We promised to tell - we are fulfilling, apologizing for the long pause. We thought for a long time how to do the right thing: go straight to the story about the underground nuclear explosion “Gnome” or start with a short preface about the very idea of underground nuclear explosions, where it came from and how it developed. We decided that not everything would be clear without a preface, but the volume of this preface turned out to be the size of a separate note. But the story is really interesting - "help yourself"!
First, let's say a few words about what kind of animal this very "PYaV" is - an underground nuclear explosion, who invented it and why it was needed. However, what is there: if we hear the words "nuclear explosion" - it means that we are talking about the military. Well, they love to “bang”, and this love is old and selfless. Since the time when gunpowder was invented - they are bang so bang, there's no saving. Of course, military affairs are not exactly the topic of our site, but uranium, which, as you know, is the head of everything, is what it is: both fuel and weapons, so it’s worth talking a little about military UNEs.
The military climbed underground with their beloved "strong loaves" not from a good life, but because of military reasons. The first nuclear explosion in the history of mankind took place on July 16, 1945: on this day, the Americans detonated a 21 kiloton plutonium bomb in the Alamogordo Desert, New Mexico, Operation Trinity - Trinity. Scientists of the Manhattan Project approached such an event very responsibly: the explosion was tracked by all means and instruments available at that time. Scientists watched the explosion, and the generals watched the scientists, and the military gentlemen recorded: these eggheads can record the fact of the explosion from very significant distances. Quite a bit of time passed, and the fixing equipment was already placed on reconnaissance aircraft. For example, the Americans learned about the explosion of our RDS-1 in August 1949 a day later, while they were able to obtain data on the type of bomb, its power and other characteristics.
US President Truman "presented" information about our first test explosion to the whole world a couple of weeks later:
"The Soviets mastered the creation of nuclear weapons, what a shame."
The speed of voice acting discouraged Comrade Stalin, but the physicists from the Special Project explained that no spies ran around the laboratories and around the test site, that this information was obtained by scientific and technical methods. Accordingly, for our physicists and the military, this immediately became the start of a program for the rapid development of control and surveillance systems: if the Americans can record our nuclear tests, we must respond in a mirror way. Events then developed many times faster than now, and so much so that one cannot get rid of the assumption that people armed with arithmometers and slide rules thought dozens of times faster than the current owners of incredible gadgets. Already in 1951, it was possible to confidently fix an above-ground nuclear explosion at the Semipalatinsk test site from a distance of 700 km - a year and a half, and the Soviet Union actually received a new type of "troop" - the Special Control Service. Organizationally, the SSK was formalized as a structural unit of the GRU by order of the Minister of Defense R. Ya. Malinovsky on May 13, 1958.
The US military had little doubt that the USSR would be able to record air and ground nuclear tests - and, therefore, receive a lot of information that would instantly cease to be secret. That is why, in fact, they crawled underground - the first UNE was produced by them on November 29, 1951. For those who believed then and believe now that only peace-loving elves with kind eyes live on the other side of the ocean, the information from Pentagon employees, of course, sounded much more beautiful. Well, like this, for example:
"PYaV are carried out only and exclusively for the purpose of preventing the spread of radiation, preventing radioactive contamination of the environment."
Members of the sect of elf-worshippers may continue to believe such texts, but realists are well aware: yes, the warriors didn’t care about any infections, they just had to observe the secrecy regime as much as possible, nothing more.
Yes, seismic exploration has developed by leaps and bounds, but it provides information only about the power of the explosion - of course, if everything is done carefully enough and the radioactive substances formed during the explosion remained underground. Why is it written "neatly enough"? So, excuse me, we are talking about the Americans, but we are aware of how they are remarkably and unmistakably developing various areas of their atomic project.
Well, to finish the "war story" - some statistics. Only two states, the USA and the USSR, produced nuclear explosives in mass quantities, much later India and Pakistan, England and China pulled themselves up with a few explosions, and now, spitting on all international treaties, only frantic North Koreans regularly do this. But “everyone else” didn’t do much weather, but the Americans blew up underground by 38.35 megatons of TNT, the Soviet Union - by 38.0 megatons. Power parity did not mean an equal number of explosions: there were 1.5 times less of ours. It is on these figures that we will stop reviewing purely military UNEs, those who are interested may well find other details on their own. About moratoriums, about the treaty that banned tests in space, in the air, on land and under water, about how the treaty came about that banned all its participants from any tests at all. A big, interesting topic - but not for Geoenergy.
Preparation, Photo: bbc.com
Actually, what is PYAV? They dig a mine with a diameter for a warhead, with a depth, as a rule, from 200 to 800 meters. A charge is lowered into the mine, a cork of loose materials (pebbles, sand, etc.) is organized on top of it, all kinds of measuring equipment are placed above the cork, somewhere aside, at a safe distance - a control point. They rushed, measured everything that was necessary, everything is simple and tasteful. It remains only to understand what is happening underground.
Test, Photo: bbc.com
The explosion leads to the evaporation of underground rock, as a result of which the cavity in which the nuclear charge was located is filled with superheated radioactive gas. Then, as the temperature drops, molten rock accumulates at the bottom of the cavity. A few more hours later, with a drop in temperature and pressure, the cavity collapses, and a crater appears on the surface. This is, if very briefly, without much detail. But the details are so "delicious" that it is worth opening them a little.
Consequences, Photo: bbc.com
Yes, one more thing. The Soviet era, in addition to all other victories, accomplishments and shortcomings, had one more characteristic feature. Let's call it conditionally "cloth language": emphatically dry, not even containing any signs of the emotional coloring of what is being described. Here you have - for nostalgia - a wonderful example.
