Located in the heart of the "Sea of Death", there is such a base, it has a very nice name called "Malan", and Malan is a very tenacious weed, no matter what the environment of growth, it can always emit its own "light" on this land.
Although the "Malan Base" is a hidden place that no one knows, it is precisely its existence that has erupted into a voice that shocked the world.
Lop
From the successful detonation of the first atomic bomb in 1964 to China's last nuclear test in 1994, in the past 30 years, more than 100,000 officers and soldiers and technicians of the base who participated in the nuclear test have appeared.
Even due to the particularity of their work, they were almost impossible to see for a long time, but their deeds were slowly uncovered and made public after countless years.
"There is a place called Ma Lan, you want to look for it, please go out of Yangguan in the west, Dan is in the desert, blood and sweat write hard, put the silver star, dance the long sword, and raise the bright sun and clear sky......" This "Malan Ballad" is a record of the story of Ma Lan, the Gobi oasis of the "Atomic City of the Republic".
Before this land was designated as a nuclear test base, it did not have its own name, some were just a deserted Gobi Desert, and the earliest nuclear test base was not here, but the world-famous Dunhuang.
When the time came to the fifties of the twentieth century, China at that time did not have any weapons with very lethal power, so it was also shrouded in the dark cloud of nuclear intimidation, in order to solve the problem, a special meeting was held to discuss this matter, that is, from the end of this meeting, China began the arduous and great journey of developing nuclear weapons.
At the beginning, the problem faced by countless staff members was that not only did they have to start from scratch, but also that the atomic bomb had to "explode" to be successful, which meant that while researching nuclear weapons, they had to find a test site that was wide enough and desolate enough.
Later, in order to find a suitable place, countless experts also traveled all over the motherland, successively surveying western Mongolia, southeastern Xinjiang, western Qinghai and other regions, and finally the Soviet experts slapped the table and decided to place the test site in the northwest of Dunhuang.
But in the end, after discussion, it was decided to change places, and there are three reasons, the first is because there are Dunhuang Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, and the nuclear test is like an earthquake.
The second point is that there was basically no water source in Dunhuang at that time, and the loose soil layer was too thick, and the smoke and dust produced by the explosion must have been particularly large.
The third point is also one that countless people are concerned about, because the test site is too small, basically only able to test an atomic bomb with a TNT yield of 20,000 tons, which is obviously unable to meet the anti-war nuclear needs of China's nuclear industry.
Then the site selection personnel set their sights on Lop Nur, which was hundreds of kilometers away from Dunhuang, and selected the western end of Lop Nur in Bayingolin Mongolia Autonomous Prefecture, and then drew a nuclear test site of more than 100,000 square kilometers, which is equivalent to the size of Jiangsu Province if it is simply compared.
And it is "inaccessible, far from the city, and most importantly, there is a water source that is not in the earthquake zone", and when the experimental site was determined, he was given the name "Malan".
The origin of the name is because when the troops came here to choose a place to live, it was originally a saline lake, with a ditch flowing through it, and there were maran grass growing on both sides, so they fell in love with this place at a glance, and the place where they lived was also named "Malan Village".
In this way, countless experts and scholars rushed over from all directions and began to devote themselves to research and construction, and in this way, after the efforts of more than 100,000 people, finally at 15 o'clock on October 16, 1964, China's first atomic bomb exploded in Lop Nur, making an earth-shattering loud noise.
Later, after research, it was learned that the power generated by the first nuclear explosion on the mainland reached a total of 22,000 tons of TNT, and this conclusion also shocked the world for a while.
Lop Nur today
With the development of science and technology, there are more and more means of detection, and finally some scientists have discovered a brine layer rich in minerals such as potassium sulfate more than 100 meters deep in the territory of Lop Nur, and also found that the potash resources of Lop Nur account for about 30% of the country, and the potash reserves are also as high as an astonishing 2.5 tons.
And most importantly, when extracting these minerals, it is necessary to continuously extract resources from the ground, and slowly the brine extracted from the ground will flow into the salt water canals, thus forming a large salt lake, so that Lop Nur can regain the "glory" of the past from a "barren" place.
And since 2000, the company has been building a factory here, and is still continuously carrying out exploratory experiments in the hinterland of Lop Nur, and once developed into the world's largest manufacturer of potassium sulfate fertilizer, producing more than 1.7 million tons of potassium sulfate in 2018 alone.
Not only that, in the process of development, the factory also drives the local GDP of Xinjiang, and at the same time nourishes the vast agricultural land, which has become an important pillar of Xinjiang's economic development.
Today's Lop Nur has also changed from the former "sea of death" to a modern factory, with more than 3,000 employees alone, and supporting basic living facilities, from dormitories, canteens to activity centers, everything, and the living conditions and office environment of employees have also been significantly improved.
It is believed that in the near future, with the entry of modern factories, the once forbidden area of life will also become a "city of hope".
Article sources:
The Harrow team of the Hami Dynamic Testing Workshop of Urumqi West Depot of Huasheng Online has been sticking to Lop Nur for 10 years - road guards in the desert (watchman)
Beijing Daily, August 24, 2017--- Revealing the story of China's nuclear test base: Malan, the Gobi Oasis