The most unusual store in the USSR

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

"Isotopes" was the name of a specialized store in Moscow where radioactive substances were sold. And the demand for them was very high.

It is rather difficult to imagine a situation today when you can get radioactive substances just by going to a store, even in the most democratic country in the world. “The shop of a young terrorist” - that's how they joke today when they remember that just such a shop called “Isotope” existed in the USSR! It was popular not only among the entire Union - foreigners came here, and the store itself was engaged in export.

This store was located on the road to the center of Moscow, on Leninsky Prospekt. On the roof of the house there was a huge neon sign with a four-color image of an atom and inscriptions in three languages: “Atome pour la paix”, “Atom for peace”, “Atom for peace”. It was this phrase that best explained the reason for the creation of such an institution: in the late 1950s, the Soviet Union relied on the "peaceful atom".

It was about the fact that radioactivity is included in the daily life of a Soviet person and from now on will help him in everything - to save potatoes, get rid of sewer leaks and even count fish.

Irradiated potato

The very existence of this store became possible thanks to the opening made 25 years earlier, in 1934. Then the French physicist Frederic Joliot-Curie proved that man himself can create radioactivity. An incredible idea for those times.

After all, before that it was believed that not only artificial radiation is impossible - it is even impossible to control (slow down or accelerate) radioactive radiation, this is an intra-atomic, isolated process. Curie demonstrated the opposite: by irradiating aluminum with polonium, as a result of radioactive decay, he obtained nuclei of phosphorus atoms that are not found in nature. In other words, a radioactive isotope.

The most amazing thing about this discovery was that the isotope retained radioactivity only for a short time and its radiation could be easily detected. It is these properties that have opened a wide road for isotopes in industry, science, medicine, and even the art world. Within a year after the discovery of artificial radioactivity, scientists obtained more than fifty radioactive isotopes.

They functioned like invisible radios, sending signals of their whereabouts all the time. They could be recorded by dosimeters or charged particle counters. With the help of them it was possible, for example, to find out how quickly the walls of a blast furnace wear out. It was no longer necessary to interrupt the operation of the oven. It is enough to lay a radioactive substance in the wall, and after the blast furnace has started to work, check metal samples from each melt for radioactivity. If there was radiation in the cast iron, it was a sign of blast furnace wear.

With the help of isotopes, the fish was counted without taking it out of the water, the density of the fur was measured, it was checked whether the fertilizer is well absorbed by the plant, where there is a gas leak in the pipeline, soil moisture was determined, gastritis, stomach ulcers or cancer were diagnosed, valuable objects of art, jewelry were marked, banknotes or irradiated potatoes so that they do not germinate.

And this is only a small fraction of where isotopes were used. In the mid-1950s, there was a feeling that the Soviets wanted to transplant almost all industries on isotope rails. From the point of view of foreign policy, this also looked attractive. With their peaceful nuclear agenda, the USSR opposed themselves in every possible way to the militaristic United States, which bombed Hiroshima.

“Why is the Soviet atom great? The fact that he is demobilized. Yes, don't argue! He took off our military uniform. Since the first nuclear power plant was launched, the atom put on a working overalls. Isotopes are atoms in overalls, peaceful workers,”wrote the Ogonyok magazine in 1960.

The Isotopes store had been operating for a year by that time.

Delivery from people in uniform

In fact, it was never just a regular store. To begin with, the reagents were not sold to everyone, but only to those who had the right to them. And since an ordinary person did not need to go there, not all residents of Moscow understood what and in what form was sold there. Curious visitors were disappointed: “It was deserted and boring there: neither the formidable brilliance of mercury, nor the monumentality of uranium ingots … As in a museum without an exhibition,” recalls Victor from Moscow.

Here they required a certificate from work, which confirmed that you have the right to buy such goods. They called it "a document establishing the sanitary readiness of consumers to receive, store and work with the specified products." As a rule, these were representatives of factories, factories and research institutes.

The isotopes were sold in radiation shielded containers that had to be returned to the store within 15 days.

The salespeople had the position of "supervisor of the store," and they only hired people who knew the subject. In terms of format, Isotopes looked more like a showroom than a standard store with a counter, since it was impossible to see the product directly.

These were catalog entries and a glowing table showing what was in stock. At the same time, all this was supplied to the store directly by the Ministry of Internal Affairs - people in uniform.

It would seem that this enterprise should have been mega-successful and long-lived, with such a demand for isotopes. The 1950s saw the boom in radioisotope technology and instruments - it was distinguished by a high degree of simplicity and cheapness and became almost synonymous with the word "automation". But the situation turned out to be not so simple and unambiguous.

Radiation for export

In a socialist planned economy, where shortages were common, the supply of isotopes suffered from irregularities and problems with packaging (and therefore transportation safety). This radiation threat caused many questions from the Soviet post office, which soon became puzzled, but how to transport isotopes without risking others?

Moreover, there were failures in the Soviet system not only with the supply of substances directly, but also with protective equipment like lead houses and with dosimetry devices.

The shortage, problems of logistics, packaging, transportation, security equipment have brought to naught the euphoria around isotopes within the Soviet Union. But not outside of it. Soviet isotopes, due to their high quality and low price, were highly valued in the Western market.

For example, 1 gram of a highly enriched isotope could be sold for several thousand dollars. But in addition to the state monopoly, which was engaged in the export of isotope products, scientists themselves from various Soviet research institutes exported it illegally. In the west, they were usually paid with scientific equipment or the ability to conduct research in foreign laboratories with full support. Such transactions, as a rule, were formalized by agreements on international scientific and technical cooperation.

Since the 1990s, such exports have taken on a massive character, and private companies and companies affiliated with institutes have already started doing it. The Isotopes store, by the way, also closed shortly before the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 1990, the country's first store of instant cameras "Svetozor" with polaroids was opened in its place.