“By the end of the energy release process, all the energy is concentrated in the gas. In a nuclear explosion, the gases usually include the detonation products of the reacted nuclear fuel and the evaporated parts of the charger. Most of these gases are vapors of various metals and other substances with a high condensation temperature. The initial thermodynamic parameters of detonation products in a nuclear explosion have higher levels than in explosions of chemical explosives. The temperature reaches several million kelvins, the pressure reaches tens of thousands of GPa.
Now the same, but in normal language. During the explosion of a nuclear charge, which was pushed underground, not only uranium or plutonium, but also the entire shell inside which it was located, turns into radioactive gas. The temperature of the explosion - a few million degrees - makes it instantly evaporate a few more meters (depending on the power of the charge) of the rocks around the charge. For example, they drilled through granite - it will become gas, and in a matter of fractions of a second. And on the rock that was a little further away, all the damaging factors of a nuclear explosion are being beaten, and the shock and heat waves are repeatedly amplified by an additional volume of such gas. The rock around the charge does not prick, does not crumble into sand - it simply evaporates. Beautiful, is not it? This heat stroke is accompanied by all the other charms - gamma radiation, electromagnetic pulse, radiant energy ... Or in the same cloth language:
“... in a nuclear explosion, such peculiar effects take place as a radioactive consequence, ionization, chemical transformation of substances and minerals, evaporation and melting and heating of rocks, intensive disintegration of minerals and rocks, destruction or change of significant sections of rocks and massifs.”
“Intense disintegration of minerals and rocks” sounds especially charming, doesn’t it? The rock and minerals turned into a radioactive gas heated to millions of degrees, another part of the solid rocks melted and flowed in a stream - this is, damn it, “intense disintegration” for us. Okay, "disintegrated", and then what?
“Further on, the blast wave is represented by compression and seismic waves ... During a nuclear explosion, accumulation and formation of undesirable or dangerous concentrations of harmful substances that retain their toxicity for a long time both at the point of explosion, both regionally and globally, depending on the production technology explosion and from the technology of using its effects in various technological chains. This circumstance requires careful consideration of the explosive aftereffect in all areas of the use of nuclear explosive technologies.
Again, a translation from Russian into Russian: a variety of radioactive gases accumulate underground, which strive through rock cracks to seep to the surface, pass into groundwater - this is what is proposed to be “carefully taken into account”. How? How to prevent the risk of such spread? There are no answers, but the result of all these “cloth” reasoning” is this:
“with the help of a single or a small number of nuclear explosions, large, sometimes very complex technological objects can be created: lifting tanks, enlarged wells, underground percolators, ore stores, excavations, embankments, etc. … The use of nuclear explosions for national economic purposes requires the development of appropriate technologies, including the actual technological processes, hardware and machine systems, and organizational and management components.”
"National economic goals" sounds lovely, doesn't it? However, the most interesting thing is that the notion about UNEs for such purposes chronologically first appeared not in the USSR, but in the USA. Our site is ready to tell about the programs of Soviet UNEs for extinguishing fires, for improving the conditions for oil and gas production, for creating reservoirs, tunnels, dams, if there is interest, but not in this article. We were going to tell about the underground nuclear explosion "Gnome" and how it is connected with the storage of spent fuel from "military" reactors in the United States - so we will continue to move in this direction.
We'll have to remember who was a wonderful US citizen, the Hungarian genius of Jewish origin Edward Teller. Genius is not an exaggeration; Teller's contribution to the development of physics is truly enormous. Yes, it was he, in collaboration with Stanislav Ulam, an American of Polish origin, who developed and proposed the design of a thermonuclear bomb.
Theoretical physicist (Hungary / USA), widely known as the "father of the hydrogen bomb", Photo: mithattosun.com
But Teller did a lot for the development of nuclear and molecular physics, spectroscopy, the theory of beta decay, statistical mechanics, scientists still use the results of his research, there are theories that bear his name. Well, just a wonderful person! Having received US citizenship in 1941, since 1943 he became a member of the Manhattan Project, but practically did not take part in the development of nuclear weapons - he was much more interested in thermonuclear weapons. Before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, his interest remained purely theoretical: even the economy of such a giant as the United States "did not pull" the development of two such projects at the same time. But he developed the theory to such an extent that after receiving funding for this direction, the Americans were able to create a thermonuclear bomb in just a few years. November 1, 1952 on the Atoll Enewetok (Marshall Islands) explosion rocked, codenamed "Ivy Mike" (Ivy Mike). Yes, the creation of Teller-Ulam could be called a bomb only with a big stretch - a 62-ton product was the size of a three-story house, but the power of the first thermonuclear explosion was amazing: 10.4 megatons! 10 million 400 thousand tons of TNT, 450 times more powerful than the explosion over Nagasaki.
The gigantic size of Teller's first brainchild was due to the fact that deuterium and tritium were used in this product in liquid form: roughly speaking, a giant refrigerator had to be built. But Teller, having proved the possibility of implementing a thermonuclear explosion in practice, proposed further improvement: to use lithium-6 deuteride. No sooner said than done, because in the 40s and 50s the Yankees lived in the USA, not the Americans. And when testing the Bravo product, codenamed “Shrimp” (1954, Bikini Atoll. The older generation should still remember that Bikinis are not only fashionable beach shorts), a tiny bell sounded: Teller can be wrong, and his mistakes can give very dramatic results. According to his calculations, the "Shrimp" was supposed to give out 6 megatons, but in reality it turned out ... 15. It turned out that lithium-7 deuteride is also involved in a thermonuclear reaction, which Teller simply did not take into account. The result is the most powerful explosion in the history of the US thermonuclear program. A mistake - and the power turned out to be higher not by percentages, but at times.
