The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945–70
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From the Russian Perspective The Cold War Atomic Intelligence Game, 1945–70 Oleg A. Bukharin Since its inception in the early impact on the Soviet nuclear 1940s and through much of the weapons program of testing mor- Cold War, the Soviet atomic atoriums and the proposed project was the focus of a mas- limited test ban treaty was criti- sive intelligence effort by the cal when Washington was United States and its allies. Of developing its position on these primary interest were the issues issues in the 1950s and 1960s. of uranium availability; the pro- duction of highly enriched In pursuing these objectives, the uranium (HEU) and plutonium; US atomic energy intelligence The USSR’s elaborate nuclear warhead R&D and test- effort was global in scope. It countermeasures were ing; and the nuclear weapons involved a wide range of covert intended to prevent production and management operations, exploitation of open the West from learning infrastructure.1 source materials, and the use of about its nuclear technical collection systems. program. Washington needed such infor- While much has been written mation to assess the Soviet about US operations against nuclear strike capability. Esti- Soviet targets (including in Stud- mates of the Soviet inventories of ies in Intelligence), relatively HEU and plutonium when put little attention has been given to together with data on warhead the USSR’s elaborate counter- designs would allow CIA ana- measures intended to prevent the lysts to gauge the size and West from learning about its composition of the Soviet nuclear nuclear program. Based on pub- weapons stockpile. Information lic information, this article seeks on Moscow’s knowledge of to examine the Soviet nuclear nuclear weapons effects was denial and deception (D&D) cam- needed to evaluate the capability paign from 1945 until 1970. of the Soviet Union to design warheads for air-defense and This period is of particular inter- anti-missile missiles and to est. The 1950s and 1960s were Born in Russia, Dr. Oleg A. develop hardened warheads the formative years of the Soviet Bukharin received his Ph.D. in capable of surviving US ballistic nuclear program. By the end of physics from the Moscow missile defenses. Analysis of the this period, Moscow had a Institute of Physics and mature nuclear weapons technol- Technology. He has been studying ogy base and a thoroughly and writing about the Russian 1 See, for example, “The Soviet Atomic En- integrated and redundant weap- nuclear complex for 14 years. He ergy Program,” National Intelligence Esti- ons complex, the configuration of is currently affiliated with mate 11-2A-65 (Washington, DC: CIA, which remained largely the same Princeton University. 19 May 1965). All US intelligence docu- until the end of the Cold War. In ments referenced in this article were ac- cessed at http://www.ucia.gov or located in many ways, these were also the This article is unclassified in its the US National Archives in College Park, most dangerous years of the Cold entirety. Maryland. War. The 1962 Cuban missile Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 48, No. 2 1 Soviet D & D Nuclear facilities were built in 10 closed cities that did not crisis and other dramatic events appear on maps. rate, multi-layered system of of that period were of critical sig- denial and deception, the main nificance in shaping approaches elements of which included the to national defense, foreign pol- restriction of access to nuclear icy, and intelligence that served facilities and personnel, strict each country for the balance of information protection mea- the Cold War confrontation. sures, an enhanced established in 1944 as the NII-9 counterintelligence posture, and research institute in the NKVD technical countermeasures. Protecting Nuclear Secrets system—it was not transferred to the broader nuclear program The nuclear weapons program, until October 1945. Denial of Access the crown jewel of Soviet mili- tary power, has always been a The pervasive role of state secu- Secrecy considerations were par- closely guarded secret. During its rity organizations in the Soviet amount in the development of the early years, the program was atomic effort was due to the pro- nuclear infrastructure. While directed by the Special Commit- gram’s high priority for national some research and design labora- tee chaired by Lavrenti Beria, security; the requirement for tories were established in the head of the Soviet NKVD absolute secrecy; the ability of Moscow and other open cities, the (People’s Commissariat of Inter- nuclear managers with state more critical fissile material pro- nal Affairs). State security security backgrounds to get duction centers and nuclear generals were appointed to key things done; and the NKVD’s weapons research and produc- management positions at nuclear vast resources, which included tion facilities were built in 10 research institutes and produc- funding, materiel, and a work- closed nuclear cities, which are tion facilities. The NKVD, which force drawn from the GULAG now