RDS-1, first Soviet atomic bomb
RDS-1, primera bomba atómica soviética
- Date
- 29 de agosto de 1949 · confidence high
- Place
- Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan
- Credited to
- Igor Kurchatov (scientific director) and Lavrentiy Beria (project head)
- Field
- Conflict
What it is
The first Soviet nuclear weapon test: an implosion plutonium bomb similar to the American «Fat Man», detonated on a 30 m tower. It broke the US monopoly and opened the arms race.
The design drew on information obtained through espionage (Klaus Fuchs), although Soviet physicists carried out the industrial development. The tower stood in a test area now in Kazakhstan.
What it led to
- the Cold War arms race
- the Soviet hydrogen bomb (RDS-6s, 1953) and the Semipalatinsk site (456 tests until 1989)
- the closure of the site in 1991 and Kazakhstan's denuclearisation