Other details of Teller's biography are interesting, but they are not particularly relevant to the case. Sat Oppenheimer, supporting accusations of his disloyalty, achieved the miniaturization of thermonuclear bombs and warheads (according to reports, all thermonuclear warheads on American strategic missiles are designed according to the Teller-Ulam scheme), actively supported the SDI, published information about Israel's presence of an atomic bomb. A wonderful man, but there is simply nowhere to put stigma ... We are more interested in the fact that in the early 50s this gentleman had a new itch - to prove that there could be practical benefits from the atomic program. No, he didn’t even have any attempts to somehow participate in the development of a nuclear power plant - the wrong bird flew, the brain was imprisoned for the wrong thing.
Look again at the "cloth" text:
"The use of nuclear explosions for national economic purposes requires the development of appropriate technologies, including the actual technological processes, hardware and machine systems, and organizational and management components."
Here, word for word, it coincides with the American Operarion Plausher program developed under the leadership of Teller (we often called this project “the Ploughshare program” - just a literal translation). For purely economic purposes, Teller and the team intended, with the help of UNEs, to make the inhabitants of California, Nevada and Arizona happy by creating a railway embankment in the Mojave Desert, the inhabitants of Alaska with a large sea harbor, the inhabitants of Panama with a duplicate of the Panama Canal, the citizens of Canada, Teller wanted to help extract oil ...
Pllusher officially launched in 1957, was curtailed in 1973 - by that time, the Americans had completely eaten the initiatives of their leading nuclear physicist to the very end. Where did the Soviet leadership only look, you ask? The KukryNixes drew some pictures, Khrushchev pounded the podium with his shoe - but it was more profitable to support the undertakings of a talented scientist with all his might. Let's go over the projects of the program - let you have a good mood too:
lay a backup channel of the Suez Canal through the territory of ... Israel;
lay a new channel for the Panama Canal: 77 km, width 300 m, depth 150 m using 302 UNEs with a total capacity of 167.5 megatons (!);
build deep-water protected sea harbors in Alaska near Cape Thompson;
to build a deep sea harbor in the northwest of Australia;
build a 160 km long shipping canal to an iron ore deposit in western Australia;
extract oil from bituminous sands in Athabasca (Canada) after their preliminary heating with the help of PYaV;
to build a hydropower complex in the Qattar Depression (Northern Africa) due to the inflow of Mediterranean Sea waters through a canal formed with the help of 429 UNEs with a total capacity of 65.9 megatons (!);
crushing ore underground in Connecticut;
build a navigable river channel between the Tennessee and Tombigbee rivers in Massachusetts;
build a system of canals and reservoirs in the state of Arizona.
Have you read? No, this is not Zadornov and not a report from the chamber of the house of the mourners, these are plans that the US Atomic Energy Commission seriously considered. The list is not complete - there are many more interesting ideas. Sublunar explosions on our natural satellite, mining of geothermal energy in different parts of the United States, crushing copper ore for its further underground leaching, and so on, so on, so on. A kind of Manilovism of imperial scope, based on the greatest source of energy conquered by man.
But, if someone thinks that Soviet physicists did not respond to these plans with a huge counter fountain of fantasy, we are in a hurry to disappoint. And we were going to create lakes, and build dams, and provide Siberian rivers with a flow to the Central Asian deserts, and extract oil and gas ...
Some kind of total euphoria, interrupted only by rough reality: one PYaV after another did not give the planned results, clouds of radioactive gases burst to the surface over and over again. The Americans were the first to wake up, turning off the Pllusher already in 1973, ours planned and planned something until 1988. But our physicists had enough plans for intellectual entertainment - to think of the fact that only the Americans could build a storage facility for radioactive waste from military programs 7 km from the epicenter of the UNE. We are talking about the first in the history of peaceful UNE "Gnome" and the very storage WIPP (Waste Isolation Pilot Plant - Pilot Waste Disposal Plant).
Armed with the firm intention of proving the absurdity of the saying "You can't bury talent in the ground," Teller began to dig. The first peaceful UNE was the Gnome explosion (uff, we got it) - Gnome on December 10, 1961. They wanted to take off back in 1958, but here the USSR and the USA had a moratorium on nuclear tests, interrupted due to the Caribbean crisis.
Very interesting article. Always associated nuclear explosions with weapons and the Cold War.
Andrey, 24.09.2009 - 16:55
but
and I thought that almost all the horror stories about the peaceful atom were mostly nonsense ...
Turns out I've heard about it in a fairly adequate form
13_freelancer, 24.11.2009 - 23:12
interesting article
Vlad, 12/16/2009 - 01:12
Good article, informative. I will never cease to be amazed at the recklessness of people who so easily and simply defile their planet. In the anus they have this charge, for deep probing; (
Only the latest nuclear reactors and heavy-duty and reliable waste storage facilities are the only application. And then I like it. WE supposedly made an explosion underground, a bubble formed inside there .. blah blah blah. Nature does not tolerate such bubbles, and over time it will either run through water or the very first earthquake .. Damn, how many factors. Psychos from Scoop developed the industry with the same barbaric methods
Fa1L, 31.01.2010 - 20:45
how to consolidate their power.
Fa1L, 31.01.2010 - 20:46
In my Donetsk region, there is also such an object ("Clivazh" is indicated on the map at the beginning of the article). Now people are shaking there and do not know when the water will flood the mine.
"In our time, environmentalists are concerned about the danger of flooding the Yunkom mine, where the atomic-explosive experiment "Klivazh" was carried out, which, according to the report of the Minister of Environmental Safety Vasily Yakovlevich Shevchuk, can lead to radioactive contamination of groundwater. (c) Wikipedia
Bravo! Peaceful atom, so it is!
