Chelyabinsk-70 / Snezhinsk - Russian Federal Nuclear Center

Chelyabinsk-70, currently Snezhinsk, is a home to the Russian Federal Nuclear Center – the All-Russian Institute of Technical Physics (VNIITF), Russia’s one of two principal warhead design centers. (The Institute of Experimental Physics, VNIIEF, in Arzamas-16 is the other principal warhead design center.) The need for a second weapons center emerged in the early 1950s due to the rapid expansion of the Soviet nuclear weapons development program.

The primary mission of VNIITF is designing nuclear weapons and providing scientific support to nuclear weapons throughout their life-cycle. The Institute is responsible for all gravity bombs and SLBM warheads as well as for numerous other types of strategic and tactical weapons. It also was the primary designer of peaceful nuclear explosive devices.