Nuclear squad: creators of the world's first nuclear power plant. Launch of the world's first nuclear power plant Construction of the first nuclear power plant

The proposal to create an AM reactor for a future nuclear power plant was first voiced on November 29, 1949 at a meeting of the scientific director of the nuclear project I.V. Kurchatov, director of the Institute of Physical Problems A.P. Alexandrov, director of NIIkhimash N.A. Dollezhal and the scientific secretary of the scientific and technical council of the industry B.S. Pozdnyakova. The meeting recommended including in the PSU research plan for 1950 “a reactor design using enriched uranium with small dimensions only for energy purposes, with a total heat output of 300 units, an effective power of about 50 units” with graphite and water coolant. At the same time, instructions were given to urgently carry out physical calculations and experimental studies on this reactor.

Later I.V. Kurchatov and A.P. Zavenyagin explained the choice of the AM reactor for priority construction by the fact that “in it, more than in other units, the experience of conventional boiler practice can be used: the overall relative simplicity of the unit makes construction easier and cheaper.”

During this period, options for using power reactors are discussed at different levels.

PROJECT

It was considered advisable to start with the creation of a reactor for a ship's power plant. To justify the design of this reactor and to “confirm in principle... the practical possibility of converting the heat of nuclear reactions of nuclear installations into mechanical and electrical energy,” it was decided to build in Obninsk, on the territory of Laboratory “B”, a nuclear power plant with three reactor installations, including and the AM installation, which became the reactor of the First NPP).

By Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated May 16, 1950, R&D on AM was entrusted to LIPAN (I.V. Kurchatov Institute), NIIKhimmash, GSPI-11, VTI). In 1950 - early 1951 these organizations carried out preliminary calculations (P.E. Nemirovsky, S.M. Feinberg, Yu.N. Zankov), preliminary design studies, etc., then all work on this reactor was, according to the decision of I.V. Kurchatov, transferred to Laboratory “B”. Appointed scientific director, chief designer - N.A. Dollezhal.

The design provided for the following reactor parameters: thermal power 30 thousand kW, electrical power 5 thousand kW, reactor type - thermal neutron reactor with a graphite moderator and natural water cooling.

By this time, the country already had experience in creating reactors of this type (industrial reactors for producing bomb material), but they differed significantly from power reactors, which include the AM reactor. Difficulties were associated with the need to obtain high coolant temperatures in the AM reactor, which meant that it would be necessary to search for new materials and alloys that can withstand these temperatures, are resistant to corrosion, do not absorb neutrons in large quantities, etc. For initiators of the construction of nuclear power plants with an AM reactor These problems were obvious from the very beginning; the question was how quickly and how successfully they could be overcome.

CALCULATIONS AND STAND

By the time the work on AM was transferred to Laboratory “B”, the project had been defined only in general terms. There remained many physical, technical and technological problems that had to be solved, and their number increased as work on the reactor progressed.

First of all, this concerned the physical calculations of the reactor, which had to be carried out without having many of the data necessary for this. In Laboratory “B”, some issues of the theory of thermal neutron reactors were dealt with by D.F. Zaretsky, and the main calculations were carried out by the group of M.E. Minashin in the department of A.K. Krasina. M.E. Minashin was particularly concerned about the lack of precise values for many constants. It was difficult to organize their measurement on site. On his initiative, some of them were gradually replenished mainly due to measurements carried out by LIPAN and a few in Laboratory “B”, but in general the high accuracy of the calculated parameters could not be guaranteed. Therefore, at the end of February - beginning of March 1954, the AMF stand was assembled - the critical assembly of the AM reactor, which confirmed the satisfactory quality of the calculations. And although the assembly could not reproduce all the conditions of a real reactor, the results supported the hope of success, although many doubts remained.

At this stand, on March 3, 1954, a chain reaction of uranium fission was carried out for the first time in Obninsk.

But, taking into account that the experimental data were constantly being refined, the calculation methodology was being improved, and right up to the launch of the reactor, the study of the amount of fuel loading of the reactor, the behavior of the reactor in non-standard modes continued, the parameters of the absorber rods were calculated, etc.

CREATION OF FUEL ELEMENTS

Another important task - the creation of a fuel element (fuel element) - was brilliantly handled by V.A. Malykh and the team of the technological department of Laboratory “B”. Several related organizations were involved in the development of fuel rods, but only the option proposed by V.A. Small, showed high performance. The search for a design was completed at the end of 1952 with the development of a new type of fuel element (with a dispersion composition of uranium-molybdenum grains in a magnesium matrix).

This type of fuel element made it possible to reject them during pre-reactor tests (special stands were created for this in Laboratory “B”), which is very important for ensuring reliable operation of the reactor. The stability of the new fuel element in a neutron flow was studied at LIPAN at the MR reactor. The working channels of the reactor were developed at NIIKhimmash.

Thus, for the first time in our country, perhaps the most important and most difficult problem of the emerging nuclear energy industry was solved - the creation of a fuel element.

CONSTRUCTION

In 1951, simultaneously with the start of research work on the AM reactor in Laboratory “B”, construction of a nuclear power plant building began on its territory.

P.I. was appointed head of construction. Zakharov, chief engineer of the facility - .

As D.I. recalled Blokhintsev, “the nuclear power plant building in its most important parts had thick walls made of reinforced concrete monolith to provide biological protection from nuclear radiation. Pipelines, channels for cables, for ventilation, etc. were laid in the walls. It is clear that alterations were impossible, and therefore, when designing the building, where possible, provisions were made to accommodate the expected changes. To develop new types of equipment and to carry out research work, scientific and technical assignments were given to “third-party organizations” - institutes, design bureaus and enterprises. Often these tasks themselves could not be complete and were clarified and supplemented as the design progressed. The main engineering and design solutions... were developed by the design team headed by N.A. Dollezhal and his closest assistant P.I. Aleshchenkov..."