known by their Russian eventually became the KGB, prison network. acronym ZATO. The construction played a key role in nuclear safe- of the first-line nuclear weapons guards and the physical Beria was executed following the R&D center (Sarov) and fissile protection of nuclear facilities.2 death of Stalin in 1953, and sub- material production facilities The NKVD also was charged sequent purges of many former (Ozersk, Novouralsk, and Les- with nuclear construction and and active NKVD/KGB officers noy) began during 1946–47. had the power to establish and reduced the state security pres- Subsequently, they were joined run its own nuclear R&D and ence in the nuclear complex. The by a cluster of second-line facili- production facilities. For exam- program itself was reorganized in ties (Snezhinsk, Trekhgorny, ple, the Bochvar Institute of June 1953 to become the USSR Seversk, Zheleznogorsk, Zele- Inorganic Materials (VNIINM), Ministry of Medium Machine nogorsk, and Zarechny), most responsible for the development Building (Minsredmash, the pre- located in the Urals and western of plutonium production and pro- decessor of today’s Ministry of Siberia. cessing technologies, was Atomic Power, Minatom), and it started to resemble other minis- To conceal operations from for- 2 In the postwar years, prior to becoming tries of the Soviet military- eign spies and increase the Committee of State Security/KGB in industrial complex. survivability against an atomic 1954, the Soviet state security organiza- bombardment, nuclear cities tion was known sequentially as the NKGB The emphasis on secrecy and were built in densely forested (People’s Commissariat of State Security, security in the nuclear area areas deep inside the USSR’s 1943–46); MGB (Ministry of State Securi- ty, 1946–53); and MVD (Ministry of Inter- remained, however. To thwart land mass. The cities did not nal Affairs, 1953–54). KGB is used in this foreign intelligence operations, appear on maps. In non-secret article for simplicity’s sake. the Soviet Union built an elabo- documents, they were assigned 2 Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 48, No. 2 Soviet D & D The USSR’s 10 Closed Nuclear Cities New Name Old Name CIA Name Established Function Sarov Arzamas-16 Sarova 1946 Nuclear Weapons R&D Warhead assembly/disassembly Snezhinsk Chelyabinsk-70 Kasli 1957 Nuclear Weapons R&D Ozersk Chelyabinsk-65 Kyshtym 1947 Plutonium production (Chelyabinsk-40) Nuclear component manufacturing Zheleznogorsk Krasnoyarsk-26 Dodonovo 1950 Plutonium production Seversk Tomsk-7 Tomsk 1949 Plutonium production HEU production Nuclear component manufacturing Novouralsk Sverdlovsk-44 Verkh-Neivinsk 1946 HEU production Zelenogorsk Krasnoyarsk-45 Zaozerniy 1956 HEU production Lesnoy Sverdlovsk-45 Nizhnaya Tura 1947 HEU production until late 1950s; then warhead assembly/disassembly Trekhgorny Zlatoust-36 Yuryuzan 1952 Warhead assembly/disassembly Zarechny Penza-19 Penza 1955 Warhead assembly/disassembly the names of nearby towns and a 817 [the code-name of the navigation landmark for numerical suffix. The use of post- Mayak complex] it was estab- aerial reconnaissance. I con- box numbers continued until the lished that water in cooling sider this argument early 1990s. towers would have a tempera- unconvincing because the site ture of about 80o C. The is located in the part of the D&D considerations at times resulting steam, which would Urals, which, within a small were decisive in determining the be inevitably produced in area, contains a very large design and location of new large quantities (especially number of similarly shaped nuclear facilities. For example, during winter), would thereby lakes. I therefore urge you to secrecy was the main factor in compromise the concealment consider moving Plant 817’s moving the first plutonium pro- . siting the plant near a lake site to Lake Kyzyltash.3 duction complex (now the Mayak would simplify the problem complex) from the initially pro- considerably because large This was how the closed city of posed remote location near the quantities of water would Ozersk and the plutonium com- Ufa River to its current location allow cooling without cooling plex, a source of several major in Ozersk, near Lake Kyzyltash. towers . and steam forma- According to a letter from the tion would be avoided . atomic project’s science director The site near Lake Kyzyltash 3 Letter from I. V. Kurchatov to L. P. Beria Igor Kurchatov to Beria: was proposed to the Special on moving the site of Plant 817 to Lake Kyzyltash, 14 November 1945, [originally] Committee. The [main] argu- Top Secret/ Special Folder,” in Lev Ryabev [I]n considering issues related ment against this site . is et al., eds., USSR’s Atomic Project II, Book to the construction of Plant that the lake could serve as a 1 (Moscow: Nauka-Fismatlit, 2000), 354. Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 48, No. 2 3 Soviet D & D plane piloted on 1 May 1961 by Gary Powers over the plutonium complex in Ozersk (and shot down shortly thereafter by an SA-2 surface-to-air missile near Yekaterinburg) was the first air- plane over this facility in the almost 15 years of its operation.