Anna”). “The town… had a triple belt of barbed wire,” the soldier writes: “the external fence with guard towers, then the zone with the settlement ‘Techa’ (after the river Techa) where the scientists lived, then the central ‘zone’ with the work force — soldiers, prisoners and released prisoners — and finally, the
Graphite for the production reactor was manufactured on the site, diverting most of the Soviet supply that year; US intelligence discovered “a serious shortage of graphite electrodes” in the USSR in 1947 and early 1948. (The US had continued selling graphite to the Soviet Union after Lend-Lease ended — about 5,500 tons in 1946. “With the development of the cold war,” the CIA noted in 1951, “exports were restricted to 1,500 tons in 1947 and stopped altogether in 1948 after the delivery of 700 tons.”) The graphite core of the A reactor would be about 30 X 30 feet in height and width, drilled with 1,168 vertical channels for aluminum-clad natural-uranium metal slugs, which would be dropped in at the top, irradiated and then gravity-discharged out the bottom into a spent-fuel pool. The core would be set below ground in a pit sixty feet deep.
They began assembling the reactor block in March 1948. Kurchatov delivered a speech. “You and I are founding an industry not for one year,” he told the staff, “not for two [but]… for centuries.” He hoped that a city would grow on the site with “kindergartens, fine shops, a theater” and that their children would succeed them at the work, “And if in that time not one uranium bomb explodes over the heads of people, you and I can be happy! And our town can then become a monument to peace. Isn't that worth living for!”
“When reactor assembly started,” writes Mikhail Pervukhin, “B. L. Vannikov, I. V. Kurchatov and E. P. Slavsky [the director of Chelyabinsk-40, a metallurgist] were always on hand. [MVD general] Avrami Zavenyagin would sometimes visit the site, as would A. N. Komarovsky, who was in overall charge of construction… I also visited several times. We inspected the assembly work very carefully, especially in the part of the reactor that would later become radioactive. We entered the reactor through a special manhole to check the quality of the work, the welding in particular. Since Vannikov, Zavenyagin and Komarovsky wore general's uniforms, the construction workers called the entry we used ‘the General's manhole.’” The workers were welding pipes to carry water through the reactor to cool it, a change from the F-l system made necessary by Anotchka's higher power level.
At Sarov, two hundred kilometers nearer Moscow, Zukerman's and Altshuler's groups worked regularly with high explosives at their site in the woods, studying implosion. “During this very early stage,” Zukerman writes, “not a lot of attention was paid to safety procedures. A charge [of HE] contained in an ordinary string shopping bag would be hung in front of the armored bunker. A few preliminary radiographs would be taken, which served to confirm that the charge was oriented in line with the X-ray beam. Then Maria Alekseevna Manakova would come out of the bunker and bang a hammer against a scrap of rail hung from a tree branch… These signals meant that an explosion was imminent and everyone on the field was to take cover. Sirens, telephones and similar ‘miracles’ of signaling and communications technology appeared only later.” Once, the high-voltage X-ray equipment induced a current in a cable connected to an electrodetonator while two members of the staff were still out on the field. “Suddenly there was a powerful explosion. Everyone in the bunker instantly understood: the charge Anya and Boris had been working on had blown up. Hearts stopped. A few seconds passed that seemed an eternity; then, in the doorway to the bunker, first Anya appeared, looking agitated, and behind her followed Boris, imperturbable as always. ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said, ‘that was our charge going off because of your induction. We had already stepped away from the barrel.’” When an experiment worked, they tallied it for the Soviet Union; when one failed they scored it “in favor of Harry Truman.”