The style of work on the construction of the first nuclear power plant was characterized by rapid decision-making, speed of development, a certain developed depth of initial studies and methods for finalizing the adopted technical solutions, a wide coverage of variant and insurance areas. The first nuclear power plant was created in three years.

START

At the beginning of 1954, testing and testing of various station systems began.

On May 9, 1954, loading of the nuclear power plant reactor core with fuel channels began in Laboratory "B". When introducing the 61st fuel channel, a critical state was reached at 19:40. A self-sustaining chain reaction of fission of uranium nuclei began in the reactor. The physical start-up of the nuclear power plant took place.

Recalling the launch, he wrote: “Gradually, the power of the reactor increased, and finally, somewhere near the thermal power plant building, where steam from the reactor was supplied, we saw a jet escaping from the valve with a loud hiss. The white cloud of ordinary steam, which was not yet hot enough to rotate the turbine, seemed to us a miracle: after all, this was the first steam produced by atomic energy. His appearance was the occasion for hugs, congratulations on “good steam” and even tears of joy. Our rejoicing was shared by I.V. Kurchatov, who took part in the work in those days. After receiving steam with a pressure of 12 atm. and at a temperature of 260 °C it became possible to study all components of the nuclear power plant under conditions close to design ones, and on June 26, 1954, during the evening shift, at 17:00. 45 minutes, the steam supply valve to the turbogenerator was opened, and it began to generate electricity from the nuclear boiler. The world’s first nuclear power plant has come under industrial load.”

“In the Soviet Union, through the efforts of scientists and engineers, work on the design and construction of the first industrial nuclear power plant with a useful capacity of 5000 kilowatts was successfully completed. On June 27, the nuclear power plant was put into operation and provided electricity for industry and agriculture in the surrounding areas.”

Even before the start-up, the first program of experimental work at the AM reactor was prepared, and until the closure of the station it was one of the main reactor bases where neutron physics research, research in solid state physics, testing of fuel rods, EGC, production of isotope products, etc. were carried out. The crews of the first nuclear submarines, the nuclear icebreaker "Lenin", and personnel of Soviet and foreign nuclear power plants were trained at the nuclear power plant.

The launch of the nuclear power plant for the young staff of the institute became the first test of readiness to solve new and more complex problems. In the initial months of work, individual units and systems were fine-tuned, the physical characteristics of the reactor, the thermal conditions of the equipment and the entire station were studied in detail, various devices were modified and corrected. In October 1954, the station was brought to its design capacity.

“London, July 1 (TASS). The announcement of the launch of the first industrial nuclear power plant in the USSR is widely noted in the English press; the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Worker writes that this historical event “has immeasurably greater significance than the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

Paris, July 1 (TASS). The London correspondent of Agence France-Presse reports that the announcement of the launch of the world's first industrial power plant running on nuclear energy in the USSR was met with great interest in London circles of nuclear specialists. England, the correspondent continues, is building a nuclear power plant in Calderhall. It is believed that it will be able to enter service no earlier than in 2.5 years...

Shanghai, July 1 (TASS). Responding to the commissioning of a Soviet nuclear power plant, Tokyo radio reports: The United States and England are also planning the construction of nuclear power plants, but they plan to complete their construction in 1956-1957. The fact that the Soviet Union was ahead of England and America in the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes suggests that Soviet scientists have achieved great success in the field of atomic energy. One of the outstanding Japanese specialists in the field of nuclear physics, Professor Yoshio Fujioka, commenting on the announcement of the launch of a nuclear power plant in the USSR, said that this is the beginning of a “new era.”

When and where was the world's first nuclear power plant built?
The world's first nuclear power plant (NPP) was built in the USSR ten years after the bombing of Hiroshima. Almost the same specialists took part in this work as in the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb - I. Kurchatov, N. Dollezhal, A. Sakharov, Yu. Khariton and others. It was decided to build the first nuclear power plant in Obninsk - there already was a fully operational turbogenerator with a capacity of 5000 kW. The construction of the nuclear power plant was directly supervised by the Obninsk Physics and Energy Laboratory, founded in 1947. In 1950, the technical council, from several proposed options, chose a reactor developed by the Khimmash Research Institute, headed by N. Dollezhal. On June 27, 1954, the world's first nuclear power plant produced industrial current. Currently, it no longer works and serves as a kind of museum. But the experience gained during its construction was then used in the construction of other, more powerful and advanced nuclear power units. Nuclear power plants now operate not only in our country, but also in the USA, France, Japan and many other countries.

What was the first peaceful reactor?
The principle of operation and design of the reactor became clear to the reactor developers back in the mid-1940s: graphite blocks with channels for uranium blocks and control rods - neutron absorbers - were placed in a metal casing. The total mass of uranium had to reach a critical mass, at which a sustained chain reaction of fission of uranium atoms began. Moreover, on average, for every thousand neutrons generated, several did not fly out instantly, at the moment of fission, but a little later they flew out of the fragments. The existence of these so-called delayed neutrons turned out to be decisive for the possibility of a controlled chain reaction.
Although the total number of delayed neutrons is only 0.75%, they significantly (by about 150 times) slow down the rate of increase in the neutron flux and thereby facilitate the task of regulating the reactor power. During this time, by manipulating the neutron-absorbing rods, you can interfere with the course of the reaction, slow it down or speed it up. In addition, as it turned out, the neutron flow significantly heated the entire mass of the reactor, so it is sometimes called the “atomic boiler.”
This scheme served as the basis for the creation of the first reactor for a nuclear power plant. During construction, the design of an industrial reactor was taken as a basis. Only instead of uranium rods, uranium heat-removing elements - fuel rods - were provided. The difference between them was that the water flowed around the rod from the outside, while the fuel rod was a double-walled tube. Enriched uranium was located between the walls, and water flowed through the internal channel. To prevent it from boiling and turning into steam right there in the fuel elements - and this could cause abnormal operation of the reactor - the water had to be under a pressure of 100 atm. From the collector, hot radioactive water flowed through pipes into a heat exchanger-steam generator, after which, after passing through a circular pump, it returned to the cold water collector. This current was called the first circuit. Water (coolant) circulated in it in a closed circle without coming out. In the second circuit, water acted as a working fluid. Here it was non-radioactive and safe for others. Having heated up in the heat exchanger to 190 °C and turned into steam with a pressure of 12 atm, it was supplied to the turbine, where it did its useful work. The steam leaving the turbine had to be condensed and sent back to the steam generator. The efficiency of the entire power plant was 17%.
At the nuclear power plant, the control system for the processes occurring in the reactor was also carefully thought out, devices were created for automatic and manual remote control of control rods, for emergency shutdown of the reactor, and devices for replacing fuel rods.

