distraction. And it turned out to actually distract the attention of spies, that is, technical intelligence in favor of foreign countries.
And then. Sketchy reactor designs were delivered quickly. An elevator shaft for the vertical channels of the reactor were prepared. Testing of individual stages took place directly on the machines of the pilot production. They say, probably, for good reason, all top-secret ideas, projects, developments, were made in super-super-super-secret areas, factories or entire cities. Such was the “invention” of the KGB, which Beria was very proud of.
At such a secret enterprise in Chelyabinsk-40, our first industrial reactor was built to produce plutonium according to the Dollezhal project.
The reactor was launched on July 19, 1948.
A year later, on August 29, 1949, an atomic bomb was tested.
With this bomb, as Kurchatov admitted to Dollezhal, we got the result a year earlier than we had expected.
There was a solution to the next regular task – to make the atom work for peaceful purposes.
It was about the construction of nuclear power plants.
Kurchatov's phrase, addressed to any employee of his Center he met in the morning, was like this, “Are there any achievements?” And no matter what the answer was, Igor Vasilyevich cheerfully suggested, “Go ahead!” He said to Dollezhalu in satisfaction, “There is progress. And what about new considerations?” Nikolay Antonovich had some thoughts.
After some time, Dollezhal, together with his assistants and, first of all, with the like-minded and talented engineer Pyotr Ivanovich Aleschenkov, created a super reactor for those times: with 128 fuel elements that ensured the power of NPPs at 5000 kilowatts!
For the creation of this reactor Dollezhal became the winner of the Lenin Prize.
As time flew, science did not stand still.
Soon the “military atomic theme” was raised again. The American submarine “Nautilus” was, as everyone understood it, created not for easy walks in the depths of the oceans.
Six months before his death, in September 1952, Stalin, realizing the significance of this step of Americans as an affirmation of US domination in the world's oceans, managed to sign the decree on the construction in the USSR of research institute No. 8 (NII-8). It soon became known as NIIET – the research institute of power engineering. Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal was appointed its director.
In Moscow in Malaya Krasnoselskaya Street there was a small territory on which a poor and small reinforcement plant was located. This was the “inheritance” Dollezhal received for NIIET, which meant that the institute had to be started from scratch.
And again, to build a reactor of enhanced power, large dimensions and – as a result – “sew” larger than in the first atomic projects, or rather, in their incarnations, the “clothes” of radiation protection.
For the ubiquitous spies, again there was a “telling of lie”: this time the smoke curtain of secrecy was the mythical “crystallizer” for “object 627”. And under this code (as witty persons of science used to joke) there could be, say, a workshop for filling siphons with sparkling water or production of “dry ice”, but in reality…
Well, it's like a joke: one short traditional Russian word of three letters is written on the fence, but there is firewood…
Only in 1958, the first Soviet nuclear submarine “Leninsky Komsomol” went out to sea. Captain II rank Leonid Osipenko was in charge of the first sea campaign of the submarine. A new era in the history of the Navy has begun.
In a word, the reactors built by Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal began the rapid development of power engineering in the 70s. There appear The Beloyarsk NPP, Smolensk, Kursk, Leningrad, Ingalinsk, Chernobyl ones… This word “Chernobyl” has become the synonym of the blackest tragedy experienced by the scientist. In his book “At the Source of the Man-Made World” Dollezhal asserts that there was no atomic explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. There was a thermal explosion which had to be extinguished differently than people in panic began to do.
And he is absolutely certain that no responsibility of a scientist to the highest institution will ever exceed the responsibility of a scientist to his own conscience and duty.
There is no person engaged in the atom who would not think about this simple truth.
Didn’t Academician Andrey Dmitrievich Saharov speak and write about this?
Wasn’t it because Academician Alikhanov withdrew from participating in the development of a new generation of bombs, which, as they say among physicists, “the 16th group of Zeldovich” “calculated” in Arzamas?
But, probably, for thousands of years, the meaning of the ancient dictum remains accurate and true: “PARA BELLUM!” – “If you want peace, be ready for war.”
This is where the brand of the pistol comes from – “PARABELLUM”…
Time is painting, timelessness is black
"We, Ivan Nikiforovich, live in Mineralnye Vody. Readers need to be explained how you got to the resort region?”
"This is a long story… But my life is even longer – the 95th year I walk on the earth.”
"But not for nothing. How many of your own, Medyanikovskiy autographs are left on it – and even what! City of Lermontov – one! Runway at the airport of Mineralnye Vody – two! Re-translational tower on Mashuk – three! Sanatoriums of the Ministry of Medium Machine Building in all cities of Mineralnye Vody – four! Car service stations – five!”
"Well, well, enough,” Ivan Nikiforovich interrupts me, "the list is really long. So, this is my fate, I will not say that it is the worst. In any case, I am not ashamed of my life, there is something to be proud of.”
We are sitting at the tea table in Medyanik’s house. Bees are circling above the amber honey…
"Eat, eat,” he treats me angrily. "Don’t refuse. This is special delicacy. Or Caucasian dzhigits are not fit to eat sweets? Do you know how much wealth my honey contains? All chemical elements! I’m telling you not only as a beekeeper, but also as a person, firstly, who has experienced the medical miracles of honey himself, and, secondly, as a person who was close to the most famous chemists and physicists of the country in the past.”
He laughs, so sincerely that I, enjoing his joke, try the honey. Ivan Nikiforovich is waiting for evaluation. There is nothing left but praise left: honey is really excellent.
“That's it!”
“By the way, your last name, Ivan Nikiforovich, comes from which word. From the word “honey” or from the word “copper”?”
“I do not know, Volodya. Probably closer to copper. So I say that if the tin is “tinsmith” or “zhestyanik”, well, and Medyanik is, naturally, from copper (med). It is a pity that the second letter “n” was lost when determining the surname.”
But it is true: wherever you look, everywhere on Mineralnye Vody, in Pyatigorsk, Kislovodsk, Essentuki there is a medyanikovsky trace. From everywhere, from any point of Pyatigorsk, for example, the TV tower on Mashuk is visible. And these are all autographs of Medyanik! And the question is ready to slip from my tongue. Ivan Nikiforovich foresees my maneuver and asks, “Let's not get on this tower
