Editing Soviet atomic bomb project (section)

=== Mining of raw uranium ===
The single largest problem during the early Soviet program was the procurement of raw [[uranium]] ore, as the Soviet Union had limited domestic sources at the beginning of their nuclear program. The era of domestic uranium mining can be dated exactly, to November 27, 1942, the date of a directive issued by the all-powerful wartime [[State Defense Committee]].  The first Soviet uranium mine was established in [[Taboshar]], present-day [[Tajikistan]], and was producing at an annual rate of a few tons of [[uranium concentrate]] by May 1943.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Medvedev|first1=Zhores|title=Stalin and the Atomic Gulag|url=http://www.spokesmanbooks.com/Spokesman/PDF/medvedev69.pdf|website=Spokesman Books|access-date=3 January 2018}}</ref>  Taboshar was the first of many officially secret Soviet [[Closed city#Soviet Union closed cities|closed cities]] related to uranium mining and production.<ref>{{cite web|title=Uranium in Tajikistan|url=http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/country-profiles/countries-t-z/tajikistan.aspx|website=World Nuclear Association|access-date=3 January 2018}}</ref>

Demand from the experimental bomb project was far higher. The Americans, with the help of Belgian businessman [[Edgar Sengier]] in 1940, had already blocked access to known sources in Congo, South Africa, and Canada. In December 1944 Stalin took the uranium project away from [[Vyacheslav Molotov]] and gave to it to [[Lavrentiy Beria]].  The first Soviet uranium processing plant was established as the [[Leninabad Mining and Chemical Combine]] in Chkalovsk (present-day [[Buston, Ghafurov District]]), Tajikistan, and new production sites identified in relative proximity.  This posed a need for labor, a need that Beria would fill with forced labor:  tens of thousands of [[Gulag]] prisoners{{Citation needed|date=July 2023}} were brought to work in the mines, the processing plants, and related construction.

Domestic production was still insufficient when the Soviet [[F-1 (nuclear reactor)|F-1]] reactor, which began operation in December 1946, was fueled using uranium confiscated from the remains of the [[German atomic bomb project]]. This uranium had been mined in the [[Belgian Congo]], and the ore in Belgium fell into the hands of the Germans after their [[Battle of Belgium|invasion and occupation of Belgium]] in 1940. In 1945, the Uranium enrichment through [[Electromagnetic isotope separation|electromagnetic method]] under [[Lev Artsimovich]] also failed due to USSR's inability to build the parallel [[Oak Ridge National Laboratory|American Oak Ridge]] site and the limited power grid system could not produce the electricity for their program.

Further sources of uranium in the early years of the program were mines in East Germany (via the deceptively-named [[SDAG Wismut|SAG Wismut]]), Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania (the [[Băița mine]] near [[Ștei]]) and Poland. [[Boris Pregel]] sold 0.23 tonnes of uranium oxide to the Soviet Union during the war, with the authorisation of the U.S. Government.<ref>"[[Time Magazine]]" March 13, 1950</ref><ref name="Zoellner">{{cite book|last1=Zoellner|first1=Tom|title=Uranium|date=2009|publisher=Penguin Books|location=London|isbn=978-0143116721|pages=45, 55, 151–158}}</ref><ref name=Williams>{{cite book|last1=Williams|first1=Susan|title=Spies in the Congo|date=2016|publisher=Public Affairs|location=New York|isbn=978-1610396547|pages=186–187, 217, 233}}</ref>

Eventually, large domestic sources were discovered in the Soviet Union (including those now in [[Kazakhstan]]).

The uranium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program came from mine production in the following countries,<ref name="chronik">Chronik der Wismut, Wismut GmbH 1999</ref>

{| class="wikitable"
! style="font-weight: bold;" | Year
! style="font-weight: bold;" | USSR
! style="font-weight: bold;" | [[East Germany|Germany]]
! style="font-weight: bold;" | [[Czechoslovak Socialist Republic|Czechoslovakia]]
! style="font-weight: bold;" | [[People's Republic of Bulgaria|Bulgaria]]
! style="font-weight: bold;" | [[People's Republic of Poland|Poland]]
|-
| 1945
| 14.6 t
|
|
|
|
|-
| 1946
| 50.0 t
| 15 t
| 18 t
| 26.6 t
|
|-
| 1947
| 129.3 t
| 150 t
| 49.1 t
| 7.6 t
| 2.3 t
|-
| 1948
| 182.5 t
| 321.2 t
| 103.2 t
| 18.2 t
| 9.3 t
|-
| 1949
| 278.6 t
| 767.8 t
| 147.3 t
| 30.3 t
| 43.3 t
|-
| 1950
| 416.9 t
| 1,224 t
| 281.4 t
| 70.9 t
| 63.6 t
|}