The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (VNIIEF; ) is a research institute based in

Sarov Sarov () is a closed city, closed town in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia. It was known as Gorkiy-130 (Горький-130) and Arzamas-16 (), after a (somewhat) nearby town of Arzamas,SarovLabsCreation of Nuclear Center Arzamas-16/ref> from 194 ...

(formerly Arzamas-16), Russia and established in 1947. During the Soviet era, it was known as KB-11 and All-Soviet (All-Union) Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (also abbreviated VNIIEF) (, ВНИИЭФ). It is currently part of the

Rosatom State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom (commonly referred to as Rosatom rus, Росатом, p=rosˈatəm}), also known as Rosatom State Nuclear Energy Corporation, (), or Rosatom State Corporation, is a Russian State corporation (Russia), sta ...

group. The All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics is the former Soviet Union's premier research and development center for nuclear weapons. The first Soviet atomic bomb was developed here in the late 1940s, after which the center continued as a center for nuclear weapons research. Many of the Soviet Union's best physicists were associated with Arzamas-16: Academician

Andrey D. Sakharov Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov (; 21 May 192114 December 1989) was a Soviet physicist and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, which he was awarded in 1975 for emphasizing human rights around the world. Although he spent his career in physics in the ...

worked here for nearly 20 years, and Academician Yuliy B. Khariton still served as the Center's scientific head in the 1990s. Before being given its current name, the facility was successively known as the Volga Office, KB-11, Object No. 550 (Site 550), "Kremlev" (Kremlyev), "Center 300, Moscow", Arzamas-75 and Arzamas-16. Other initial provisional names included Base 112 and Yasnogorsk. The researchers working there have sometimes referred to the place as "Los Arzamas" (after the American nuclear research facility Los Alamos). As of August 2019, the Research Institute of Experimental Physics was a very large research complex with these institutes: Theoretical and mathematical physics (), Gas dynamics and explosion physics (), Nuclear and radiation physics (), Laser physical research (), and the Scientific and Technical Complex () also known as the KB (), which consists of KB-1 (nuclear charges) (), KB-2 (nuclear munitions) (), KB-3 (special security) (), and KB-12 (special topics) ().

History

On February 11, 1943, a resolution was adopted by the

State Defense Committee The State Defense Committee () was an extraordinary organ of state power in the Soviet Union during the German-Soviet War, also called the Great Patriotic War, with complete state power in the country. General scope The Soviets set up the GKO ...

to begin work on the creation of an atomic bomb. The general leadership was entrusted to the Deputy Chairman of the State Defense Committee

Lavrentiy Beria Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria ka, ლავრენტი პავლეს ძე ბერია} ''Lavrenti Pavles dze Beria'' ( – 23 December 1953) was a Soviet politician and one of the longest-serving and most influential of Joseph ...

, who, in turn, appointed the head of the atomic project

Igor Kurchatov Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov (; 12 January 1903 – 7 February 1960), was a Soviet physicist who played a central role in organizing and directing the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons, and has been referred to as "father of the Russian ...

(his appointment was signed on March 10). The information received through intelligence channels facilitated and accelerated the work of Soviet scientists. Beginning at the end of 1945, a search began for a location for a secret facility, which would later be named KB-11. According to the memoirs of the academician

Yulii Khariton Yulii Borisovich Khariton (; 27 February 1904 – 18 December 1996) was a Russian people, Russian physicist who was a leading scientist in the former Soviet atomic bomb project, Soviet program of nuclear weapons. Since the initiation of the So ...

, the place for the future institute was researched carefully: it had to be located at a distance from the cities, since it was required to test various explosive structures so that active plutonium could be compressed and when combined, would exceed

critical mass In nuclear engineering, critical mass is the minimum mass of the fissile material needed for a sustained nuclear chain reaction in a particular setup. The critical mass of a fissionable material depends upon its nuclear properties (specific ...

