Top-secret atomic plant of the USSR or the "Skala" facility

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

In the spring of 1950, something strange began to happen on the banks of the great Siberian river Yenisei. In a remote taiga corner 40 kilometers north of Krasnoyarsk, thousands of builders, mostly prisoners, began to storm the unnamed mountain.

Right inside the granite massif of the Atamanovsky ridge, a grandiose enterprise, the top-secret "Combine No. 815", was being erected. Nearby, behind a perimeter of barbed wire, a city was being built for his workers, the future Krasnoyarsk-26. In the mountainous strata at a depth of two hundred meters, three nuclear reactors for the next several decades produced a product strategically important for the Soviet defense industry - plutonium-239. The following is a story about how a unique object with its own submontane railway appeared in the depths of the Sayan Mountains.

Boeing B-29 Superfortress "Enola Gay" strategic bomber. The bomber was named Enola Gay after the mother of Paul Warfield Tibbets Jr., commander of the Enola Gay and the 509th Air Regiment. Tibbets was considered one of the best pilots in the United States Air Force during the Second World War.

Immediately after the end of World War II, the main task of the Soviet defense industry was the creation of nuclear weapons. Work on the atomic project began in the USSR as early as 1942, but only the American bombing of Japanese cities led to the realization of the entire destructive potential of the new weapon and the consequences that the possession of it, and especially its absence, can lead to. Just two weeks after the day when the Enola Gay bomber dropped a bomb nicknamed "Kid" on Hiroshima, a special "Special Committee" was created in the Soviet Union, the main task of which was to achieve the necessary parity with the United States in nuclear weapons as quickly as possible.

Testing of the first Soviet atomic bomb.

This organization received virtually unlimited access to financial and human resources, and the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs Lavrenty Beria was put at the head of it (and the entire Soviet atomic project), who proved to be an extremely effective manager in solving this issue.

RDS-1, "special jet engine", the first Soviet atomic bomb was successfully tested at the Semipalatinsk test site on August 29, 1949, almost exactly four years after the start of active work on its creation, but this success was preceded by the construction of virtually from scratch an extensive scientific and industrial -technical infrastructure.

The main component of nuclear weapons is the isotopes of uranium-235 or plutonium-239, and their production is becoming a strategically important task. For the production of weapons-grade plutonium, already in November 1945, near Chelyabinsk, the construction of Combine No. 817, which later received the name "Mayak", began. In the early 1950s, another large enterprise of a similar profile was commissioned - Combine No. 816 in the Tomsk Region (now the Seversky Chemical Combine). However, the demand for plutonium was constantly growing, and both facilities built had a significant drawback. They were located on the surface of the earth.

Both Chelyabinsk and Tomsk regions are located deep in Soviet territory, but theoretically they could be bombed (including nuclear) by a potential enemy. The leadership of the Soviet Union could not risk the complete destruction of plutonium production, and therefore in February 1950 Beria, in a letter to Stalin, substantiated the need to build another chemical plant, No. 815, and to build it underground.

This letter also identified the future site of the new secret giant, located north of Krasnoyarsk on the Yenisei River. Beria pointed out that, firstly, it is even farther away from possible enemy air bases, secondly, it is provided with sufficient river water (for cooling the reactors), and thirdly, it allows the plant's structures to be placed in “solid rocky rocks, with deepening 200-230 meters above the roofs of the tallest buildings”. An important factor was the proximity to a large city, which made it possible to quickly provide the construction site with transport, energy and other infrastructure.

The construction of a large high-tech enterprise in the bowels of the mountain significantly increased the cost of the object, but the arguments presented by Beria seemed convincing to Stalin. The corresponding top secret resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR was adopted immediately, and the work immediately began to boil.

Three months later, in May 1950, a forced labor camp "Granitny" was formed on the banks of the Yenisei - like most large-scale construction projects of this kind, the construction of "Combine No. 815" was planned to be carried out with the help of a contingent of "z / k". However, the prisoners tried to get here, because for hard work, even if physically hard work, there was a reward. For example, if the plan was fulfilled by 121%, one working day was counted for three days of the deadline. Such objects were a real opportunity to significantly reduce it.

Specialists from the Moscow Metrostroy, miners and just young enthusiasts who came to the taiga from all over the Soviet Union worked together with the prisoners on the site. Like the rest of the nuclear facilities that were under the jurisdiction of the Special Committee of Beria, the construction site on the banks of the Yenisei did not experience problems in financing, and Stalin's close attention to it ensured the necessary operational efficiency. The resolution with the approval of the project was issued in February, and already in May (just 3 months later!) The construction of the railway line from the Bazaikha station began. At the same time, the construction of a residential settlement, power lines from the Krasnoyarsk CHPP and communication lines was underway. By the end of the first (incomplete) year of construction, almost 30 thousand people were already working at the facility. However, the most interesting thing happened in the summer.

In June 1950, builders began to build the main transport tunnel leading into the mountain. In parallel, active work was unfolded at 13 more sites: 3 adits were laid from the Yenisei, two - from the opposite side of the mountain, and at once eight shafts were passed from above. Some of them in the future entered the transport system of the complex, the rest were used for laying communications: ventilation systems, power supply and river water supply to the reactor.