The peculiarity of a nuclear power plant is that the source of electrical energy is the nucleus of an atom (uranium and plutonium).

The first nuclear power plant in the world was built in the Soviet Union.

The following nuclear power plants are currently operating in Russia:

Balakovskaya
Beloyarskaya
Bilibinskaya
Kalininskaya
Kola
Kursk
Leningradskaya
Novovoronezhskaya
Rostovskaya
Smolenskaya

The largest number of nuclear power plants are located in the United States

Nuclear power plants are nuclear installations that produce energy while maintaining specified regimes under certain conditions. For these purposes, a territory defined by the project is used, where nuclear reactors are used in combination with the necessary systems, devices, equipment and structures to perform the assigned tasks. To carry out targeted tasks, specialized personnel are involved.

All nuclear power plants in Russia

History of nuclear energy in our country and abroad

The second half of the 40s was marked by the beginning of work on the creation of the first project involving the use of peaceful atoms to generate electricity. In 1948, I.V. Kurchatov, guided by the instructions of the party and the Soviet government, made a proposal to begin work on the practical use of atomic energy to generate electricity.

Two years later, in 1950, not far from the village of Obninskoye, located in the Kaluga region, the construction of the first nuclear power plant on the planet was launched. The launch of the world's first industrial nuclear power plant, whose power was 5 MW, took place on June 27, 1954. The Soviet Union became the first power in the world to use the atom for peaceful purposes. The station was opened in Obninsk, which had by that time received the status of a city.

But Soviet scientists did not stop there; they continued work in this direction, in particular, just four years later in 1958, operation of the first stage of the Siberian Nuclear Power Plant began. Its power was many times greater than the station in Obninsk and amounted to 100 MW. But for domestic scientists this was not the limit; upon completion of all work, the design capacity of the station was 600 MW.

In the vastness of the Soviet Union, the construction of nuclear power plants assumed, at that time, a massive scale. In the same year, the construction of the Beloyarsk Nuclear Power Plant began, the first stage of which, already in April 1964, supplied the first consumers. The geography of the construction of nuclear power plants entangled the entire country in its network; in the same year, the first unit of the nuclear power plant was launched in Voronezh, its capacity was 210 MW, the second unit, launched five years later in 1969, boasted a capacity of 365 MW. The boom in nuclear power plant construction did not subside throughout the Soviet era. New stations, or additional units of already built ones, were launched at intervals of several years. So, already in 1973, Leningrad received its own nuclear power plant.

However, the Soviet power was not the only one in the world that was able to develop such projects. In the UK, they also did not sleep and, realizing the promise of this area, actively studied this issue. Just two years later, after the opening of the station in Obninsk, the British launched their own project to develop the peaceful atom. In 1956, in the town of Calder Hall, the British launched their own station, the power of which exceeded its Soviet counterpart and amounted to 46 MW. They did not lag behind on the other side of the Atlantic; a year later, the Americans solemnly launched the station in Shippingport into operation. The facility's capacity was 60 MW.

However, the development of the peaceful atom was fraught with hidden threats, which the whole world soon learned about. The first sign was a major accident in Three Mile Island that occurred in 1979, and after it there was a catastrophe that struck the whole world, in the Soviet Union, in the small town of Chernobyl, a large-scale catastrophe occurred, this happened in 1986. The consequences of the tragedy were irreparable, but besides this, this fact made the whole world think about the feasibility of using nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

World leaders in this industry are seriously thinking about improving the safety of nuclear facilities. The result was the holding of a constituent assembly, which was organized on May 15, 1989 in the Soviet capital. The assembly decided to create a World Association, which should include all nuclear power plant operators; its generally recognized abbreviation is WANO. In the course of implementing its programs, the organization systematically monitors the improvement of the safety level of nuclear power plants in the world. However, despite all the efforts made, even the most modern and at first glance seemingly safe objects cannot withstand the onslaught of the elements. It was because of an endogenous disaster, which manifested itself in the form of an earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, that an accident occurred at the Fukushima-1 station in 2011.

Atomic blackout

NPP classification

Nuclear power plants are classified according to two criteria: the type of energy they produce and the type of reactor. Depending on the type of reactor, the amount of energy generated, the level of safety, and also what kind of raw materials are used at the station are determined.

According to the type of energy that the stations produce, they are divided into two types:

Their main function is to generate electrical energy.

Nuclear thermal power plants. Due to the heating installations installed there, using heat losses that are inevitable at the station, heating of network water becomes possible. Thus, in addition to electricity, these stations generate thermal energy.

Having examined many options, scientists came to the conclusion that the most rational are three of their varieties, which are currently used all over the world. They differ in a number of ways:

Fuel used;
Coolants used;
Active zones operated to maintain the required temperature;
A type of moderator that reduces the speed of neutrons that are released during decay and are so necessary to support a chain reaction.

The most common type is a reactor using enriched uranium as fuel. Ordinary or light water is used here as a coolant and moderator. Such reactors are called light water reactors; there are two types of them. In the first, the steam used to turn the turbines is generated in a core called a boiling water reactor. In the second, steam formation occurs in an external circuit, which is connected to the first circuit through heat exchangers and steam generators. This reactor began to be developed in the fifties of the last century; the basis for them was the US Army program. In parallel, around the same time, the Union developed a boiling reactor, in which a graphite rod acted as a moderator.

