The RDS-2 (Russian: РДС-2) was the second atomic bomb developed by the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
as an improved version of the
RDS-1
The RDS-1 (russian: РДС-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 S ...
. It included new
explosive lens
An explosive lens—as used, for example, in nuclear weapons—is a highly specialized shaped charge. In general, it is a device composed of several explosive charges. These charges are arranged and formed with the intent to control the shape ...
es along with a new
core
Core or cores may refer to:
Science and technology
* Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages
* Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding
* Core (optical fiber), the signal-carrying portion of an optical fiber
* Core, the centra ...
design to decrease the probability of
pre-detonation or 'fizzle'. The RDS-2 weighed approximately and had a diameter of 1.25 m. The RDS-2 was tested on September 24, 1951 and produced a 38.3
kiloton
TNT equivalent is a convention for expressing energy, typically used to describe the energy released in an explosion. The is a unit of energy defined by that convention to be , which is the approximate energy released in the detonation of a t ...
yield. It was detonated from the top of a tower thirty meters high. The detonation was controlled by a bomber flying over the testing site instead of the detonation being controlled by a ground control center.
See also
*
Soviet atomic bomb project
The Soviet atomic bomb project was the classified research and development program that was authorized by Joseph Stalin in the Soviet Union to develop nuclear weapons during and after World War II.
Although the Soviet scientific community dis ...
*
RDS-1
The RDS-1 (russian: РДС-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 S ...
*
RDS-3 RDS-3 was the third atomic bomb developed by the Soviet Union in 1951, after the famous RDS-1 and RDS-2. It was called ''Marya'' in the military. The bomb had a composite design with a plutonium core inside a uranium shell, providing an explosive p ...
Notes
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*{{cite web , url=http://militaryrussia.ru/blog/topic-732.html, archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180424011046/http://militaryrussia.ru/blog/topic-732.html , archive-date=April 24, 2018, website=Military Russia, title=РДС-1 / изделие 501 , language=Russian , trans-title=RDS-2 (1946, project)
Nuclear weapons of the Soviet Union
Soviet nuclear weapons testing
Nuclear bombs of the Soviet Union
1951 in the Soviet Union
Nuclear weapons policy
Nuclear proliferation
1951 in military history