who would like to read one book on the subject. This book has been written for that reader. The history of Russian and Soviet science is a story of remarkable achievements and frustrating failures. That history is presented here in a comprehensive form, and explained in terms of its social and political context. Major sections include the tsarist period, the impact of the Russian Revolution, the relationship between science and Soviet society, and the strengths and weaknesses of individual scientific disciplines. The book also discusses the changes brought to science in Russia and other republics by the collapse of communism in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Download or read book The Making of the Atomic Bomb written by Richard Rhodes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 890 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: **Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award** The definitive history of nuclear weapons—from the turn-of-the-century discovery of nuclear energy to J. Robert Oppenheimer and the Manhattan Project—this epic work details the science, the people, and the sociopolitical realities that led to the development of the atomic bomb. This sweeping account begins in the 19th century, with the discovery of nuclear fission, and continues to World War Two and the Americans’ race to beat Hitler’s Nazis. That competition launched the Manhattan Project and the nearly overnight construction of a vast military-industrial complex that culminated in the fateful dropping of the first bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Reading like a character-driven suspense novel, the book introduces the players in this saga of physics, politics, and human psychology—from FDR and Einstein to the visionary scientists who pioneered quantum theory and the application of thermonuclear fission, including Planck, Szilard, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Fermi, Teller, Meitner, von Neumann, and Lawrence. From nuclear power’s earliest foreshadowing in the work of H.G. Wells to the bright glare of Trinity at Alamogordo and the arms race of the Cold War, this dread invention forever changed the course of human history, and The Making of The Atomic Bomb provides a panoramic backdrop for that story. Richard Rhodes’s ability to craft compelling biographical portraits is matched only by his rigorous scholarship. Told in rich human, political, and scientific detail that any reader can follow, The Making of the Atomic Bomb is a thought-provoking and masterful work.
Download or read book Dark Sun written by Richard Rhodes and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-09-18 with total page 770 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Here, for the first time, in a brilliant, panoramic portrait by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb, is the definitive, often shocking story of the politics and the science behind the development of the hydrogen bomb and the birth of the Cold War. Based on secret files in the United States and the former Soviet Union, this monumental work of history discloses how and why the United States decided to create the bomb that would dominate world politics for more than forty years.
Download or read book Atomic Junction written by Abena Dove Osseo-Asare and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-19 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An innovative account of the first nuclear programme in independent Africa, centring on the promises and perils of atomic research in Ghana.
Download or read book The Soviet Atomic Project written by Lee G Pondrom and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2012-06-04 with total page 784 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book describes the lives of the people who gave Stalin his weapon -- scientists, engineers, managers, and prisoners during the early post war years from 1945-1953. Many anecdotes and vicissitudes of life at that time in the Soviet Union accompany considerable technical information regarding the solutions to formidable problems of nuclear weapons development. The contents should interest the reader who wants to learn more about this part of the history and politics in 20th century physics. The prevention of nuclear proliferation is a topic of current interest, and the procedure followed by the Soviet Union as described in this book will help to understand the complexities involved. remove