. Having reviewed many locations, physicists came across a completely satisfying place in the former Sarov Monastery (a famous saint that lived in the monastery, the Saint Seraphim of Sarov, later became a patron saint of Russia's nuclear weapons) not far from

Arzamas Arzamas (, ) is a types of inhabited localities in Russia, city in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Russia, located on the Tyosha River (a tributary of the Oka River, Oka), east of Moscow. As of 2024, it has a population of 103,629. History Arzamas ...

(hence the names Arzamas-75 and Arzamas-16), on the border with the Mordovian reserve. On the territory of the monastery, there was plant number 550 (hence the names Site 550 etc.), which produced mortar shells, guns, rockets for BM-13 "Katyusha" rocket launchers, and other types of weapons. Behind the wall of the monastery there was a protected forest (the nature reserve is still very near to the

closed city) for hundreds of square kilometers, where test explosions could be carried out unnoticed.

Boris Vannikov Boris Lvovich Vannikov (; 26 August 1897 – 22 February 1962), was a Soviet politician and a political commissar of Azerbaijani Jewish origin who was one of the senior program managers in the Soviet program of nuclear weapons. Biography Bor ...

commissioned a survey of the plant and on April 1, 1946

was chosen as the location of the first Soviet “nuclear center,” later famously known as “Arzamas-16.” On April 9, 1946, a resolution was adopted by the

Council of Ministers of the USSR The Council of Ministers of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics ( rus, Совет министров СССР, r=Sovet Ministrov SSSR, p=sɐˈvʲet mʲɪˈnʲistrəf ˌɛsˌɛsˌɛsˈɛr), sometimes abbreviated as Sovmin or referred to as the ...

- No. 805-327ss on the creation of KB-11 at Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Kurchatov Institute). was appointed Head of KB-11 at the suggestion of Yu.B. Khariton, and the chief designer was

. Construction of KB-11 on the plant No. 550 base in the village of Sarov was entrusted to Glavpromstroy by the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR. To carry out all the construction work, a special construction organization was created - Construction Department No. 880 of the NKVD of the USSR. Since April 1946, the entire personnel of the plant No. 550 were enlisted as workers and employees of the Construction Department No. 880. In addition to civilian workers, the main contingent consisted of prisoners. On 07/01/1947, the number of prisoners in the labor camp at SU-880 was 10,098, of which 9044 were men and 1,054 were women. In February 1947, by the decree of the

KB-11 was classified as a highly restricted enterprise and was transformed from a territory into a closed restricted zone. The settlement of Sarov was removed from the administrative structure of the

Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic The Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (, ''Mordovskaya Avtonomnaya Sovetskaya Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika''; , ''Mordovskjaj Avtonomnaj Sovetskjaj Socialističeskjaj Respublikaś''; , ''Mordovskoj Avtonomnoj Sovetskoj Socialisti� ...

and excluded from all records. Research laboratories and design departments of KB-11 began to develop their activities directly in Sarov in the spring of 1947. At the same time, the first production shops of experimental plants No. 1 and No. 2 were created. On March 3, 1949, the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted decree No. 863-327ss/op on the construction of the USSR's first plant for the industrial production of atomic bombs as part of KB-11 in 1949-1950. On June 6, 1950, KB-11 was transferred from the Laboratory of Measuring Instruments of the USSR Academy of Sciences to the direct jurisdiction of The First Main Directorate under the USSR Council of Ministers, on the basis of which, in turn, on July 1, 1953, the

Ministry of Medium Machine Building The Ministry of Medium Machine-Building (, also known as Sredmash) was a government ministry of the Soviet Union which supervised the Soviet nuclear industry, including production of nuclear warheads. History The ministry was established on the ...

was formed. By the end of 1951, the experimental mass production plant No. 551, which came into operation in the second half of 1951 (plant No. 3 KB-11), produced 29 atomic bombs

RDS-1 The RDS-1 (), also known as Izdeliye 501 (device 501) and First Lightning (), was the nuclear bomb used in the Soviet Union's first nuclear weapon test. The United States assigned it the code-name Joe-1, in reference to Joseph Stalin. It was de ...