Fa1L, 31.01.2010 - 20:51
And what kind of explosion in Yakutia was unsuccessful, with the release of radioactive gases? And in what year? I grew up in Yakutia and some of these explosions, judging by the map, are quite close to us. I was especially intrigued by nuclear explosions for seismic sounding with the name Kimberlite-3 and 4. My parents were engaged in Yakut diamonds all their lives, geologists.
Yuri, 6.06.2010 - 07:09
Thank you very interesting, did not even imagine the peaceful use of nuclear explosions.
Xo66uT, 6.06.2010 - 13:04
In the late 70s, an underground nuclear explosion was carried out in the Donbass to collapse some cavities.
Shit, 23.07.2010 - 15:47
... interesting, but it’s real now to find out which developer’s charges were used in specific explosions!?
For example:
"Horizon-3", October 29, 1975, 7.6 kt
"Meteorite-2", July 26, 1977, 13-15 kilotons
Were they made in Snezhinsky VNIITF or VNIIEF (Arzamas-16)?
AlSi, 13.09.2010 - 14:06
Interesting article!
I lived just near Kuelpor in the Murmansk region. I heard about explosions at one time, but did not attach much importance to them. And then the article even intrigued. Thanks to the author!
True, it would be very interesting to learn about unsuccessful experiments. Although I am skeptical about successful ones, although I am not a physicist
Sergiy, 25.10.2010 - 10:15
An excellent article, where the material is interesting, in particular about Yakutia and the explosions of Crystal and Kraton 3, I live here 70 km from it, I thought that all this was a rumor, but then I looked on the Internet it turned out to be so :(
Alexander, 25.10.2010 - 13:52
Correct, the mountain in the photograph (Kuelporr) was before the explosion.
Roman, 25.10.2010 - 21:37
By the way, if I'm not mistaken, our Krasnodar reservoir was built by launching several nuclear charges.
sergey, 01/29/2011 - 20:14
Lena, 03/22/2011 - 11:53
It is very sad that now the phobia obscurantism of the humanities rules the world. Greenpeace and other alleged environmentalists have turned into PR-offices, working to order and having nothing to do with the scientific approach (and the science of Ecology). People do not understand that they owe EVERYTHING to science and progress, they are eager to return back to the caves.
100 years ago, "futurologists" predicted that London by the end of the twentieth century would be littered with horse manure to the level of the roofs of houses. If there had already been Greenpeace then, now only the oligarchs could afford a horse, and London would be littered with Mr. only up to the second floor.
Only science moves humanity forward. Yes, it creates new risks and problems, but it also gives new dimensions to the spectrum of human capabilities, and ultimately, human well-being. As soon as it stops, the world will slide into the Stone Age faster than it came out of it.
Igor, 1.04.2011 - 04:35
It is possible that a peaceful atom will save humanity from impending global climate change on Earth. The article describes the real experience of the USSR in the peaceful use of nuclear explosions, the pros and cons, thanks to the author for the well-illustrated material presented.
According to satellite images using the Google program, I explore the Martian surface, many craters on the surface of Mars have edges similar to those left in craters formed from nuclear explosions carried out on Earth,
including the program for the peaceful use of the atom.
Peter, Nik2009, 05.06.2011 - 03:25
Regarding the underground storage facilities near Astrakhan, as far as I know, none of them are used, since they are simply flooded with groundwater, in fact, there is no talk of any cavities underground either, since even a child understands that a cavity needs to be formed in the rock choose this rock, and the explosion only roughly mixed and compacted the layers ... And in general, what kind of use of nuclear explosions in the national economy can we talk about (especially extinguishing gas torches with a nuclear explosion :-)) ... IMHO in most cases it looks typical testing of underground nuclear explosions and a peaceful atom is in last place here ...
ps Thanks for the pics and info.
virt557, 11.06.2011 - 13:50
Hello.
Very interesting stuff. We want to use the data you provide to prepare an article for a trade paper. If you don't mind, of course.
Yulia, 29.06.2011 - 15:22
Heckuva good job. I sure appreictae it.
Jalen, 19.07.2011 - 19:55
Thanks for the interesting article! As for extinguishing gas torches, this is true. We have the dean of the faculty, personally took part in such extinguishing. The gas came out of the well - under a monstrous pressure of 320 atmospheres. There was no way to shut down or shut off the well. They made a nuclear explosion nearby, which shifted the earthen layers in a horizontal plane and sealed the leak tightly.
Kiril, 16.01.2012 - 15:21
The article is interesting. Learned a lot. We were advanced in those days ...
SashaShmel, 25.01.2012 - 11:37
In 1999, a powerful gas condensate field was discovered near the village of Krestishchi, the reserves of which were estimated at 300 billion cubic meters of natural gas. By the end of 1971, 17 boreholes were operating on its territory. The gas pressure from the wells was abnormal and reached 400 atmospheres. At a depth of 20 m, gas condensate caught fire in one of the wells, which led to a severe fire (the flame rose tens of meters above the ground), which could not be extinguished for almost two years. The entire drilling complex was gradually swallowed up by the resulting huge sinkhole. Taking into account the positive result in the use of a nuclear explosion in extinguishing a gas torch that burned for three years at the Urta-Bulak field in the Uzbek SSR (1966), scientists proposed to clog an emergency well with a nuclear explosion.
alexcellular.narod.ru, 13.02.2012 - 17:24
Information taken from Wikipedia
The torch is the first industrial nuclear explosion on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR, carried out on July 9, 1972, 3 km from the village of Khrestishche, Krasnogradsky District, Kharkov Region, in order to close an emergency gas release. The energy release of the explosion is 3.8 kilotons.
