MOSCOW, June 6 The President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin by his decree awarded more than 30 employees of the Mayak Production Association (ZATO Ozersk, Chelyabinsk Region), a leading industrial
According to the text of the decree published on Tuesday on the official portal of legal information, Mayak employees were awarded state awards for merits in the development of the nuclear industry and many years of conscientious work.
«Mayak» is part of the nuclear weapons complex of the state corporation «Rosatom». June 19 marks the 75th anniversary of Mayak, created as part of the Soviet nuclear project to produce weapons-grade plutonium for nuclear charges and then tritium for thermonuclear charges.
Alexei Konovalov, director of the Mayak plant, was awarded the medal of the Order «For Services to the Fatherland», 1st class. A number of Mayak employees were awarded medals of the Order «For Merit to the Fatherland» II degree and medals «For Merit in the Development of Atomic Energy», other employees of the enterprise were awarded the honorary title «Honored Worker of the Nuclear Industry of the Russian Federation».
The foundation of the country's nuclear industry
The Mayak Production Association, the first industrial facility of the domestic nuclear industry, ensures the security of Russia by fulfilling the state defense order for the production of nuclear weapons components. Other main areas of Mayak's current activities are the transportation and processing of spent nuclear fuel; engineering and instrumentation, research and production activities and solving problems of nuclear legacy The technologies mastered by Mayak are necessary for the development of nuclear energy of the future.
The decision to build a Soviet industrial complex for the production of weapons-grade plutonium was taken at a time when the domestic nuclear project had entered its mobilization phase. This happened after the US tested its first atomic bomb in July 1945 and the subsequent atomic bombings by the Americans of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Thus, the question of the speedy creation of its own nuclear weapons became for the Soviet Union a question of the possibility of its continued existence. And the future plutonium production, without exaggeration, became the main construction site of the country in those most difficult post-war years.
A number of requirements were made to the place where this object was to be erected. In order to ensure secrecy, it had to be removed from the big cities. At the same time, there should have been a developed industrial base, a railway, sources of energy supply nearby, and, very importantly, large volumes of water should have been available in this area to cool the core of a nuclear reactor.
As a result, the site in the Southern Urals, between the cities of Kyshtym and Kasli, on the shore of Lake Kyzyl-Tash, was chosen as the best location for plutonium production. This place (in different years it was called Chelyabinsk-40, Chelyabinsk-65, now Ozersk) was approved by a decree of the USSR government signed by Stalin on December 1, 1945.
The first industrial uranium-graphite plutonium-producing reactor (it received the index «A»), the radiochemical plant «B» for the separation of plutonium from irradiated uranium in the reactor and metallurgical plant «B» for the production of products from metallic plutonium. On June 19, 1948, under the leadership of Igor Kurchatov, the scientific director of the Soviet atomic project, reactor «A» was brought to its design capacity. It is this date that is considered the day the entire domestic nuclear industry began its work.
Now «Mayak» is a complex of interconnected industries, structurally separated into plants and production units.