Nuclear scientist says first Soviet A-bomb 'miracle': report

Arkadi Brich also criticised banning atomic tests, saying they boosted scientific research and produced "very nice" mushroom clouds.

"The day of the first test should be considered a national day of celebration," he told RIA Novosti.

"People who knew nothing rapidly familiarised themselves with new technology and succeeded in creating a bomb in a country devastated by war."

"It was a miracle," he added.

The Soviet Union detonated its first atom bomb, the RDS-1, on August 29, 1949, in the Semipalatinsk test zone in northern Kazakhstan.

The test came four years after the US detonated atomic bomb Trinity, the first in history.

"The nuclear mushroom is a very nice phenomenon," Brich recalled, adding that after the explosion and the shockwave the sky cleared and there was glorious weather.

He criticised banning nuclear tests, a move he thought slowed scientific progress.

"The tests are progress, a possibility to use nuclear explosions for other objectives, to advance basic science," he said.

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was signed in 1996 in New York by 177 states, but it has not come into force.

It can only come into force when it is ratified by the required 44 states which had nuclear research or power facilities when it was adopted.

So far, only 34 of those states have ratified it.

(c) 2009 AFP