People & Events| First Soviet Test The Soviets called their
first atomic test "First Lightning." A train belching black
smoke, shipped the bomb components 2,000 miles from Arzamas, the
weapons laboratory in Russia to the test site at Semipalatinsk
in Kazakhstan. Like the Americans, the Soviets constructed a
tower from which to test their weapon. They assembled the device
in an adjacent concrete hall which had railway trucks running
down its entire length. The bomb components came in one end and
the completed device was wheeled out the other end to be hoisted
to the top of the tower. The Soviets wanted to learn about the
effects of nuclear weapons. So in addition to instruments that
would measure the size of the shock wave and the intensity of
the radiation, they constructed wooden and brick houses,
bridges, tunnels and water towers in the vicinity of the tower.
They also put caged animals nearby so that they could study the
effects of nuclear radiation. Igor Kurchatov, the scientific
director of the soviet nu