Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy
From Freepedia
Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy was a Soviet program to investigate peaceful uses of nuclear weapons (PNEs). It was analogous to the US program Operation Plowshare.
One of the better-known tests was Chagan of January 15, 1965. Radioactivity from the Chagan test was detected over Japan by both the U.S. and Japan in apparent violation of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT). The United States complained to the Soviets, but the matter was dropped.
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History
In November 1949, shortly after the test of their first nuclear device on September 23, 1949, Andrey Vyshinsky, the Soviet representative to the U.N., delivered a statement justifying their efforts to develop their own nuclear weapons capability. In the overblown rhetoric of the times, he said:
- “The representative of the USSR stated that although the Soviet Union would have as many atom bombs as it would need in the unhappy event of war, it was using its atomic energy for purposes of its own domestic economy; blowing up mountains, changing the course of rivers, irrigating deserts, charting new paths of life in regions untrodden by human foot. . . . The Ukrainian SSR representative pointed out that, despite the fact that the USSR had come into possession of the secrets of atomic energy production, it had not swerved from its insistence upon the prohibition of atomic weapons.”
However the U.S.S.R. did not immediately follow the U.S. lead in 1958 in establishing a program, Presumably, their position in support of a comprehensive nuclear test ban, stalled any efforts to establish such a program until the mid- 1960s.
But at some point they formally established Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy with Alexander D. Zakharenkov, a chief weapons designer was named to head the program. Initially, the Soviet program was focused on two applications, nuclear excavation and oil stimulation, as the U.S. Program had been. However, interest in other applications quickly developed, and within 5 years the Soviet program was actively exploring six or seven applications involving participation by some 10 govenment departments.
Once underway the Soviets conducted a much more vigorous program than the Americans' Operation Plowshare, of some 156 nuclear tests, some with multiple devices, between 1965 and 1989. Similar in aims to the American effort, with the exception that six of the shots were considered of an applied nature, that is they were not tests per se, but were used to put out runaway gas well fires and a methane blow out.
There were in fact two programs:
- "Employment of Nuclear Explosive Technologies in the Interests of National Economy." or IE - industrial underground peaceful nuclear explosions and testing of peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE) technologies which was "Program 6" -124 tests with 135 devices- with the objectives: Water reservoir development; canal construction (incl two row shots x 3 explosives); dam construction; and constructing underground cavities for burying toxic wastes,
- and
- "Peaceful Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy", or TIC - testing of industrial nuclear charges for use in peaceful activities. "Program No. 7" -32 tests with 38- devivces with the stated purpose of: searching for useful mineral resources (deep seismic sounding); breaking up ore bodies; simulating the production of oil and gas, and the formation of underground cavities for storing the recovered oil and gas. As well as 13 shots for the creation of transplutonic elements and one to control coal dust.
The "Program" numbers comes from the U.S.S.R.'s classification system of nuclear explosions, the first five programs designating various phases of nuclear weapon development.
The experiments continued past the disolution of the U.S.S.R., and came to an end with the adoption by Russia of a unilateral moratorium on the testing of nuclear weapons at Soviet test sites in 1989. Although it primarily was designed to support Mikhail S. Gorbachev's call for a world-wide ban on nuclear weapons tests, the Russians apparently also applied the moratorium to peaceful nuclear explosions as well.
Conclusion
As noted, the Soviet PNE Program was many times larger than the U.S. Plowshare Program in terms of both the number of applications explored with field experiments and the extent to which they were introduced into industrial use. Several PNE applications, such as deep seismic sounding and oil stimulation, were explored in depth and appeared to have had a positive cost benefit at minimal public risk. Several others, such as deep void storage, developed significant technical problems that cast a shadow on their general applicability. Some, such as closure of runaway gas wells, demonstrated a unique technology that may yet find application as a last resort. Still others were the subject of one or two tests but were not explored further for reasons that have never been explained. Overall, the program represented a significant technical effort to explore, what was seen at the time, to be a promising new technology, and it generated a large body of data, although only a small fraction of it has been made public.
Wikipedia links and references
External links and references
Categories: Soviet Union stubs | Soviet nuclear program | Cold War | Nuclear weapons | Nuclear weapons programs