In 1970, a powerful gas condensate field was discovered near the village of Krestishchi, the reserves of which were estimated at 300 billion cubic meters of natural gas. By the end of 1971, 17 boreholes were operating on its territory. The gas pressure from the wells was abnormal and reached 400 atmospheres. At a depth of 20 m, gas condensate caught fire in one of the wells, which led to a severe fire (the flame rose tens of meters above the ground), which could not be extinguished for almost two years. The entire drilling complex was gradually swallowed up by the resulting huge sinkhole. Taking into account the positive result in the use of a nuclear explosion in extinguishing a gas torch that burned for three years at the Urta-Bulak field in the Uzbek SSR (1966), scientists proposed to clog an emergency well with a nuclear explosion.
On July 9, 1972, at exactly 10 am local time, the nuclear device detonated. After 20 seconds, a powerful gas fountain, mixed with rock, escaped from the emergency well to a height of 1 km, a characteristic mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion formed in a minute.
The experiment was not successful - it was not possible to close the ejection with the help of an explosion. People returned to the village 30 minutes after the explosion. All experimental animals in the special zones died. In the village of Pervomaisky, the shock wave knocked out glass from the windows, the walls of houses collapsed. Restoration of dwellings (at the expense of the state) lasted more than a year, subsequently all the inhabitants of the village of Pervomaisky received newly built houses in place of the destroyed ones. The gas flare was extinguished a few months later by standard methods.
There is no official data on the impact of the Fakel explosion on people's health.
alexcellular.narod.ru, 13.02.2012 - 17:25
Information taken from Wikipedia.
Yenakiyevo where I live and V.F.Yanukovych was born and raised
The Klivazh facility is an underground nuclear explosion with a power of 0.2-0.3 Kt in TNT equivalent, which was carried out on the territory of the Ukrainian SSR on the eastern wing of the Yunkom mine (Yunokommunarovsk, Yenakievsky City Council, Ordzhonikidzeugol) at a depth 903 m between the coal seams "Devyatka" (l4) and "Kirpichny" (l21) on September 16, 1979 at 9 o'clock (GMT). The purpose of the explosion is to reduce stress in the rock mass, which ultimately was to increase the safety of mining coal seams.
Until 1979, the Yunkom mine had the maximum frequency of coal and rock outbursts in the Central Donbass, associated with the state of the rocks, due to the influence of the Yunkomovsky Northern, Brunvaldsky and other overthrusts (42% of the seams that were developed at the Yunkom mine were in the zone of tectonic disturbances ). The explosion was carried out at a depth of 800 meters. As a result of a nuclear explosion, a cavity with a radius of 5-6 m appeared, around which a zone of crushing and crushing with a radius of 20-25 m was formed. The level of radioactivity in mine workings and mine waters during the observation period of 1979-2000 was at the background level. After the explosion, a decrease in the frequency of coal and rock emissions was noted. In the period 1980-1985, at the horizon of 826 m, located 77 m above the level of the charging chamber, the development of the Mazur and Devyatka coal seams ended.
Work on the Cleavage facility was carried out by the VNIPIPROMTECHNOLOGY Institute. The experiment was led by Nikolai Kusev, an employee of the Academician Skochinsky Institute of Mining. They say that among the authors was the famous laureate of the Lenin and State Prizes, academician Sadovsky. The academician put forward the theory that a powerful shaking of rocks would break the bonds between coal and methane, and in this case, the coal seams would cease to be explosive. Best suited for this purpose, in his opinion, was a directed nuclear explosion. Others call Academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR Nikolai Polyakov, others - the Minister of the Coal Industry of the USSR Mikhail Shchadov. The head of the laboratory of the Institute of Mining named after Academician Skochinsky, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Mikhail Sergeevich Antsiferov was categorically against it. At 12.00, the charge laid between the coal seams "Nine" and "Mazur" (the most dangerous in terms of sudden emissions) was blown up. Even those who were far from the mine felt that the ground trembled under their feet. [source not specified 264 days]
Accurate estimates of the magnitude of the charge and the depth of its placement have now become secret.
In 2002, as an unpromising mine, the Yunkom mine was closed, and in our time, environmentalists are concerned about the danger of flooding the Yunkom mine, where the atomic explosion experiment Klivazh was carried out, which, according to the report of the Minister of Environmental Safety Vasily Yakovlevich Shevchuk, can lead to radioactive contamination groundwater.
alexcellular.narod.ru, 13.02.2012 - 17:32
Interesting article, but full of inaccuracies. My father worked in the ATO Design Bureau, was at many of these explosions, including the emergency "Kraton-3" on the banks of the Marcha, he was hit by a blowout, he has very vivid impressions, how everything that was there flew up from the well it was hammered how part of the drilling rig flew away, and how their group then came out of there in the advancing darkness, mixed up the direction and instead of moving away began to approach the well ... He considers this day - August 24, 1978 - to be his second birthday, he even wrote poems about the event, very clumsily - but brightly. I was very small then, and I didn’t understand why my father didn’t go home from a business trip, but returned to some hospital, “caught a cold” ... 85, roofing felts in the 86th. Later, he told all this, periodically getting into clinics - something got into his lungs. as a result, in the 94th, he still lost one lung - destruction began. Explosions were stopped in the second half of the 80s not at all because of accidents - it was just that the situation became different. http://ludiwosleaeskotlov.1bbs.info/viewtopic.php?p=421 Here is pure Baikal water for you
Price, 26.06.2013 - 17:27
I was born and live in Kazakhstan, not so long ago I ended up at work near the border of Russia and Kazakhstan, somewhere near the Caspian Sea, in a lost village in the sands ... in general, there was a lot of free time and the locals suggested "let's go to a failure in the ground and see! " It's kind of a local attraction.