. The storage of atomic bombs was also carried out on the territory of KB-11 in a specially erected underground reinforced concrete storage warehouse. In 1967, KB-11 was transformed into the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics, which became part of the structure of the USSR Ministry of Medium Machine Building. Since February 1992, it is called the - Russian Federal Nuclear Center - All-Russian Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF). It is a federal state unitary enterprise of the nuclear weapons complex of the State Atomic Energy Corporation Rosatom (SC Rosatom).

Supercomputer

On March 9, 2011, a supercomputer was officially put into operation at RFNC-VNIIEF - the most powerful

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

at that time in Russia. On 9 February 2018,

Interfax Interfax () is a Russian news agency. The agency is owned by Interfax News Agency joint-stock company and is headquartered in Moscow. History As the first non-governmental channel of political and economic information about the USSR, Interfax ...

reported that several employees of the All-Russian Research Institute of Experimental Physics (RFNC-VNIIEF) were detained because they had used the power of the greater than 1 petaflops supercomputer to mine

cryptocurrencies A cryptocurrency (colloquially crypto) is a digital currency designed to work through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. Individual coin ownership records ...

on 8 February 2018. By 2018-2020, it was planned to increase the capacity of the supercomputer to 1

exaflop Floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops or flop/s) is a measure of computer performance in computing, useful in fields of scientific computations that require floating-point calculations. For such cases, it is a more accurate measur ...

Nyonoksa radiation accident on 8 August 2019 and the deaths of five employees of RFNC-VNIIEF

Among the many research and developments the RFNC-VNIIEF has supported included the development of the " isotope power source for a liquid-fuelled rocket engine" which caused a failed test on 8 August 2019 producing the

Nyonoksa radiation accident The Nyonoksa radiation accident, Arkhangelsk explosion or Nyonoksa explosion () occurred on 8 August 2019 near Nyonoksa, a village under the administrative jurisdiction of Severodvinsk, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russian Federation. Five military and ci ...

involving a

9M730 Burevestnik The 9M730 Burevestnik (; " Storm petrel", NATO reporting name: SSC-X-9 Skyfall) is a Russian low-flying, nuclear-powered, nuclear-armed cruise missile under development for the Russian Armed Forces. According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, ...

at the

Nyonoksa Nyonoksa, also Nenoksa, ( ) is a rural locality (a '' selo'') under the administrative jurisdiction of Severodvinsk Town of Oblast Significance, Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It is located at the coast of the Dvina Bay of the White Sea (the Summ ...

navy test range and resulted in the deaths of five employees of RFNC-VNIIEF: Alexey Vyushin, Evgeny Korataev, Vyacheslav Lipshev, Sergey Pichugin and Vladislav Yanovsky, according to a 15 August 2019 ''

Izvestia ''Izvestia'' ( rus, Известия, r=Izvestiya, p=ɪzˈvʲesʲtʲɪjə, "The News") is a daily broadsheet newspaper in Russia. Founded in February 1917, ''Izvestia'', which covered foreign relations, was the organ of the Supreme Soviet of th ...

'' article.

Members

Directors: * (1946) * Valentin Efimovich Kostyukov (с 2008) Scientific advisers: *

Yulii Borisovich Khariton Yulii Borisovich Khariton (; 27 February 1904 – 18 December 1996) was a Russian physicist who was a leading scientist in the former Soviet program of nuclear weapons. Since the initiation of the Soviet program of developing the atomic bomb ...

(1952—1992) * Viktor Nikitovich Mikhaylov (1993—2008) * Vyacheslav Petrovich Soloviev (с 2017) As of March 2005, about 24 thousand people worked in the Nuclear Center, of which over 44% were women. VNIIEF has 527 candidates of sciences, of whom 36 are women. Of the 102 doctors of sciences, three are women: Galina Vladimirovna Dolgoleva, Vera Vladimirovna Rasskazova, and Lyudmila Valentinovna Fomicheva.

References

External links