It is the type of reactor with a moderator of this type that has found application in practice. We are talking about a gas-cooled reactor. Its history began in the late forties and early fifties of the 20th century; initially, developments of this type were used in the production of nuclear weapons. In this regard, two types of fuel are suitable for it: weapons-grade plutonium and natural uranium.

The last project, which was accompanied by commercial success, was a reactor where heavy water is used as a coolant, and natural uranium, which is already familiar to us, is used as fuel. Initially, several countries designed such reactors, but in the end their production was concentrated in Canada, which is due to the presence of massive uranium deposits in this country.

Thorium nuclear power plants - the energy of the future?

History of improving types of nuclear reactors

The reactor of the first nuclear power plant on the planet was a very reasonable and viable design, which was proven during many years of impeccable operation of the station. Among its constituent elements were:

lateral water protection;
masonry casing;
top floor;
collection manifold;
fuel channel;
top plate;
graphite masonry;
bottom plate;
distribution manifold.

Stainless steel was chosen as the main structural material for fuel rod shells and technological channels; at that time, there was no knowledge of zirconium alloys that could have properties suitable for working with temperatures of 300°C. Cooling of such a reactor was carried out with water, and the pressure under which it was supplied was 100 at. In this case, steam was released with a temperature of 280°C, which is a quite moderate parameter.

The nuclear reactor channels were designed in such a way that they could be completely replaced. This is due to resource limitation, which is determined by the time the fuel remains in the activity zone. The designers found no reason to expect that structural materials located in the activity zone under irradiation would be able to exhaust their entire service life, namely about 30 years.

As for the design of TVEL, it was decided to adopt a tubular version with a one-way cooling mechanism

This reduced the likelihood that fission products would enter the circuit in the event of fuel rod damage. To regulate the temperature of the fuel element shell, a fuel composition of uranium-molybdenum alloy was used, which had the form of grains dispersed through a warm-water matrix. Nuclear fuel processed in this way made it possible to obtain highly reliable fuel rods. which were capable of operating under high thermal loads.

An example of the next round of development of peaceful nuclear technologies can be the infamous Chernobyl nuclear power plant. At that time, the technologies used in its construction were considered the most advanced, and the type of reactor was considered the most modern in the world. We are talking about the RBMK-1000 reactor.

The thermal power of one such reactor reached 3200 MW, while it has two turbogenerators, the electrical power of which reaches 500 MW, so one power unit has an electrical power of 1000 MW. Enriched uranium dioxide was used as fuel for the RBMK. In the initial state before the start of the process, one ton of such fuel contains about 20 kg of fuel, namely uranium - 235. With a stationary loading of uranium dioxide into the reactor, the mass of the substance is 180 tons.

But the loading process does not represent a bulk; fuel elements, already well known to us, are placed into the reactor. Essentially, they are tubes made from a zirconium alloy. The contents are cylindrical uranium dioxide tablets. In the reactor activity zone, they are placed in fuel assemblies, each of which combines 18 fuel rods.

There are up to 1,700 such assemblies in such a reactor, and they are placed in a graphite stack, where vertical technological channels are designed specifically for these purposes. It is in them that the coolant circulates, the role of which, in the RMBK, is played by water. The water whirlpool occurs under the influence of circulation pumps, of which there are eight. The reactor is located inside the shaft, and the graphic masonry is located in a cylindrical casing 30 mm thick. The support of the entire apparatus is a concrete base, under which there is a pool - a bubbler, which serves to localize the accident.

The third generation of reactors uses heavy water

The main element of which is deuterium. The most common design is called CANDU, it was developed in Canada and is widely used throughout the world. The core of such reactors is located in a horizontal position, and the role of the heating chamber is played by cylindrical tanks. The fuel channel stretches across the entire heating chamber, each of these channels has two concentric tubes. There are outer and inner tubes.

In the inner tube, the fuel is under coolant pressure, which allows additional refueling of the reactor during operation. Heavy water with formula D20 is used as a retarder. During a closed cycle, water is pumped through the pipes of a reactor containing fuel bundles. Nuclear fission produces heat.

The cooling cycle when using heavy water consists of passing through steam generators, where ordinary water boils from the heat generated by heavy water, resulting in the formation of steam that comes out under high pressure. It is distributed back into the reactor, resulting in a closed cooling cycle.

It was along this path that there was a step-by-step improvement of the types of nuclear reactors that were and are being used in various countries around the world.

June 7, 1954 in the village of Obninskoye, Kaluga Region, at the Physics and Energy Institute named after A.I. Leypunsky (Laboratory “B”), the world’s first nuclear power plant was launched, equipped with one uranium-graphite channel reactor with water coolant AM-1 (“peaceful atom”) with a capacity of 5 MW. From this date the history of nuclear energy began.

During the Great Patriotic War, work began on the creation of nuclear weapons, led by physicist and academician I.V. Kurchatov. In 1943, Kurchatov created a research center in Moscow - Laboratory No. 2 - later transformed into the Institute of Atomic Energy. In 1948, a plutonium plant with several industrial reactors was built, and in August 1949, the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested. After the production of enriched uranium was organized and mastered on an industrial scale, an active discussion began on the problems and directions of creating power nuclear reactors for transport use and generating electricity and heat. On behalf of Kurchatov, domestic physicists E.L. Feinberg and N.A. Dollezhal began to develop a reactor design for a nuclear power plant.

On May 16, 1950, a resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR determined the construction of three experimental reactors - uranium-graphite with water cooling, uranium-graphite with gas cooling and uranium-beryllium with gas or liquid metal cooling. According to the original plan, they were all supposed to work in turn on a single steam turbine and generator with a capacity of 5000 kW. ...

