Chagan (nuclear test)
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Chagan nuclear test, not to be confused with Joe 1. |
Chagan was a
Soviet nuclear test during the
Soviet atomic bomb project and was the most powerful test in the
Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy series. The series was also known as Project 7, the Soviet equivalent of the
United States'
Operation Plowshare to investigate peaceful uses of
nuclear weapons. It was an underground test, and was fired on
January 15 1965. The site was a dry bed of the Chagan River at the edge of the
Semipalatinsk Test Site, and was chosen such that the lip of the crater would dam the river during its high spring flow. The resultant crater had a diameter of 408 meters (1,338 feet) and was 100 meters (328 feet) deep. A major lake soon formed behind the 20-35 m high upraised lip, known as
Lake Chagan or Lake Balapan ().
The blast was the equivalent of 140
kilotons of
TNT.
The area is still radioactive. The test apparently violated the
1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty, and the United States complained to the Soviets, but the matter was dropped.
Of note, the photo has been twice mistakenly credited (in otherwise reputable works) as the Soviet test,
Joe 1 (Richard Rhode's 1995
Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb and David Holloway's 1994
Stalin and the Bomb). The difference can be seen when comparing it to other photographs of
Joe 1 (which look quite different), and also in the fact that the Chagan photograph is clearly coming out of the ground, notable by the amount of dirt and debris in the picture (comparable with photographs of other US "plowshares" shots).
*
On the Soviet nuclear program*
On the Soviet program for peaceful uses of nuclear weapons from the American Office of Scientific and Technical Information