I ask what they say for the failure, they answer in Soviet times there was an explosion and after it a huge and deep hole in the ground - you throw a stone and you can’t hear how it fell.
Well, I’m naturally in shock, I say everything must be fenced there, they answer me - well, of course everything is fenced, but we are locals, we know everything, we’ll drive right up to the hole by car.
Then I became alert and I had a question by itself - and where does the wind usually blow from, to or from there to the village. They tell me - in different ways, it also often blows from there.
I have a quiet panic, I ask - do people in the village often get sick and what do they die of .... they answer me, yes they get sick, basically everyone dies of cancer!
In general, this is how they live in those places ... and I quickly left home from there.
I was born and lived in the USSR, but the terrible legacy of the "happy family of peoples" has been very puzzling lately.
Igor, 06/21/2014 - 15:05
Poor mother nature. terrible experiments are being carried out. Someday she will be angry with us. And there will be no time for progress, capital.
Of course, everyone knows about such a type of test as an underground nuclear explosion, but I still did not quite understand the specifics of this option. How? What for? Why is this test option more profitable and better? For what purpose?
In 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved a resolution on the start of construction of a test site for testing the first Soviet atomic bomb. Construction was completed on July 26, 1949. Landfill with an area of 18,540 sq. km was located 170 km from Semipalatinsk. Subsequently, it turned out that the choice of a site for the test site was made successfully: the terrain made it possible to conduct underground nuclear tests in adits and wells.
In total, 122 atmospheric and 456 underground nuclear tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site in the period from 1949 to 1989.
Here is the technology for conducting an underground nuclear explosion ...
First - USA
The first underground nuclear explosion in history was carried out by the United States under the code name "Uncle" at the Nevada test site on November 19, 1951. A 1.2 kiloton ground ejection explosion was carried out at a shallow depth (5.5 m), solely in the interests of the Ministry of Defense to test damaging factors. The first "full-fledged" underground nuclear test "Rainier" took place at the Nevada test site, the Rainier Mesa site, on September 19, 1957.
Rainier Nuclear Test Scheme
A nuclear device with a capacity of 1.7 kilotons was blown up in a mountain tunnel at a depth of 275 m.
It was carried out to develop methods for testing nuclear charges in underground conditions, as well as to test methods and means of early detection of underground explosions. This test laid the foundations for the technology of conducting underground nuclear tests, this became especially relevant after the signing of the Moscow Treaty of 1963 on the prohibition of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.
Clouds of dust raised by the shock wave of the Rainier explosion
In total, prior to the first Soviet underground explosion, 21 underground nuclear tests were conducted by the US government during operations.
Test preparation
An adit for the first Soviet underground nuclear explosion 380 m long was dug inside the rock massif of the test site at a depth of 125 m.
During an explosion inside the chamber, the pressure could reach several million atmospheres, so the adit was equipped with three driving sections. This was done to prevent the radioactive products of the explosion from getting outside.
The first driving section, 40 m long, had a reinforced concrete wall and consisted of crushed stone backfill. A pipe passed through the plug to output the neutron flux and gamma radiation to the sensors of the devices, which recorded the development of a chain reaction. The second section, consisting of reinforced concrete wedges, had a length of 30 m. The third section of driving 10 meters long was built at a distance of 200 m from the explosion chamber. There were three instrument boxes with measuring equipment. Also, other measuring instruments were placed throughout the adit.
The epicenter was designated by a red flag located on the surface of the mountain, directly above the explosion chamber. The charge was detonated automatically from the command console, located at a distance of 5 km from the mouth of the adit. It also housed seismic equipment and equipment for recording electromagnetic radiation from the explosion.
Trial
On the appointed day, a radio signal was sent from the command console, including hundreds of devices of various types, as well as ensuring the detonation of the nuclear charge itself.
As a result, a dust cloud formed at the site of the explosion, caused by a rockfall, and the surface of the mountain above the epicenter rose by 4 m.
No release of radioactive products was observed. After the explosion, the dosimetrists and workers who entered the adit found that the section of the adit from the mouth to the third blocking and the instrument boxes were not destroyed. No radioactive contamination was recorded either.
On November 6, 1971, on the deserted island of Amchitka (Aleutian Islands, Alaska), a 5-megaton Cannikin thermonuclear charge was activated - the most powerful in the history of underground explosions. The test was conducted by the US to study seismic effects.
The consequence of the explosion was an earthquake of 6.8 on the Richter scale, which caused the ground to rise to a height of about 5 meters, large collapses on the coastline and shifts of earth layers throughout the island with an area of 308.6 km.
Peaceful Explosions
From 1965 to 1988, the USSR had a program of peaceful nuclear explosions. Within the framework of the secret “Program No. 7”, 124 “peaceful” nuclear explosions were carried out, 117 of them were carried out outside the borders of nuclear test sites, and with the help of explosions of nuclear charges, scientists solved only national economic problems. Thus, the closest nuclear explosion to Moscow was carried out in the Ivanovo region.
It was assumed that with the help of underground peaceful nuclear explosions it would be possible to intensify oil and gas production, create harbors, canals and reservoirs, as well as develop minerals in poor deposits.
sources
Underground nuclear explosion October 13th, 2016
Of course, everyone knows about such a type of test as an underground nuclear explosion, but I still did not quite understand the specifics of this option. How? What for? Why is this test option more profitable and better? For what purpose?