In May 1954, the reactor was launched, and in June of the same year, the Obninsk nuclear power plant produced the first industrial current, opening the way for the use of atomic energy for peaceful purposes. Obninsk NPP has operated successfully for almost 48 years. April 29, 2002 at 11:31 a.m. Moscow time, the reactor of the world's first nuclear power plant in Obninsk was shut down forever. As the press service of the Russian Federation Ministry of Atomic Energy reported, the station was shut down solely for economic reasons, since “maintaining it in a safe condition became more and more expensive every year.” In addition to generating energy, the Obninsk nuclear power plant reactor also served as a base for experimental research and for the production of isotopes for medical needs.

The operating experience of the first, essentially experimental, nuclear power plant fully confirmed the engineering and technical solutions proposed by nuclear industry specialists, which made it possible to begin implementing a large-scale program for the construction of new nuclear power plants in the Soviet Union. Even during its construction and commissioning, the Obninsk NPP turned into an excellent school for training construction and installation personnel, scientists and operating personnel. The nuclear power plant performed this role for many decades during industrial operation and numerous experimental work on it. The Obninsk school was attended by such well-known specialists in nuclear energy as: G. Shasharin, A. Grigoryants, Yu. Evdokimov, M. Kolmanovsky, B. Semenov, V. Konochkin, P. Palibin, A. Krasin and many others.

In 1953, at one of the meetings, the Minister of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building of the USSR V.A. Malyshev raised before Kurchatov, Alexandrov and other scientists the question of developing a nuclear reactor for a powerful icebreaker, which the country needed in order to significantly extend navigation in our northern seas, and then make it year-round. At that time, special attention was paid to the Far North as the most important economic and strategic region. 6 years have passed, and the world's first nuclear-powered icebreaker, Lenin, set out on its maiden voyage. This icebreaker served for 30 years in harsh Arctic conditions. Simultaneously with the icebreaker, a nuclear submarine (NPS) was built. The government decision on its construction was signed in 1952, and in August 1957 the boat was launched. This first Soviet nuclear submarine was named “Leninsky Komsomol”. She made an under-ice trek to the North Pole and returned safely to base.

“The world's energy industry has entered a new era. This happened on June 27, 1954. Humanity is still far from realizing the importance of this new era.”

Academician A.P. Alexandrov

London, July 1 (TASS). The announcement of the launch of the first industrial nuclear power plant in the USSR is widely noted in the English press; the Moscow correspondent of the Daily Worker writes that this historical event “has immeasurably greater significance than the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima.

The world's first nuclear power plant is the official name of the main attraction of Obninsk, the history and structure of which was dedicated. Built in 1951-54, the Obninsk nuclear power plant operated for 48 years until April 29, 2002. With a power of only 5 MW, it was hundreds of times smaller than its modern descendants, but it was she who became the firstborn of Peaceful Atom. Moreover, the oldest nuclear power plants in the West - the British Calders Hill and the American Shippingport - were dismantled at the end of their service life. And at the Obninsk NPP, since 2009, there has been an industrial memorial complex - a kind of quasi-museum, which, however, is not so easy to get into.

Previously, I showed many milestones of the Soviet atomic project. For example, in Kyrgyzstan, the first uranium mine in the USSR, where ore was mined with a pick and transported on donkeys. Here is the neighboring one in Tajikistan - the city of the first Soviet uranium. This is where the first atomic bomb in the USSR was detonated in 1949, once and for all depriving America of its monopoly on superweapons. Here, from the hills of neighboring Verkh-Neyvinsk, is a center for isotope enrichment of uranium, and there are also Sarov, Ozyorsk, Seversk, Zheleznogorsk and other closed cities, which are oh so difficult to get into! The Soviet nuclear project, as is commonly believed, began with Beria’s report to Stalin about American developments, and the words of the leader - “We must do it!” Then there was the explosion over Hiroshima, plans for the atomic bombing of Soviet cities, a hasty search for uranium in various places from to, and finally the creation by the 1950s of not yet nuclear parity with potential adversaries, but weapons of retaliation. However, an atomic bomb is only the end result, and the key link in the chain of its creation is a nuclear reactor that produces plutonium. The world's first nuclear reactor, nicknamed the Chicago Woodpile for its location and characteristic appearance, was built in 1942 by the Italian Enrico Fermi, and it was purely experimental. In 1943, the Clinton Woodpile, or X-1, the world's first "operating" reactor in continuous operation, came into operation in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and in 1948, it powered the enterprise's electrical grid for the first time in history. The first experimental reactor in the USSR, F-1, was launched in 1946 in Moscow Laboratory No. 2 (now the Kurchatov Institute) and operated until 2016, and in 1948, in what is now Ozersk (Chelyabinsk region), the first industrial development reactor A-1 began operating. provided the first Soviet atomic bomb. However, as often happens, theory was ahead of practice: if the first purely paper project of an atomic bomb in the USSR appeared back in 1940, then in 1945 academician Pyotr Kapitsa presented a report “On the use of intra-atomic energy for peaceful purposes.” From the very beginning, the future Obninsk was located a little away from the atomic project, as if above the fray: Laboratory “B”, which gave it its start, founded in 1946 (since 1960 - the Institute of Physics and Energy), never dealt with nuclear weapons.

We will begin the path to the world's first nuclear power plant in the Old Town - an area of the 1950s, built back in the days when there was not the city of Obninsk, but a village at Object "B" and a scattering of estates, villages and boarding schools around it. I talked about the Old Town with its quiet shady streets, grandiose old pine trees, silence and cleanliness in the last part, but now let’s continue our walk to the beginning of Lenin Avenue. In the frame above is the IPPE House of Culture, completed in 1954, almost simultaneously with the nuclear power plant, and although the monument in front of it is to Lenin, this porch remembers the whole flower of Soviet nuclear and space science.

The Old Town has a surprisingly sterile landscape, as if you were in the 1960s:

And here it’s not the 21st century that wedges in, but only the 1980s in the backyard:

One of the oldest buildings in Obninsk is a school (1949), where the children of the first employees of Laboratory “B” studied, and great scientists and designers entered its doors as just someone’s dads or moms. The monument in front of the school, however, is not to one of the eminent parents of its students, but to Stanislav Shatsky, familiar to us from the last part - his colony "Vivacious Life" is from here across the ravine.

