The Soviet Union's K project nuclear test series was a group of five

nuclear test Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine nuclear weapons' effectiveness, Nuclear weapon yield, yield, and explosive capability. Testing nuclear weapons offers practical information about how the weapons function, how detona ...

s conducted in 1961–1962. These tests followed the 1961 Soviet nuclear tests series and preceded the 1962 Soviet nuclear tests series. The K project nuclear testing series were all high altitude tests fired by missiles from the

Kapustin Yar Kapustin Yar (russian: Капустин Яр) is a Russian rocket launch complex in Astrakhan Oblast, about 100 km east of Volgograd. It was established by the Soviet Union on 13 May 1946. In the beginning, Kapustin Yar used technology, material ...

launch site in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

across central

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

toward the Sary Shagan test range (see map below). Two of the tests were 1.2 kiloton

warhead A warhead is the forward section of a device that contains the explosive agent or toxic (biological, chemical, or nuclear) material that is delivered by a missile, rocket, torpedo, or bomb. Classification Types of warheads include: * Explosiv ...

s tested in 1961. The remaining three tests were of 300 kiloton warheads in 1962.

Electromagnetic pulse

The worst effects of a Soviet high altitude test were from the

electromagnetic pulse An electromagnetic pulse (EMP), also a transient electromagnetic disturbance (TED), is a brief burst of electromagnetic energy. Depending upon the source, the origin of an EMP can be natural or artificial, and can occur as an electromagnetic fi ...

of the nuclear test on 22 October 1962 (during the

Cuban Missile Crisis The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (of 1962) ( es, Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, the Caribbean Crisis () in Russia, or the Missile Scare, was a 35-day (16 October – 20 November 1962) confrontation between the United S ...

). In that Operation K high altitude test, a 300

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 ...

missile-warhead detonated west of

Jezkazgan Jezkazgan, or Zhezkazgan ( kk, Жезқазған, translit=Jezqazğan ), formerly known as Dzhezkazgan (russian: Джезказган) until 1992, is a city and the administrative centre of Ulytau Region, Kazakhstan, on a reservoir of the Kara ...

(also called Dzhezkazgan or Zhezqazghan) at an altitude of . The Soviet scientists instrumented a section of telephone line in the area that they expected to be affected by the nuclear detonation in order to measure the electromagnetic pulse effects. The

(EMP) fused all of the 570-kilometer monitored overhead telephone line with measured currents of 1500 to 3400

ampere The ampere (, ; symbol: A), often shortened to amp,SI supports only the use of symbols and deprecates the use of abbreviations for units. is the unit of electric current in the International System of Units (SI). One ampere is equal to elect ...

s during the 22 October 1962 test. The monitored telephone line was divided into sub-lines of in length, separated by

repeater In telecommunications, a repeater is an electronic device that receives a signal and retransmits it. Repeaters are used to extend transmissions so that the signal can cover longer distances or be received on the other side of an obstruction. Some ...

s. Each sub-line was protected by

fuses Fuse or FUSE may refer to: Devices * Fuse (electrical), a device used in electrical systems to protect against excessive current ** Fuse (automotive), a class of fuses for vehicles * Fuse (hydraulic), a device used in hydraulic systems to protec ...

and by gas-filled

overvoltage When the voltage in a circuit or part of it is raised above its upper design limit, this is known as overvoltage. The conditions may be hazardous. Depending on its duration, the overvoltage event can be transient—a voltage spike—or perm ...

protectors. The EMP from the 22 October (K-3) nuclear test caused all of the fuses to blow and all of the overvoltage protectors to fire in all of the sub-lines of the telephone line. The EMP from the same test caused the destruction of the

Karaganda Karaganda or Qaraghandy ( kk, Қарағанды/Qarağandy, ; russian: Караганда, ) is the capital of Karaganda Region in the Republic of Kazakhstan. It is the List of most populous cities in Kazakhstan, fourth most populous city in Kaza ...

power plant, and shut down of shallow-buried

power cables A power cable is an electrical cable, an assembly of one or more electrical conductors, usually held together with an overall sheath. The assembly is used for transmission of electrical power. Power cables may be installed as permanent wiring wi ...

between

Astana Astana, previously known as Akmolinsk, Tselinograd, Akmola, and most recently Nur-Sultan, is the capital city of Kazakhstan. The city lies on the banks of the Ishim (river), Ishim River in the north-central part of Kazakhstan, within the Akmo ...

(then called Aqmola) and Almaty. The

Partial Test Ban Treaty The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT) is the abbreviated name of the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, which prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted ...

was passed the following year, ending atmospheric and exoatmospheric nuclear tests. ProjectK

Aftereffects

Although the weapons used in the K Project were much smaller (up to 300 kilotons) than the United States Starfish Prime test of 1962, the damage caused by the resulting EMP was much greater because the K Project tests were done over a large populated land mass, and at a location where the

Earth's magnetic field Earth's magnetic field, also known as the geomagnetic field, is the magnetic field that extends from Earth's interior out into space, where it interacts with the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emanating from the Sun. The magnetic f ...

was greater. After the

collapse of the Soviet Union The dissolution of the Soviet Union, also negatively connoted as rus, Разва́л Сове́тского Сою́за, r=Razvál Sovétskogo Soyúza, ''Ruining of the Soviet Union''. was the process of internal disintegration within the Sov ...

, the level of this damage was communicated informally to scientists in the United States. After the 1991 Soviet Union collapse, there was a period of a few years of cooperation between United States and Russian scientists on the high-altitude nuclear EMP phenomenon. In addition, funding was secured to enable Russian scientists to formally report on some of the Soviet EMP results in international scientific journals.Pfeffer, Robert and Shaeffer, D. Lynn. Combating WMD Journal, (2009) Issue 3. pp. 33-38
"A Russian Assessment of Several USSR and US HEMP Tests"
As a result, formal scientific documentation of some of the EMP damage in Kazakhstan existsLoborev, Vladimir M. "Up to Date State of the NEMP Problems and Topical Research Directions," Electromagnetic Environments and Consequences: Proceedings of the EUROEM 94 International Symposium, Bordeaux, France, 30 May – 3 June 1994, pp. 15–21 but is still sparse in the open scientific literature. The 1998 IEEE article, however, does contain a number of details about the measurements of EMP effects on the instrumented telephone line, including details about the fuses that were used and also about the gas-filled overvoltage protectors that were used on that communications line. According to that paper, the gas-filled overvoltage protectors fired as a result of the voltages induced by the fast E1 component of the EMP, and the fuses were blown as the result of the slow E3 component of the EMP, which caused

geomagnetically induced currents Geomagnetically induced currents (GIC) are electrical currents induced at the Earth's surface by rapid changes in the geomagnetic field caused by space weather events. GICs can affect the normal operation of long electrical conductor systems such ...

in all of the sub-lines. The Aqmola (now

) to Almaty buried power cable was also shut down by the slow E3 component of the EMP. Published reports, including the 1998 IEEE article, have stated that there were significant problems with ceramic insulators on overhead electrical power lines during the tests of the K Project. In 2010, a technical report written for a United States government laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, stated, "Power line insulators were damaged, resulting in a short circuit on the line and some lines detaching from the poles and falling to the ground."

References

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MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...

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Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

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