Jubilees

History in documents, discoveries, devices

On 7 December, the round table "At the origins of scientific Dubna", dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Dzhelepov Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, was held in the Museum of History of Science and Technology of JINR.

V.V.Rodionov, a tour guide at the Dubna Museum of Archeology and Local History, gave a report entitled "Facility "M". Documents. People. Chronicle of events". He said that he had tried to implement the idea of the exhibition "HTL - time of the first" five years ago, for the 70th anniversary of the synchrocyclotron. Having started working at the museum in 2018, he had not managed to implement the idea by December, 2019. Vladimir Rodionov contacted the archive of LenNIIProekt (the former design SUD Institute 11) that designed our city, but it turned out that they had no materials left. I talked to the Institute veterans and only thanks to the help of V.A.Matveev did things move forward - V.V.Rodionov got access to the JINR archive, where the HTL project, personal files of the laboratory staff, folders of orders from 1949 to 1953 on enrollment in work individually and in groups from Department No.4 of Laboratory No.2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences that was headed by I.V.Kurchatov were preserved. Laboratory No.2 was later renamed LMD of the USSR Academy of Sciences and even later - the Kurchatov Institute.

V.V.Rodionov gave a chronology of events, demonstrating copies of documents: a letter from I.V.Kurchatov to L.P.Beria on 26 January, 1946 with a proposal to construct a cyclotron, a Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR on the choice of a site in the Moscow Region for construction (versions were considered in the Lukhovitsky and Mikhnevsky districts, the village of Vasino near Zaprudnya). On 27 January, 1947, a meeting of the STC FMD (First Main Directorate under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR, established to manage all organizations and enterprises involved in the Atomic Project) was held, at which A.L.Mintz that spoke with a report, chose a site in the area of the Novo-Ivankovskaya hydroelectric power station. Its advantage was the ability to directly power the synchrocyclotron from the hydroelectric power station that could no longer be done in Zaprudnya. The marshy terrain and high groundwater level did not affect the choice. On 14 February, a decision was made to build the "M" facility and two months later, M.G.Meshcheryakov was relieved of his post at the Radium Institute and was appointed Head of the "M" facility. On 13 December, the HTL synchrocyclotron was put into operation.

The HTL included scientific sectors A, B, G, the instrument bureau, the vacuum department and the garage. Due to the secrecy of the facility, there is not a single photograph taken inside the site. On 31 July, 1954, by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the HTL was given the name Institute of Nuclear Problems of the USSR Academy of Sciences. By the time, the Institute of Nuclear Problems was transformed into the JINR Laboratory of Nuclear Problems, 750 people worked at the Institute.

We saw the executive plan for the alienation of territories for the HTL (a document of the Ministry of Internal Affairs), the general plan of the 1950 territory of the settlement of Dubna and a copy of the 1947 plan - the only one signed by M.G.Meshcheryakov, later by Deputy Head of Laboratory No. 2 of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The first settlement was designed for 600 residents, its territory was 33 hectares. We also saw copies of pages from the registration log of stay in the special zone (started in 1950), where Bruno Pontecorvo is listed as "Professor B.M". And pages of the medical examination log with notes on doses obtained, an additional 20 days to vacation or disqualification from admission to building No.1 for those whose total dose achieved exceeded the norm.

Answering the questions, the speaker explained that the last prison barracks located in the area of the current territory of the JINR CED were liquidated in 1960. The water tower that many still remember on the territory of the fire station, was built according to the main project and supplied the city with water from a well. And the treatment facilities were not scheduled in the first project.

