Uranium
In the early stages, the Soviet atomic bomb project was in critical need of uranium. In May 1945, the sole atomic laboratory, Laboratory No. 2, only had seven tons of uranium oxide available. The critical nature of their stock can be realized when compared to the amounts needed for their first uranium reactor F-1 and their first plutonium production reactor “A” in the Urals. The first load of F-1 required 46 tons. The first load of reactor “A” required 150 tons.
The Soviet search teams deployed to Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia were aware of the Soviet needs for uranium. However, General Leslie Groves, commander of the U.S. Manhattan Project was also aware of the needs of his effort and that of the Soviet atomic bomb project for uranium. Hence, General Groves, especially to deny uranium to the Soviets, arranged for the removal of 1,200 tons of uranium ore from a salt mine near Stassfurt, an area due to fall within the Soviet occupation zone. This stash turned out to be the bulk of the German stock of uranium ore.
As soon as the Soviet troops occupied Vienna, a search team was sent to Austria. Vladimir Shevchenko, director of Scientific Research Institute No. 9 (NII-9), and atomic scientist Igor’ Nikolaevich Golovin from Laboratory No. 2 stayed in Vienna from 13 April to 10 May 1945. In Vienna, they interviewed scientists from the Radium Institute of the Academy of Sciences and from the Second Physical Institute of the University of Vienna. Information collected provided an overview of German organizations involved in the uranium project, including companies potentially engaged in metallic uranium production. In an Auergesellschaft building there, they retrieved 340 kilograms of metallic uranium, a precursor to what would be found in Germany, as indeed Auergesellschaft was a main producer.
The Auergesellschaft facility in Oranienburg had nearly 100 metric tons of fairly pure uranium oxide, which a search team found. The Americans had bombed the facility near the end of the war to deny the works to the Soviets. The Soviet Union took this uranium as reparations, which amounted to between 25% and 40% of the uranium taken from Germany and Czechoslovakia at the end of the war. Khariton said the uranium found there saved the Soviet Union a year on its atomic bomb project.
Khariton and Kikoin, not knowing about the find in Oranienburg, started an intensive search of their own. From inspecting a plant in the Grunau district, they learned that the company Rohes had shipped several hundred tons of uranium, but they could not then determine the final destination. While in Potsdam, they determined the name of the head of the Belgian office of Rohes. The services of SMERSh military counterintelligence were used to find and arrest the man and bring him to the two physicists. Under questioning by SMERSh, the man revealed that the uranium was in Neustadt. Unfortunately, there were about 20 towns in Germany with that name, 10 of them were in the Soviet zone of occupation. In Neustadt-Glewe, they found more than 100 tons of uranium oxide. Another major find for the Soviet atomic bomb project.
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