In 1947, the Council of Ministers of the USSR approved a resolution on the start of construction of a test site for testing the first Soviet atomic bomb. Construction was completed on July 26, 1949. Landfill with an area of 18,540 sq. km was located 170 km from Semipalatinsk. Subsequently, it turned out that the choice of a site for the test site was made successfully: the terrain made it possible to conduct underground nuclear tests in adits and wells.
In total, 122 atmospheric and 456 underground nuclear tests were carried out at the Semipalatinsk test site in the period from 1949 to 1989.
Here is the technology for conducting an underground nuclear explosion ...
First - USA
The first underground nuclear explosion in history was carried out by the United States under the code name "Uncle" at the Nevada test site on November 19, 1951. A 1.2 kiloton ground ejection explosion was carried out at a shallow depth (5.5 m), solely in the interests of the Ministry of Defense to test damaging factors. The first "full-fledged" underground nuclear test "Rainier" took place at the Nevada test site, the Rainier Mesa site, on September 19, 1957.
Rainier Nuclear Test Scheme
A nuclear device with a capacity of 1.7 kilotons was blown up in a mountain tunnel at a depth of 275 m.
It was carried out to develop methods for testing nuclear charges in underground conditions, as well as to test methods and means of early detection of underground explosions. This test laid the foundations for the technology of conducting underground nuclear tests, this became especially relevant after the signing of the Moscow Treaty of 1963 on the prohibition of nuclear tests in the atmosphere, outer space and under water.
Clouds of dust raised by the shock wave of the Rainier explosion
In total, prior to the first Soviet underground explosion, 21 underground nuclear tests were conducted by the US government during operations.
Test preparation
An adit for the first Soviet underground nuclear explosion 380 m long was dug inside the rock massif of the test site at a depth of 125 m.
During an explosion inside the chamber, the pressure could reach several million atmospheres, so the adit was equipped with three driving sections. This was done to prevent the radioactive products of the explosion from getting outside.
The first driving section, 40 m long, had a reinforced concrete wall and consisted of crushed stone backfill. A pipe passed through the plug to output the neutron flux and gamma radiation to the sensors of the devices, which recorded the development of a chain reaction. The second section, consisting of reinforced concrete wedges, had a length of 30 m. The third section of driving 10 meters long was built at a distance of 200 m from the explosion chamber. There were three instrument boxes with measuring equipment. Also, other measuring instruments were placed throughout the adit.
The epicenter was designated by a red flag located on the surface of the mountain, directly above the explosion chamber. The charge was detonated automatically from the command console, located at a distance of 5 km from the mouth of the adit. It also housed seismic equipment and equipment for recording electromagnetic radiation from the explosion.
Trial
On the appointed day, a radio signal was sent from the command console, including hundreds of devices of various types, as well as ensuring the detonation of the nuclear charge itself.
As a result, a dust cloud formed at the site of the explosion, caused by a rockfall, and the surface of the mountain above the epicenter rose by 4 m.
No release of radioactive products was observed. After the explosion, the dosimetrists and workers who entered the adit found that the section of the adit from the mouth to the third blocking and the instrument boxes were not destroyed. No radioactive contamination was recorded either.
On November 6, 1971, on the deserted island of Amchitka (Aleutian Islands, Alaska), a 5-megaton Cannikin thermonuclear charge was put into action - the most powerful in the history of underground explosions. The test was conducted by the US to study seismic effects.
The consequence of the explosion was an earthquake of 6.8 on the Richter scale, which caused the ground to rise to a height of about 5 meters, large collapses on the coastline and shifts of earth layers throughout the island with an area of 308.6 km.
Peaceful Explosions
From 1965 to 1988, the USSR had a program of peaceful nuclear explosions. Within the framework of the secret “Program No. 7”, 124 “peaceful” nuclear explosions were carried out, 117 of them were carried out outside the borders of nuclear test sites, and with the help of explosions of nuclear charges, scientists solved only national economic problems. Thus, the closest nuclear explosion to Moscow was carried out in the Ivanovo region.
Here we discussed in more detail
For 23 years, the USSR had a secret “Program No. 7”, within the framework of which underground atomic explosions were carried out. A total of 124 nuclear charges were detonated between 1965 and 1988. With their help, with the blessing of the party authorities, scientists tried to explore diamond reserves and even turn back the rivers. And everything would be fine if atomic mushrooms grew only in remote uninhabited regions of Siberia and the Far East. However, the test sites were, among other things, densely populated areas in Central and Southern Russia. How many people suffered from radiation emissions is unlikely to ever become known.
The fact that atomic charges can be used not only for military purposes, but also in a completely peaceful field, Soviet scientists began to think in the early 60s. In the spring of 1962, the closed report of nuclear physicists Yuri Babaev and Yuri Trutnev lay down on the table of the head of the "atomic" Ministry of Medium Machine Building, Yefim Slavsky. In it, they presented their views on the use of nuclear charges in the interests of the national economy. In particular, scientists have proposed using the giant craters formed during atomic explosions properly, for example, as pits for artificial reservoirs. The great depth of the funnel and its bottom melted during the explosion were ideally suited for the use of such man-made lakes in the interests of land reclamation and prevention of salinization of the territories.
Slavsky warmly supported the idea. As a result, the Chagan project was born. According to him, in the arid regions of Kazakhstan, it was supposed to create 40 "nuclear" reservoirs.
It was not difficult to create a nuclear charge with the necessary characteristics for the craftsmen from Arzamas-16, who ate a dog on the development of the Soviet atomic shield. On the morning of January 15, 1965, a 3-meter container with a thermonuclear charge was lowered into a 178-meter well drilled in the floodplain of the Chagan River. Its capacity was 170 kilotons - eight and a half times more than that used in Hiroshima. There was a deafening explosion - 10 million tons of soil, scattered into grains of sand, flew up into the sky for a kilometer. At the same time, a funnel with a diameter of 430 and a depth of 100 meters was formed on the ground. “I have never seen such a beautiful sight from a nuclear explosion, although I have seen a lot of them,” project manager Ivan Turchin later recalled. The beginning of the Soviet industrial nuclear program was laid.
