Nikolay Dollezhal

Who was Nikolay Dollezhal?

Nikolay Antonovich Dollezhal was a Soviet mechanical engineer, a key figure in Soviet atomic bomb project and chief designer of nuclear reactors from the first plutonium production reactor to the RBMK.

Born in Omelnik, Zaporizhia Oblast, Dollezhal graduated MVTU in 1923. Until 1930, he worked in various design bureaus, but after a tour of Europe in 1929 was arrested and spent a year and a half in prison, before being acquitted in January 1932. In 1932-1943 he headed important manufacturing plants in Kiev, Leningrad and Sverdlovsk.

In 1943, Dollezhal was appointed to lead the new Institute of Chemical Machinery in Moscow. In 1946, the Institute was assigned to the Soviet atomic project; his first reactors, graphite moderated types A and AI, produced Soviet plutonium used in Joe 1 nuclear test of 1949 and subsequent nuclear weapons deployment. After 1950, Dollezhal focused on nuclear marine propulsion. His first proposal, Type AM, was not practical for marine uses but became the core of the first nuclear power plant in Obninsk, commissioned in 1954. In the same year, he produced a viable draft of a light water submarine reactor.