The last blocks in front of the IPPE, where the street makes a very noticeable turn - in the perspective of Lenin Avenue, not the building of the institute, but beyond Protva:

The houses on the other side of the block face the Institute:

The facades of the houses in both blocks south and north of Lenin Avenue are the same, and their appearance is clearly from the turn of the 1940s-50s. But house No. 1 looks completely different from the yard:

The main IPPE building, peeking out from behind the entrance, is in the same style:

At the entrance there are a couple more buildings, one of which is occupied by institute offices, the other by a telephone exchange:

I was not given permission to take photographs on the IPPE territory, and the Obninsk NPP is located on a different site, so I was not behind the main entrance. But the Main Building is a building with a very interesting history, and its architecture clearly shows that it was not built at the time of the “songs of the victors”: it was a Spanish orphanage. More precisely, the building was founded in 1937 as a boarding school for children suffering from tuberculosis, but just on the eve of its opening, the Santai steamship from Bilbao arrived in Leningrad, and soon the train brought five hundred Spanish children and several dozen of their teachers to the Obninsk station. Some of these were the children of Spanish revolutionaries like Dolores Ibarruri, some were simply orphans and refugees whose homes were destroyed by the Civil War. The USSR, born of its Civil War, had enormous experience in rehabilitating street children, but it was not easy to cope with the Spanish temperament: the children took the toys apart piece by piece and distributed them equally, they fought with daisies in the meadow (in their homeland it was a symbol of children's fascist organizations), the very first football match stripped the building of most of its glass, and one day little Spaniards climbed into the control room of the Obninsk station and staged a semaphore doomsday. This whole extravaganza did not last long - during the war, the Spanish orphanage was evacuated to Saratov, the grown-up Ruben Ibarruri became a pilot and died a hero, and people with Spanish surnames are still not uncommon in Russia (for example, in my student days I had a classmate Sanchez-Perez). The capital buildings in a beautiful, clean place quickly found a new owner - Object "B". And yet, on the day of my arrival at the IPPE, there was a fair amount of fuss going on - a delegation led by the Kaluga governor and the Spanish ambassador came to unveil the memorial plaque.

13. photo courtesy of the press service of JSC State Research Center of the Russian Federation IPPE

The house in frame No. 10 served as apartments for teachers. Judging by its appearance, the IPPE Hotel also belonged to the Spanish orphanage, the façade of which is clearly visible at the end of Mendeleev Street, which hugs the Institute, if you stand facing the entrance and look to the right.

On the ground floor, behind an inconspicuous door, there is an excellent canteen “Health”, among whose visitors there are many obvious people of science:

And if you turn left at the hotel and walk along the fence of the institute, then at the foot of one of the buildings you can see a nice wooden house.
On the closed territory of the IPPE, near the Main Building, there are monuments to Dmitry Blokhintsev and Alexander Leipunsky. The first is better known as one of the founders of the famous Institute of Nuclear Research and the author of a number of discoveries in quantum physics; he headed Object “B”, although not for long, but at the most crucial time - 1950-56. Alexander Leypunsky was the scientific director of the institute. He laid the foundations of the IPPE scientific school, the flower of local science is his students and the students of his students, therefore, since 1996, the institute has been called IPPE named after Alexander Leipunsky. Well, this wooden mansion is known as “Leipunsky’s house” - the scientist lived here in 1949-72, until his death. Nowadays it is not a museum, but an ordinary and dilapidated municipal housing:

Delving further into the woods, you can see another similar house - these are the remains of the Turliki estate, better known as Morozovskaya Dacha. In 1901, the nobleman and famous publicist Viktor Obninsky, the owner of the Belkino estate familiar to us from the previous part, to whom the city owes its name through the railway station, settled here. In 1909, Turliki was bought by Margarita Morozova, a half-relative of Savva Morozov, the textile king from. Under her, in the 1910s, wooden buildings were built - Leipunsky's house was originally the mansion of the estate manager, and this is the house for guests of the estate:

And a little further away is the stone Main House, in an equally sad state:

Basically it was built under Obninsk in the romantic “English” style. An observation tower rose above the roof, and the interiors were decorated with furniture from the Kaluga house of Imam Shamil, the leader of the endless Caucasian War who surrendered to the Russian authorities. There was heating, elevators, linoleum floors - everything was according to the latest technology of that time. In the 1910s, under Morozova, the house was rebuilt, and there is a version (it seems not entirely reliable) that the textile princess ordered the project from the founder of Moscow Art Nouveau Lev Kekushev.

During the revolution and civil war, approximately the same thing happened to Turliki as to most Russian estates, and since 1918, “Beautiful Life” has spread here from behind the ravine. And in 1942, the Morozov dacha, together with the Spanish orphanage, was occupied by the Headquarters of the Western Front. The roof of the estate was painted khaki, the tower was chopped off, and a net of barbed wire was stretched between the trees, over which spruce branches were thrown - the estate was not visible from the air. A whole system of underground communications grew under the buildings - the so-called Zhukovsky caves, which, thanks to the efforts of popular rumor, grew into the semblance of medieval catacombs. After the war, the Morozov dacha served as a home for high-ranking guests, primarily Igor Kurchatov, who regularly came to supervise the work of Laboratory “B”. Then it was an IPPE dispensary, and in 2016 Turliki was transferred to the balance of the city. The estate is now awaiting restoration, but until it has been put in order, the entrance to the territory is closed, only the museum sometimes conducts excursions. However, the interiors of the house have been preserved. Well, I walked for a long time in the snow along the fence to find a suitable view of the facade:

All this can be seen just by arriving in Obninsk. But IPPE is spread over half the city, its size is worthy of a large plant (2 km by 500 m), it consists of two sites separated by a road, and the Obninsk NPP is located in the very heart of that site, which is further away. Having called the museum, I found out that excursions to the World's First Nuclear Power Plant are provided free of charge, but for groups of at least 15 people, without the possibility of joining a ready-made group and without taking photographs. Then I called Communications Director Alexei Yurievich Gromyko, and you owe the rest of this post to him: he was interested in my proposal, but still it took another week for all the approvals, calls and letters to the press service, the museum and the security service. As a result, I was allowed to join a group of schoolchildren and take photographs “in designated places” - that is, strictly inside the building of the World's First Nuclear Power Plant. And so, after walking around the city, at the agreed time I was at the checkpoint, where a bus with ninth-graders from one of the Obninsk lyceums was waiting. I took the following shots of graffiti on the way back at dusk - the entrances of the two sites are connected by the same Mendeleev Street:

Laboratory "B" - IPPE has developed more than 120 nuclear reactor projects over its history. But the original AM-1 project was not deciphered as Atom Mirny, but as Atom Morskoy. No weapons were created here, but still, Laboratory “B” also worked for the defense industry: its first project was nuclear reactors for submarines. The huge uranium-graphite reactor was not very suitable for ships, unlike a power plant. The world's first nuclear power plants (in the USSR) and nuclear submarines (in the USA) went into operation almost simultaneously - in 1954, but the creation of the Soviet nuclear submarine dragged on until 1959, and the crews for it were also trained in Obninsk. In subsequent decades, IPPE created nuclear reactors that could stand still, drive, swim, and even fly.

Among the brainchildren of the IPPE were not only the nuclear reactors of most Soviet nuclear power plants, ships and icebreakers, but also such exotic things as the mobile nuclear power plant-all-terrain vehicles "Pamir" (in the frame below they are in the background of the thermal power plant of the Obninsk nuclear power plant) for power supply to geological parties in the remote corners of the Far North or space nuclear reactors "Buk" and "Topaz" with a one-year service life, which ensured the operation of satellite equipment.

IPPE access road, diesel locomotive at the bus stop. Obninsk NPP equipment was transported along these tracks:

If next to the main site there is Leipunsky’s house, then at the second site, which is located on the site of the village of Pyatkino, there is Kurchatov’s house. This is no longer an estate - a wooden mansion, in which it is difficult to recognize the Stalinist style, was built in 1952-53. Now it is in a protected area, looking out from behind the gate on the top floor, but it is planned to equip it with a museum and an interactive educational center for children.

The most interesting thing in this house is on the reverse side: the snow-covered Bench of Three “Ks”, on which Igor Kurchatov, Sergei Korolev and Mstislav Keldysh sat. And although it is not known for sure whether they were ever all here together, it is breathtaking to think what prospects could be discussed on this bench on warm summer nights, without unnecessary officialdom.

At the checkpoint, I handed over a backpack with a laptop, a phone and flash drives to the storage room, and the soldier-guard checked my passport with the list, and together with the guide and the person in charge of the museum, Inna Mikhailovna, I boarded the bus. Groups of “15 people or more” are here precisely because the checkpoint to the nuclear power plant is a little less than a kilometer away, and of course, tourists are not taken on foot through the territory of such a sensitive institute. Even the façade of the Obninsk Nuclear Power Plant and the information posters next to it are prohibited from being removed!

25. photo courtesy of the press service of JSC State Research Center of the Russian Federation IPPE

Peaceful Atom was created in the strictest secrecy; from the air, the site had to have a minimum of differences from city blocks. Therefore, the Obninsk NPP consists of two buildings - to the left of the main road is the nuclear power plant itself with a reactor, and to the right is the thermal power plant. It is not entirely obvious to the average person that a nuclear reaction is used to heat a boiler, and even nuclear ships are actually steamships. Likewise, at the thermal power plant, hot steam was supplied from the reactor hall through an underground steam pipeline. On June 26, 1954, the power start-up of the world's first nuclear power plant took place, and when a cloud of steam appeared above the building of the thermal power plant, not yet hot enough to spin the turbine, Igor Kurchatov exclaimed “Enjoy steam!”: for nuclear scientists, this phrase means about the same as Gagarin’s "Go!" for astronauts. Those pipes from which the “light steam” came out have not been preserved; they are visible in the black and white photograph with the “Pamirs” (No. 21a), and the current striped pipes are of late Soviet construction.

The current status of the Obninsk NPP is twofold. With a power of 5 MW, by the end of the 20th century, the “old lady” (as the nuclear scientists affectionately called her) worked mainly for scientific purposes, and also produced isotopes for medicine. Its exploitation did not pay off, the design period had expired long ago (although the “old lady” held on cheerfully and could have worked for many more years), and in 2002 it was decided to shut down the Obninsk NPP - the first of the Soviet nuclear power plants. But they did not destroy its building, and in parallel with the dismantling of the equipment, the creation of an industry memorial complex took place. It opened for tourists in 2009, conservation work was completed in 2015, but even now the World’s First Nuclear Power Plant resembles a working enterprise rather than a museum, and in its narrow corridors we met concentrated employees more than once or twice. At the entrance, according to the regulations, the group dresses in white coats and shoe covers.

The tour passes through 4 objects. The first is the control and radiation safety post on the first floor. Recorders and dials of measuring instruments here continuously showed data on the level of radiation and air composition in the working premises of the station. The valves on the wall on the left each correspond to one of the rooms from where, when they were pressed, an air sample was taken for analysis.

Minor disruptions in the operation of the world's first nuclear power plant initially occurred regularly, sometimes several times a day, but none of them turned into a serious emergency. Over the 48 years of operation at the Obninsk NPP there was not a single dangerous release of radiation into the environment or cases of exposure of employees (but at other facilities of the institute in the same 1954 there was a much more serious incident - not with the dead, but with the injured).

Dosimeters, including a “pencil” - at the workplace, each employee had one of these hanging on the chest:

Radiation protection suits. These were used when repairing equipment in the “hot chamber” room, where spent fuel assemblies were cut. When putting one on, they also inflate it from the inside, so that at the slightest depressurization, the person notices this by the air escaping, and has time to leave the dangerous room while the air leaves the suit, preventing contaminated air from penetrating under the suit.