For compression and initiator experiments, Altshuler devised a quick, cheap substitute for the precisely fitted two-piece lenses that would shape the implosive wave in the finished bomb: spheres of HE glued to a solid HE shell. This “charge for three-dimensional implosion of very simplified design,” as Altshuler calls it, made it possible “to realize up to twenty experiments a month.” They assembled the rough-and-ready charges in the field, heating their pot of glue over an open fire. On one occasion, writes Zukerman, “they were readying an experiment involving a large explosive charge, over one hundred kilograms. Suddenly the charge caught fire. In such cases, the burn can trigger a detonation, with all its consequences. [The group leader] stayed calm and collected. He led his brigade to the bunker and phoned the dispatcher to order everyone to keep away from the area. This time, nature was kind: there was never an explosion and the charge burned down without incident.” Accidents were acts of sabotage in Berialand. The scientists attributed the fire to spontaneous combustion — a passing bird had shat on the charge, they claimed, and the splash of liquid had functioned as a lens to focus the sunlight. It was a story only technological illiterates would swallow, and the bosses did.
In the winter and spring of 1948, the Soviet Union and the Western allies gave up any remaining pretense of continuing their wartime collaboration. When a Council of Foreign Ministers meeting broke down in London on December 15, 1947, in disagreement over the future of Germany, Ernest Bevin proposed to George Marshall “the formation of some form of union, formal or informal in character, in Western Europe backed by the United States and the Dominions.” Bevin started the process in January by pursuing an alliance with the Benelux countries — Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg — and France.
The Soviets, on their side, confident that war was not an immediate threat (“America may pull on our leg,” Georgi Malenkov told a group of Italian Communists, “but war is out of the question now”), moved to consolidate their control over Eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan was already a success, Marshall had reported to the US Cabinet in November — “the advance of Communism has been stemmed and the Russians have been compelled to make a reevaluation of their position.” Stalin resented the plan bitterly. Czechoslovakia in particular had attempted to take advantage of Marshall Plan aid. At a meeting with the Czech Prime Minister, who complained that his country needed foreign exchange, Stalin laughed in his face: “We know you have enough.” Still laughing, he turned to Molotov: “They thought they could lay their hands on some dollars, and they didn't want to miss the chance.” On February 25,1948, Soviet forces occupied Prague. Bedell Smith cabled Marshall from Moscow on March 1: “Full information on and explanation to… Congress of significance [of] recent Soviet moves in Czechoslovakia and Finland may result in speeding consideration and adoption [of] universal military training and building programs for Army, Navy, and particularly Air Force.”
Forrestal wanted a renewal of the draft and increased funding for the armed services. The US aviation industry was in nearly fatal trouble that winter as well, approaching bankruptcy unless defense contracts could be authorized immediately and funding accelerated. Marshall needed approval of $5.3 billion in Marshall Plan aid. The country required a good war scare to rally a recalcitrant Republican Congress. The Soviet takeover of Czechoslovakia helped, but not enough; in March, Marshall, Forrestal, the State Department's Robert Lovett and others colluded to add fuel to the fire. At a luncheon on March 4 that included Cabinet officials and senators, Forrestal records in his diary, “Marshall talked over the war situation… Everyone present agreed that the public needed information and guidance on the deterioration of our relations with Russia.”
Besides speeches, the war scare group called on General Lucius Clay, the intense, imperious military governor of the American zone of occupied Germany. Clay had predicted in November 1947 that the Soviets might decide to move against Berlin. The former capital of Nazi Germany, divided into four zones like the German nation, was embedded behind the Iron Curtain a hundred miles deep into the Soviet zone, beyond the range of more than token US military protection. The day after the war situation luncheon, Clay sent an Eyes-Only cable to Washington that Forrestal parlayed into a major event:
For many months, based on logical analysis, I have felt and held that war was unlikely for at least ten years. Within the last few weeks, I have felt a subtle change in Soviet attitude which I cannot define but which now gives me a feeling that it may come with dramatic suddenness. I cannot support this change in my own thinking with any data or outward evidence in relationships other than to describe it as a feeling of a new tenseness in every Soviet individual with whom we have official relations. I am unable to submit any official report in the absence of supporting data but my feeling is real. You may advise the chief of staff of this for whatever it may be worth if you feel it advisable.
