In the JINR Laboratories

Jubilee of the first pulsed reactor

On 23 June, a FLNP seminar on the topic "Launch of the world's first pulsed reactor 65 years ago" was held at FLNP. It was on 23 June that the first FLNP and JINR IBR reactor was put into critical state. Evgeny SHABALIN, a direct participant in the launch, spoke about the event that gave impetus to the development of a whole branch of nuclear facilities, its background and main characters.

He called his report "IBRs - 65 years (100 years of loneliness?)" focusing on the fact that the IBR reactor was and is the only pulsed neutron source in the world and it will be so for another 35 years, since other pulsed reactors are not constructed anywhere. This speech by Evgeny Pavlovich, the first of the scheduled series, was dedicated to the period from 1960 to 1968 and included the background of the event, a story about the principles of the reactor. He addressed it primarily to the young laboratory staff.

The pace of development of the first reactor was surprising. In the autumn of 1955, D.I.Blokhintsev voiced the idea of a pulsed reactor at a seminar at the IPPE (Obninsk) director of which he was at that time. In February-March of the following year, I.I.Bondarenko and Yu.Ya.Stavissky had already developed a theory and in May, the design of the reactor started. In the spring of 1957, construction began on the reactor building in Dubna, the next year, it was completed. We saw a photo of the reactor, a very small volume surrounded by mechanical devices. The speaker also recalled the words of Niels Bohr after visiting the reactor, "Your IBR is a simple and elegant machine!" The great physicist came to the USSR in 1961 for several days, two of which he spent in Dubna.

We also saw the fuel element of the first reactor that is currently on display at the JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology. We heard a story about how the "assistant loader" E.P.Shabalin that supplies fuel elements to the experienced mechanical engineer Yury Kondiorin that is standing on a stand and loading them into the reactor, unexpectedly dropped one on the floor. Fortunately, the steel case was not damaged but Evgeny Pavlovich was removed from practical work after this incident and "was recorded as theorists for life". The speaker showed a sketch of the reactor, made in 1956 at the IPPE and stored in the archive of the Leningrad Scientific Foundation under number 2. While JINR has not yet been organized, work has started on a reactor project in Obninsk. It is surprising that the technical project completely coincided (we also saw it) with the Obninsk sketch. At that time, there were no computers yet, "computers" and "calculators" were people. He became a "recalculator" along with V.D.Ananiev and E.P.Shabalin that had also recently joined FLNP.

In the summer of 1959, a kritstand was assembled, exactly repeating the design of the reactor, at which a group of specialists from the IPPE, headed by Yu.Ya.Stavissky and a group of young people of the Leningrad Scientific Foundation, headed by B.N.Deryagin, measured the key features of the future reactor. In the winter of 1959-1960, the second kritstend was assembled and on 23 June, the physical launch of the reactor took place that was registered in the operational journal. Evgeny Pavlovich told the story of an "underground," in secret from the chief engineer S.K.Nikolaev, soldering on an ordinary electric stove (and not on special equipment) soldered shell of a metallic uranium liner. There was also a soldered radioactive source in the history of launch, sealed due to a rush with low-melting solder. The dispute of Ananiev and Stavissky over it (soldered or not) continued 40 years later during the celebration of the anniversary of the launch of the reactor. Later, problems began due to the swelling of the insert, due to which it was necessary to reduce the rotation speed of the rotary disk. There were other tasks that the team met without having any experience yet.

B.N.Deryagin in the reactor hall. 1962. Photo by P.I.Zolnikov

Showing a photo of the first team of 12 people that put the reactor into operation, E.P.Shabalin separately dwelled on the personalities of Yu.Ya.Stavissky and V.D.Ananiev. He called Vladimir Dmitrievich the main person in this story, unforgettable and irreplaceable, introduced him outside of work - on hikes in Altai, the Caucasus, kayaking in the Vologda Region, in performances of the amateur theater "Klop". And the seminar ended with a video clip of Evgeny Pavlovich's speech on the stage of the Cultural Centre "Mir" with verses of his own composition with a wonderful refrain:

"The most pulsed, the fastest
Our reactor, our IBR-2!"

Olga TARANTINA