Radiation levels in Pripyat and the surrounding area following the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

Physicists at the Academy of Sciences give advice for containing the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

This KGB report provides a chronology of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and gives information on the disaster's first victims.

This document lists events which the Ukrainian Republican Committee of Peace Protection planned to hold during November 1957 in order to propagate against the nuclear tests and nuclear war. For example, on November 25, 1957 Committee planned to organize meeting of the medical scientists; on November 23 it planned to hold meeting of scientists of Lvov; on November 20 – 25 Committee was going to hold meeting of workers of Odessa seaport etc.

The nuclear research activities of UPhTI were concentrated in Laboratory No. 1 which was established as a part of institute in 1946. This archival document illustrates the list of its activities.

In this document, leading Soviet scientists criticize the idea of Kharkov physicists to use Uranium in military goals, because they do not believe it is possible to realize nuclear fission in the current practical conditions faced. The Soviet National Committee of Defence received these skeptical assessments in 1941 and decided not to develop the military nuclear program.

This document is an answer to the letter from State Plan of Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic to Academy of Sciences of USSR “About Rationality to Construct Cyclotron in UIPhT” (22 Feb 1940). The answer of academician Petr Kapitsa to this letter was very critical. Kapitsa wrote that UIPhT “during the last several years built a number of research installation but did not finish them. However it started to build new installations. Such activities of UIPhT can’t be considered as normal”. So Petr Kapitsa discouraged building a cyclotron in UIPhT, and this was one of the reasons why this institute did not become the leading nuclear center in USSR.

This letter informed the Academy of Sciences that UIPhT asked the government of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic to allocate 75 thousand rubles for designing of the cyclotron, and 1,5 million rubles for its building. The State Plan asked an advice on necessity to build the cyclotron.

In this letter the Soviet minister proposed to the Soviet government to concentrate the nuclear research in Ukrainian Institute of Physic and Technology (UIPhT) and to locate in Kharkov the nuclear scientists from Leningrad Institute of Physic and Technology because Kharkov institute had very good base for the nuclear studies. If this proposal was realized Kharkov could become more important Soviet nuclear center than Moscow or Sarov. In any case this letter of people’s commissar recognized the prominent role of the Ukrainian Institute of Physic and Technology (UIPhT) in the Soviet nuclear science.