Chief designer of Soviet nuclear reactors
In January 1946, Kurchatov told him at their first meeting: "We must create an industrial uranium 'boiler' in the shortest possible time." Dollezhal devoted the rest of his life to reactor design.
An engineer of Czech descent, he was the Soviet Union's chief reactor designer, responsible for the reactors that powered the atomic bomb, the first nuclear power plant, and the nuclear submarine fleet. After meeting Igor Kurchatov in 1946, he designed the A reactor for plutonium production, enabling the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, and built the AM-1 reactor at Obninsk, the world's first grid-connected nuclear power plant (1954). As founding director of NIKIET for 34 years, he developed the prototypes of every major Soviet reactor line — VVER, RBMK, and naval propulsion — making him a foundational figure of the Soviet atomic establishment. In the aftermath of the Chernobyl disaster, his role in the RBMK design drew sharp criticism, and he stepped down as director in 1986.
Activities and affiliations
Career Timeline
- 1923Graduated MVTU, mechanical engineer
- 1930–1932Imprisoned in Prompartiya case; OKB-8 OGPU Deputy Chief Engineer
- 1933–1942Chief Engineer, Bolshevik plant (Kiev) / Uralkhimmash
- 1943–1952Director, NIIkhimmash (atomic project from 1946)
- 1952–1986Director, NII-8 / NIKIET
- 1954Chief designer, Obninsk AM-1 (world's first NPP)
- 1961–1986Chair, Nuclear Machines Dept., MVTU
Related historical events
The RBMK and Chernobyl: the designer and the debate over responsibility
Dollezhal's NIKIET developed the RBMK (high-power channel reactor) jointly with the Kurchatov Institute. Born as a dual-purpose design that produced both weapons-grade plutonium and electricity, it later became purely energy-generating; its water-graphite channel reactors were installed at Chernobyl, Leningrad, Kursk, Smolensk, and Ignalina. Yet Dollezhal himself opposed siting RBMK plants in the USSR's densely populated regions. He repeatedly wrote internal memoranda to that effect, and in 1979 he warned publicly in the journal Kommunist, calling for a halt to RBMK construction in the populous European part of the country. Aleksandrov, director of the Kurchatov Institute and effectively the RBMK's inventor, rebutted him in Problems of Peace and Socialism, defusing the warning. The official doctrine of the absolutely safe NPP prevailed, and Dollezhal fell silent and remained the RBMK's chief designer.
After the Chernobyl disaster in April 1986, the dispute over design flaws escalated into a question of prosecution. Half a century after the Prompartiya affair, Dollezhal came under investigation for a second time. A criminal case concerning the reactor's design deficiencies was separated out but closed by the Soviet Procuracy, and a new one opened in January 1991 was likewise dropped after the USSR's dissolution, leaving no guilty verdict. The IAEA's accident report did not mention his name. The argument over responsibility continues to this day: the 1991 USSR Supreme Soviet commission identified design shortcomings in the RBMK-1000, while the convicted former deputy chief engineer of the Chernobyl plant, Anatoly Dyatlov, blamed the design and its scientific supervisor and chief designer in his book. The court, by contrast, held the station's operating personnel responsible.