After the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, the Soviet scientific community began to scrutinize the current state of uranium mining and research within the country, identifying the “uranium problem” as a significant area for scientific and national development. During World War II, Soviet policymakers increasingly recognized the importance of the “uranium problem” in the context of national development strategy. By 1945, a collaborative effort between Soviet scientists and policymakers resulted in the establishment of a nuclear program and the restructuring of the uranium mining industry, leading to a new unified management system. Under this system, the Soviet Union not only founded numerous research institutes dedicated to “uranium science” and the “uranium industry” but also developed a comprehensive body of knowledge on uranium mining engineering. This enabled the large-scale exploration and extraction of uranium both domestically and internationally in a short period of time, transitioning the Soviet Union from a state of “uranium poverty” to “uranium abundance”. Analyzing this historical period not only elucidates the evolving relationship between the Soviet scientific community and policymakers regarding the “uranium problem” but also highlights the critical role of uranium mining engineering in the full lifecycle of nuclear engineering.
ZHANG et al. (Sun,) studied this question.