In general, it is difficult to talk about nuclear power plants, if only because most of its technology is, in principle, not understandable to people far from the topic. For example, the UIM-2D device for measuring the speed of impulses - how many of you reading these lines does this mean anything?

Straight to the station master's office. The situation here changed several times while the nuclear power plant was in operation, and the current one is recreated as it was in the 1950s. There are portraits of directors on the wall, and a small display of measuring instruments on the table:

But the main artifact of this room is the guest book. Initially, the Obninsk NPP was built in such a secret environment that not even all construction participants knew what exactly they were doing - they simply made calculations without being aware of the whole picture. When Pravda wrote about the launch of the Peaceful Atom, not even all the employees of Object “B” knew that they had this Peaceful Atom, and when the men walking by asked the nuclear workers who had covered the clearing near the shore of the Protva, “What are you celebrating?” They answered - “We are celebrating the Lunar Eclipse!” But soon Peaceful Atom began to open up to the world, and only under the Soviets, more than 60 thousand people visited the Obninsk NPP as part of various delegations (for comparison, now the museum’s attendance is 3-5 thousand tourists a year).

An old guest book with autographs of Georgy Zhukov, Yuri Gagarin, Ho Chi Minh, Indira Gandhi, Broz Tito and other already legendary personalities of the 20th century is now kept in Moscow. But the current book with inscriptions in all languages of the world looks impressive. Famous guests still visit the World's First Nuclear Power Plant today - for example, several years ago the British Prince Michael of Kent visited it.

And not far away, behind a door marked with children’s drawings and a monument to Kurchatov (he wore a “Sumerian” beard, by the way, because he was very young for his importance and tried to look more respectable among the veterans of physics) ...

The central control panel of the nuclear power plant is located. The strange thing on the left puzzled me with its absolute cosmic appearance, and it was really intended for space. This is nothing more than the already mentioned “Buk” (or rather, its mock-up), a space nuclear power plant for powering on-board equipment. Since 1970, at least 30 spacecraft have been launched with it.

Nuclear power plant control panel:

Once again, like (from his remote control - my current avatar), I can’t help but admire the technical design of Soviet nuclear technology.

On the other hand, there are fuel assemblies for different types of reactors (RBMK, VVR and BN-600). FA is what is loaded into the core of a nuclear reactor. Each assembly is a "bundle" of fuel rods - fuel elements, long rods with nuclear fuel pellets inside, and is designed so that the nuclear reaction is efficient but controllable. The word “TVEL” was also born in Laboratory “B” in 1951, even before the construction of the Obninsk NPP, and their creator was Vladimir Malykh, whom his colleagues called “the king of TVELs”. Today, Russia, represented by the TVEL company, with its main production in Elektrostal near Moscow, accounts for 17% of the world nuclear fuel market, and 100% for some types of reactors.

Well, the last point is the holy of holies of the nuclear power plant, its reactor. The path to it is along an inconspicuous staircase in the floor, along narrow winding corridors:

First, the corridors lead to the crane control panel. This control panel did not always work, but only when opening the reactor cover to replace active process channels:

Behind the green windows there appear to be models. In fact, half a meter of protective quartz glass gives this effect:

The crane operator's cabin looks into the reactor hall like a gloomy three-eyed Martian:

At the bottom right is a characteristic “sieve”, a cooling pool for waste channels:

The channels themselves, of course, are fuel-free and “clean”:

When the reactor was closed with a multi-ton lid, the crane operator worked from the console on a glassed-in platform almost above the reactor itself. The chief designer of the Obninsk NPP reactor was Nikolai Dollezhal, who participated in the creation of reactors and subsequent Soviet nuclear power plants.

The guide said the phrase “America is a country of atomic darkness, Russia is a country of atomic light.” The USA created an atomic bomb and dropped it on the city, and the USSR, although it was 4-5 years behind in weapons and ships, created the world's first nuclear power plant. In 1956, the first nuclear power plant in Britain produced electricity, and in 1957 - in the USA. In 1958, the Siberian Nuclear Power Plant began operating near Tomsk, ten times more powerful than Obninsk, but still mainly engaged in the production of plutonium. The same applies to the Beloyarsk nuclear power plant in the Urals, launched in 1964, now the oldest operating in Russia. And the first completely civilian nuclear power plant in the country was Novovoronezh, which began operating in the same 1964. But sadly, the most famous nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union remains the same, and there is great injustice in this. When the disaster happened there, headlines appeared in the foreign press like “Savages should not be allowed near high technologies,” and their authors clearly managed to forget who exactly created these technologies and first implemented them. At the moment, the Obninsk NPP reactor has 441 living “descendants”; Japan shut down another 40 of its reactors after Fukushima. And Russia continues to build nuclear power plants and supply fuel to them both at home and around the world.

But the museum of the World's First Nuclear Power Plant is unlikely to ever become easily accessible - it is located too far from the entrance, and the IPPE is doing too much important work to make the passage to it free. Finally, a view of the IPPE from the train, the Obninsk NPP has a high chimney of the main building on the left and low chimneys of the thermal power plant in the middle.

Obninsk forms a clearly visible agglomeration, which includes Balabanovo, Borovsk, Maloyaroslavets and many smaller towns and villages. As already mentioned in the last part, now this is one of the most prosperous corners of Russia. Well, Borovsk is responsible for the historical center of this system, where we will go in the next 3-4 parts.

KALUGA REGION-2018
and table of contents.
and table of contents.
. City.
Obninsk The world's first nuclear power plant.
Borovsk. Pafnutev Monastery and surroundings.
Borovsk. Center.
Borovsk. Suburbs and details.
Kaluga. General color.
Kaluga. Old market and surroundings.
Kaluga. Churches.
Kaluga. Chambers and mansions.
Kaluga. Cradle of Cosmonautics.