The extracted rock was delivered outside by special accumulator electric locomotives, where it was filled with gullies in the Atamanov ridge. In addition, all these millions of cubic meters were used to create a special cornice along the banks of the Yenisei, along which a road and railroad was subsequently laid to the underground plant. Drilling and blasting operations were carried out around the clock, seven days a week with one goal - to quickly reach the cherished point located at a depth of 200-230 meters from the surface.

Here, in the heart of the mountain, a huge chamber with a height of 72 meters was erected. The underground hall was intended for nuclear reactors, the task of which was to produce plutonium. Despite all the attention paid to the object and the round-the-clock work of thousands of builders, the construction process took years. By 1956, six years after the start of work on the object, transport tunnels were finally put into operation, a railway came into the mountain, with the help of which the construction was intensified. Now tunnellers and materials for their work were delivered underground by electric trains. In 1957, the finished empty chamber was handed over for the installation of reactor equipment.

On August 28, 1958, after more than 8 years of hard work, Combine No. 815 was put into operation. The industrial reactor of the AD series built in the depths of the mountain reached a thermal power of 260 MW, at the beginning of September it was brought to its design capacity, and a month later, on October 9, 1959, the First Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee Nikita Khrushchev personally came here with an inspection. This visit once again emphasized the importance of the new nuclear facility for the Soviet Union.

So what was this unique venture like?

Combine No. 815, later renamed the Mining and Chemical Combine, was intended for the production of plutonium. Plutonium is absent in nature; it must be obtained by irradiating uranium-238 with neutrons. It is this process that takes place in nuclear reactors. In total, three reactors were located under the Siberian mountain at once: AD (entered service in 1958), ADE-1 (1961), ADE-2 (1964). It is curious that the last, third reactor, in addition to producing plutonium, produced electrical and thermal energy for the plant's satellite city.

The uranium irradiated in the reactors then went to the radiochemical plant, which was also part of the plant. Its final product was weapons-grade plutonium, which was then sent to the appropriate enterprises, where nuclear warheads were produced.

A real engineering miracle was built near Krasnoyarsk. Imagine a small nuclear power plant that was taken and somehow moved inside a mountain, surrounded by a 200-meter layer of granite that could withstand a nuclear strike. A real railway is laid into this mountain, a kind of hybrid with the subway. Every day, according to the schedule, ordinary electric trains ER2T, probably the most unusual electric trains of the Soviet Union, leave from the station of the neighboring city inside the rock massif. Four eight-car trains on a 30-kilometer-long line make two stops, and the last station (and as many as five kilometers of this service line) is under the mountain. On the Kombinat platform, the resemblance to the metro is further enhanced.

The enormity of the problem solved is also emphasized by the fact that a new city with a population of 100,000 was built from scratch in the taiga next to the Mining and Chemical Combine. Its existence was a strict secret, the territory was surrounded by barbed wire, ordinary Soviet citizens were forbidden to enter here, and all local residents signed an agreement not to disclose their real place of residence and type of activity.

Since 1956, this settlement has been known as Krasnoyarsk-26. Known, of course, in narrow circles, wide - until the second half of the 1980s, the era of glasnost, his existence was simply not suspected.

In 1994, the secret "mailbox" finally got its own unique name - Zheleznogorsk.

The costs of living in a closed city, secrecy, hazardous production were compensated by a large number of material and moral benefits. First, the city itself was comfortable. It was designed in the 1950s by Leningrad architects as an excellent example of neoclassicism, correct from the point of view of this decade. Excessive funding made it possible to build up the central part of Krasnoyarsk-26 with houses typical of that era.

The second advantage of living in Krasnoyarsk-26 was the excellent (by Soviet standards) city supply. Its residents did not know what a real shortage and queues were. Groceries have always had groceries, department stores - manufactured goods in the right assortment. And most importantly, all this wealth went exclusively to the local, because outsiders were simply not allowed into the city. The same was the case with crime, which was much less than the national average.

High-tech enterprises (and in addition to the Mining and Chemical Combine in the city, they located an NPO of Applied Mechanics, which produced the lion's share of all Soviet satellites) implied an appropriate level of employees. The strict regime of admission of nonresident with the access system made it possible to reduce the presence of potentially dangerous elements to practically zero.

Zheleznogorsk and the Mining and Chemical Combine are still operational facilities today, even despite the fact that weapons-grade plutonium has not been produced at underground reactors for a long time. However, they ceased to be secret for a potential enemy a long time ago, even in the first years of the enterprise's operation. Already in 1962, information appeared in the analytical reports of the CIA about the existence of a large underground plutonium production near Krasnoyarsk.

American spy satellites were working properly, and a large-scale construction near a large industrial center could not fail to attract their attention. The nature of the enterprise and its location were guessed indirectly. Hot water from the cooling system of the reactors after the purification measures was discharged through special tunnels directly into the Yenisei. Before the construction of the Sayano-Shushenskaya hydroelectric power station, it was typical for this river to freeze in winter, but not near Krasnoyarsk-26. Comparing the available information, the Americans drew the correct conclusions from it.

Now the Mining and Chemical Combine, the pride of Soviet nuclear engineers and builders, specializes in the storage and processing of spent nuclear fuel. The reactors that once provided the country with plutonium will be decommissioned and mothballed in the foreseeable future. The atomic heart of the Siberian mountain will stop beating, but it will forever remain an outstanding monument to the omnipotence of human genius.