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, the "father" of the first Soviet nuclear bomb, Igor Kurchatov, asks the chief of the Soviet ministry of energy, Pervukhin, to help demobilize the Ukranian physicist Veniamin Kelman, who was a fellow of UIPhT before the war. In this note Kurchatov writes about the high quality of the Ukrainian nuclear scientist and about his importance for the development of the Soviet nuclear program. This document once again demonstrates that Ukraine played a significant role in the Soviet military nuclear program.

This famous, de-classified document officially started the Soviet atomic project aimed at producing the nuclear bomb. The second point of this document orders the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences to establish a plan for the project of Uranium enrichment. F. Lange, a scientist from the Ukraine Institute of Physics and Technology, was appointed as head of this project because he worked previously on theoretical aspects of Uranium enrichment.

In this letter two nuclear scientists from UIPhT described the construction of the nuclear bomb and proposed to start activities in producing of the nuclear arsenal and make these activities secret. Two Ukrainian physicists were first Soviet scientists who revealed the way of producing the nuclear weapon (of course they did not know about the similar inventions of the western scientists which were made at the same time because of secrecy regime).

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’s proposal about centrifuge received positive assessments from the leading Soviet academicians in Moscow.

Kharkov Institute scientists proposed in this document the concrete steps to build a nuclear weapon. The document demonstrates that Ukrainian physicists understood how to receive weapons grade uranium and elaborated concrete technical proposals to achieve this goal through uranium enrichment in centrifuge.

In this letter two nuclear scientists from UIPhT described the construction of the nuclear bomb and proposed to start activities in producing of the nuclear arsenal and make these activities secret. Two Ukrainian physicists were first Soviet scientists who revealed the method of producing a nuclear weapon (of course they did not know about the similar inventions of western scientists which were made at the same time under great secrecy).

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.