Have you been blown up yet? Then we go to you!
Since the Chagan project was experimental in nature, the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site became a place for its implementation - a closed area located far from housing, which is why the possible effect of radiation was minimized. However, from now on, scientists no longer bother with such conventions - out of 124 "peaceful" atomic explosions, 117 were carried out outside special test sites. After all, the main task was to solve economic and scientific problems. Little attention was paid to how many people live in the district.
Another explosion was carried out two and a half months after the first. This time, as part of the Butan project, two atomic charges detonated one after the other in the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, 10 kilometers northwest of the city of Meleuz. With their help, it was possible to double the volume of oil production at the Grachevskoye oil field. When the well began to dry up 15 years later, the experiment was repeated again. Also, with the help of atomic charges, underground tanks were created near Ufa for the disposal of industrial waste from the Salavat petrochemical plant.
The increase in oil production and the creation of underground storage facilities through atomic explosions turned out to be profitable, so this method was used more than once. Even more effective was the use of nuclear charges for conducting deep seismic sounding of the earth's crust and searching for promising mineral deposits. Such explosions were carried out in Yakutia, the Komi ASSR, Kalmykia, the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, the Irkutsk and Kemerovo regions, and also in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. And in the fall of 1971, a charge of 2.3 kilotons was blown up almost in the very center of the European part of Russia - the Ivanovo region. As a result, new oil fields were discovered on the territory of the Vologda and Kostroma regions. Even in the resort Stavropol Territory, they thought of blowing it up - 10 kilotons, in order to intensify gas production, rushed 90 kilometers north of Stavropol.
On this topic
Democrats in the US Congress consider the administration of President Donald Trump involved in the plans of American companies to build nuclear power plants in Saudi Arabia. This is stated in the report of the committee on oversight and government reform.
But success is known to be intoxicating. In the early 70s, Soviet scientists swung at an ambitious project - now it was decided to show "Kuzkin's mother" to nature itself.
Since the 19th century, there has been a project to create the Pechora-Kama canal. Once again, Khrushchev remembered him, proposing to reverse the course of the Siberian rivers in order to fill the thirsty Central Asian republics with fresh water. However, the general secretary-voluntarist failed to complete his plan. But his idea was not forgotten, especially since now thousands of prisoners' hands were no longer required to create a canal - the socialist reformers had a more powerful tool at their disposal. In October 1968, an experiment was conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site to create a directed trench with the help of an atomic explosion, designed to become the basis of the canal. It ended successfully, and three years later, in the Cherdynsky district of the Perm region, lost among the forests, a secret object grew up, surrounded by rows of barbed wire. The level of secrecy was so great that even the project participants themselves were forbidden to communicate with each other. Under the cover of night, specialists from the Minsredmash placed three nuclear charges with a capacity of 15 kilotons each at an ultra-shallow depth. But even this power was only enough to form a trench about 700 meters long. Realizing that in order to create a canal in the north of the country it would be necessary to triple the atomic holocaust, the authorities curtailed the project.
Blood cancer in the appendage
Did the locals know nothing about it? After all, an atomic explosion is not a barrel of kerosene blown into the air ... As Nikolai Prikhodko, Doctor of Technical Sciences, said, the inhabitants of the surrounding cities and villages were usually informed that military exercises would be held. And the residents of the Stavropol village of Kevsala, near which the charge was fired, were ordered by “people in civilian clothes” to go outside from their houses while an explosion was made underground to increase gas production. Thus, they were practically not lied to. But the fact that they were clearly told not the whole truth, the villagers soon began to guess.
For industrial atomic explosions, special “civilian” charges were used, which differ from military ones in extremely low rates of residual contamination of the area. Nevertheless, a nuclear bomb is, as they say, a bomb in Africa. Therefore, it was simply impossible to avoid radiation emissions.
It became clear after the first experimental explosion. As a result of the Chagan project, a cloud from the explosion covered the territory of 11 settlements, in which about 2 thousand people lived. All of them received a dose of radiation to the thyroid gland - in the most affected, its indicators were 28 times higher than the maximum level.
No less disastrous for the environment were the results of the attempt to create a canal. Soon, residents of the Cherdynsky, Krasnovishersky, Chernushinsky and Osinsky districts of the Perm region began to notice an increase in cancer. Later, in the 1990s, ecologists discovered traces of plutonium-239 at the site of the explosions, the half-life of which is 240 thousand years.
A similar situation has developed in the Ivanovo region. Back in 2001, the Institute of Industrial Technologies of the Ministry of Atomic Energy, in its report on the study of the consequences of the explosion, admitted that even after 30 years, the danger of radioactive contamination of soil and water has not decreased. The degree of pollution was aggravated by the fact that an emergency situation occurred during the explosion. Shortly after the detonation, a gas-water fountain was formed with the removal of radioactive sand and water. As a result, for 10 days, the gas jet propagated along the channel of the Shachi River, which flows into the Volga, and the water and soil turned out to be contaminated with cesium-137 and strontium-90 isotopes. Oncological diseases in this area are also not uncommon. However, such complaints are heard in almost all areas where "peaceful" nuclear explosions were carried out. The last of them thundered in the fall of 1988, 80 kilometers northeast of the city of Kotlas in the Arkhangelsk region. After that, the use of the nuclear arsenal for industrial purposes was finally put to rest.
