Concept
Soviet atomic bomb project
Related concepts (20)
Atomic spies
Atomic spies or atom spies were people in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada who are known to have illicitly given information about nuclear weapons production or design to the Soviet Union during World War II and the early Cold War. Exactly what was given, and whether everyone on the list gave it, are still matters of some scholarly dispute. In some cases, some of the arrested suspects or government witnesses had given strong testimonies or confessions which they recanted later or said were fabricated.
Nuclear espionage
Nuclear espionage is the purposeful giving of state secrets regarding nuclear weapons to other states without authorization (espionage). There have been many cases of known nuclear espionage throughout the history of nuclear weapons and many cases of suspected or alleged espionage. Because nuclear weapons are generally considered one of the most important of state secrets, all nations with nuclear weapons have strict restrictions against the giving of information relating to nuclear weapon design, stockpiles, delivery systems, and deployment.
Nuclear arms race
The nuclear arms race was an arms race competition for supremacy in nuclear warfare between the United States, the Soviet Union, and their respective allies during the Cold War. During this same period, in addition to the American and Soviet nuclear stockpiles, other countries developed nuclear weapons, though none engaged in warhead production on nearly the same scale as the two superpowers. The first nuclear weapon was created by the United States of America during the Second World War and was developed to be used against the Axis powers.
Nuclear weapons of the United Kingdom
In 1952, the United Kingdom became the third country (after the United States and the Soviet Union) to develop and test nuclear weapons, and is one of the five nuclear-weapon states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The UK initiated a nuclear weapons programme, codenamed Tube Alloys, during the Second World War. At the Quebec Conference in August 1943, it was merged with the American Manhattan Project.
Calutron
A calutron is a mass spectrometer originally designed and used for separating the isotopes of uranium. It was developed by Ernest Lawrence during the Manhattan Project and was based on his earlier invention, the cyclotron. Its name was derived from California University Cyclotron, in tribute to Lawrence's institution, the University of California, where it was invented. Calutrons were used in the industrial-scale Y-12 uranium enrichment plant at the Clinton Engineer Works in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
Novaya Zemlya
Novaya Zemlya (ˌnoʊvəjə_ˈzɛmliə, also UKˌnɒv-,-aɪ.ə-, US-_zɛmˈl(j)ɑː; Но́вая Земля́, ˈnovəjə zjɪmˈlja, New Land) is an archipelago in northern Russia. It is situated in the Arctic Ocean, in the extreme northeast of Europe, with Cape Flissingsky, on the northern island, considered the easternmost point of Europe. To Novaya Zemlya's west lies the Barents Sea and to the east is the Kara Sea. Novaya Zemlya consists of two main islands, the northern Severny Island and the southern Yuzhny Island, which are separated by the Matochkin Strait.
Peaceful nuclear explosion
Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) are nuclear explosions conducted for non-military purposes. Proposed uses include excavation for the building of canals and harbours, electrical generation, the use of nuclear explosions to drive spacecraft, and as a form of wide-area fracking. PNEs were an area of some research from the late 1950s into the 1980s, primarily in the United States and Soviet Union. In the U.S., a series of tests were carried out under Project Plowshare.
Nuclear weapon yield
The explosive yield of a nuclear weapon is the amount of energy released such as blast, thermal, and nuclear radiation, when that particular nuclear weapon is detonated, usually expressed as a TNT equivalent (the standardized equivalent mass of trinitrotoluene which, if detonated, would produce the same energy discharge), either in kilotonnes (kt—thousands of tonnes of TNT), in megatonnes (Mt—millions of tonnes of TNT), or sometimes in terajoules (TJ). An explosive yield of one terajoule is equal to .
Soviet Army
The Soviet Army or Soviet Ground Forces was the main land warfare uniform service branch of the Soviet Armed Forces from 1946 to 1992. Until 25 February 1946, it was known as the Red Army. In Russian, the term armiya (army) was often used to cover the Strategic Rocket Forces first in traditional Soviet order of precedence; the Ground Forces, second; the Air Defence Forces, third, the Air Forces, fourth, and the Soviet Navy, fifth, among the branches of the Soviet Armed Forces as a whole.
History of nuclear weapons
Nuclear weapons possess enormous destructive power from nuclear fission, or a combination of fission and fusion reactions. Building on major scientific breakthroughs made during the 1930s, the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France collaborated during World War II, in what was called the Manhattan Project, to build a weapon using nuclear fission, also known as an atomic bomb. In August 1945, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were conducted by the United States against Japan at the close of that war, standing to date as the only use of nuclear weapons in hostilities.