The history of the synchrocyclotron, its scientific programme and the discoveries carried out on it were the subject of the report by A.A.Rastorguev, an employee of the Museum of History of Science and Technology of JINR. "Everything that the Americans have, we should have. Or better," he quoted I.V.Kurchatov. The accelerator was constructed in pursuit of the one already under construction in Berkeley; in the 1930s, the USA was the leader in this area. On 13 August, 1946, the Resolution of the Council of Ministers of the USSR "On the construction of a powerful cyclotron ("M" facility)" was issued. And the accelerator turned out to be really powerful - 480 MeV against 340 MeV in Berkeley. Initially, the scientific programme was aimed exclusively at nuclear physics; after the discovery of pi-mesons in 1947, particle physics started. In 1948, at the suggestion of I.V.Kurchatov and M.G.Meshcheryakov, the investigation of hydrogen nuclear fusion reactions was included in the research plan that was due to the topic of designing a thermonuclear bomb.

The first scientific publications appeared only in 1954, before that, all investigations had been classified. The authors of the accelerator were presented with state awards - we saw a list of winners of the Stalin Prize of the 1st and 2nd degree.

In 1951, it was decided to reconstruct the synchrocyclotron in order to increase its energy to 680 MeV. Almost half of all discoveries of the Soviet period were made on it. The speaker focused on the selected ones. The most "fruitful" year was 1965: four discoveries were implemented at the Laboratory of Nuclear Problems and one - at the Laboratory of Nuclear Reactions. A discovery was carried out on the synchrocyclotron without co-authorship from JINR, by employees of MEPhI. And in 1979, the accelerator was shut down.

Little-known pages of M.G.Meshcheryakov's biography were the subject of K.E.Kozubsky's speech (JINR Museum of History of Science and Technology). While establishing a memorial office of Mikhail Grigorievich at MLIT, Kirill Eduardovich discovered manuscripts, notes in the margins of newspapers and magazines made by M.G.Meshcheryakov and a 1946 issue of Science magazine that he had brought from the USA. L.M.Soroko and I.A.Malyarevsky tried to compile a complete biography of Mikhail Grigorievich, yet in the opinion of the speaker, it has not yet been written. The office contained the full version of Ikar Malyarevsky's essay about Mikhail Grigorievich, "A Man in a babirusa coat," an abridged version of which was included under a different title in the anniversary collections published in 2000 and 2010. M.G.Meshcheryakov took part in the Finnish War and constantly returned to it in his memoirs. We also heard Mikhail Grigorievich's message in 2015 from a 1989 publication in the newspaper Pravda: "No matter how difficult the situation in the country is, fundamental research cannot be interrupted." It sounds relevant again!

Amateur local historian A.V.Golovkin spoke about his father, Viktor Pavlovich Golovkin that had worked as an electrician at the "M" facility since 1948. He showed some examples of devices from that time from his collection: a Geiger counter MS-4 from the early 1950s, examples of domestic radio tubes from 1943 (!) and post-war, captured German and US-made ones obtained under Lend-Lease, the first photomultipliers, a semiconductor selenium rectifier from 1954. The main electronic device that counts pulses - the counting decade is still the main instrument for counting particle decay events.

Alexander Viktorovich also showed a photograph of the cover of the magazine "Soviet Union" from 1954, in which a large article about the synchrocyclotron was published. On the cover there was an electronic oscilloscope from 1949, used for adjusting accelerator systems that surpassed the American one of that time in technical characteristics. And its rocket-like design still makes an impression today.

V.N.Gaevsky (DLNP) emphasized that not only 14 great discoveries had been made at the synchrocyclotron. It demonstrated to the world that applied programmes could be successfully implemented at such accelerators. After the first successful irradiation of patients with oncological diseases, the USSR Academy of Sciences proposed producing a specialized proton beam at JINR. V.P.Dzhelepov and his colleagues obtained such a beam in a short time. At that time, it became the fourth in the world and the first in the USSR medical beam; in 1969, the second appeared at ITEP. More than 1200 patients from all the republics of the Soviet Union and different countries of the world underwent radiation therapy on it.

The round table ended with a screening of a documentary about M.G.Meshcheryakov.

Olga TARANTINA,
photo by Anastasia ZLOTNIKOVA