At the Semipalatinsk Training Ground. Eyewitness Accounts (on the 75th Anniversary of the Explosion of the First Soviet Atomic Bomb)

On August 29, 1949, exactly 75 years ago, the first test of the Soviet atomic bomb was conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site. More than one and a half thousand animals were brought to the landfill to conduct research, employees of the Institute of Biophysics of the Ministry of Health of the USSR under the leadership of B.M.Isaev provided equipment for conducting radiation reconnaissance on the ground, in the explosion area, for aviation reconnaissance and dosimetric control of irradiation of test participants. In the following years, more than 300 scientists from different laboratories of the Institute of Biophysics visited the landfill. In the field, medical and biological studies were conducted on large and small laboratory animals, the course of acute radiation sickness was studied when exposed to radiation in various doses and the effectiveness of anti-radiation agents used. During the testing period, new sections of medical science were created: radiation pathology, clinical and field dosimetry, toxicology of radioactive fission products, radiation hygiene, radiation epidemiology. It was during this period that original, modern anti-radiation agents for various purposes were developed: RS-10 and its analogue RS-11, prodigiozan (early treatment agents), B-190 (emergency radioprotector), hemosorption (detoxification method), as well as a scheme of complex therapy and means to combat early manifestations of the primary reaction to radiation exposure. One of the important stages of research in those years, along with preclinical studies, was the evaluation of the effectiveness of new drugs in conditions simulating radiation damage in a nuclear explosion. Such large-scale tests were conducted at the Semipalatinsk test site.