
Why It's So Hard to Make Nuclear Weapons - fjabre
http://www.livescience.com/technology/090922-nuclear-weapons-science.html
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friism
>"But a major problem with uranium bombs, Kristensen said, is the fact that
the material happens to be the world’s heaviest naturally occurring element
(twice as heavy as lead). According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a
nuclear bomb needs about 33 pounds (15 kilograms) of uranium to be
operational, a requirement that hinders how far a missile can travel. The
bulkiness of uranium also makes it harder to mount the technology to existing
missile systems."

This is rubbish. 15 kgs is hardly what keeps a missile from travelling around
athe world, it's the tamper, explosives and other assorted hardware (weighing
around 1000 kgs for a crude device).

>"Unlike uranium bombs, plutonium bombs are detonated using an 'implosion'
method"

More rubbish, uranium bombs can also be implosion designs, indeed most modern
ones (primaries in thermonuclear bombs) are.

~~~
tedunangst
Also very strange to complain about the bulkiness of something that's twice as
heavy as lead.

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tptacek
William Langewiesche --- badass narrative journalist formally of The Atlantic
Monthly --- wrote a pretty good book on this topic called _The Atomic Bazaar_.

There are other reasons why it's tricky for non-state actors to acquire
workable nuclear weapons, including the fact that the weapons they're likely
to get will probably kill them before they can kill us.

On the other hand, remember that when engineers talk about things like
managing the window of supercritical mass before the explosion rips the bomb
apart, a non-ballistic nuclear device (like something rigged in a shipping
container) wouldn't need to be nearly as efficient as a US nuclear weapon to
wreak total havoc.

Also, non-state actors aren't going to centrifuge their own enriched uranium;
they're going to steal it from the CIS states.

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Nwallins
> _Spector thinks such a time frame is still reasonable enough for the United
> States to dissuade Iran from continuing down that path._

> _"All the really dangerous actions that Iran can do, haven’t been done," he
> said. "They do not appear to be manufacturing parts or developing designs
> for an advanced nuclear weapon. So if the U.S. can strike a deal with them
> where both sides can find some satisfaction, it may be enough to end the
> crisis."_

This seems hopelessly naive to me. The "crisis" is that we don't trust Iran
with nukes. What magic negotiation or concession can we offer in the next 18
months that will get them to stop pursuing nukes that we haven't tried before?
They may halt facilities, only to move them underground or fire them up later
when it is to their advantage.

It's like the NK situation all over again.

~~~
papaf
_What magic negotiation or concession can we offer in the next 18 months that
will get them to stop pursuing nukes that we haven't tried before?_

I think the involvement of China and Russia is the new development that may
make the threat of sanctions more meaningful.

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InclinedPlane
This article is a little silly. First it moves the goal posts from making
nuclear weapons to making advanced nuclear weapons (e.g. Plutonium implosion
designs), with the justification that only implosion weapons are suitable for
ICBM delivery.

However, this analysis is inaccurate, naive, and misleading. Look at the
history of nuclear proliferation. South Africa, Israel, India, Pakistan, and
North Korea all successfully acquired nuclear weapons production capability,
the later 2 fairly recently. All but North Korea and South Africa are sure to
have built advanced weapons.

Also, there are 2 parts to the equation implicit in this article: a nuclear
warhead and an ICBM capable of carrying it. Unfortunately, it's just as easy
to keep working on the 2nd part to make bigger rockets with heavier payload
capacity, even if you are never able to figure out how to make an advanced,
lightweight warhead. India has the capability to launch a dead-simple gun-type
Uranium bomb to anywhere in the world, for example. North Korea's missile
program is maybe 10-20 years behind India's. And North Korea has been sharing
its missile technology with Iran.

It's naive to think that we're safe merely because the technological road is
difficult. At best it's just a matter of time, given concerted effort.

~~~
catzaa
South Africa built at least 6 deliverable nuclear weapons (bombing airplanes).
If it was tested, no one knows. There were suggestions that SA tested in 1979
(Vela incident).

For what it is worth, South Africa had a fairly good rocket development. The
Israeli Jericho rocket was actually a joint Israeli-South African project (the
Jericho missiles were tested in SA btw). The RSA rockets would have been able
to carry South African nuclear warheads. This (and the whole company Houteq)
got dismantled in 1990 though.

South Africa had a different strategy with its nuclear weapons though. Its
main purpose of its program was to force the USA to act if the RSA was
threatened by the USSR.

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ironkeith
There's a book called "The Bomb in My Garden", about the man responsible for
Iraq's nuclear weapons program in the 90's, which get pretty in depth to the
length he had to go to in order to get "not very close".

It gets into a lot more detail than this article, so if you're interested I'd
recommend checking it out: [http://www.amazon.com/Bomb-My-Garden-Secrets-
Mastermind/dp/0...](http://www.amazon.com/Bomb-My-Garden-Secrets-
Mastermind/dp/0471679658)

------
tomjen2
What I don't get is why haven't anybody brought one on the black market from
some Russian general who is ready to take a lot of black money?

There is got to be plenty of counties who would be prepared to pay a lot of
money for such a device, since it guarantees that they will never be attacked
by the US.

~~~
evgen
> There is got to be plenty of counties who would be prepared to pay a lot of
> money for such a device, since it guarantees that they will never be
> attacked by the US.

Not really. You need a device and a delivery mechanism. If either fail you are
basically ending your country as an independent entity for the next couple of
decades or so and you personally are unlikely to survive long after the
failure.

If you have one device and declare it the general public will not believe it
(some will, those "in the know" probably will if they can confirm it, but most
will think it is tin-hat BS) so you need two devices: one to "test" openly and
one to hold in reserve. If you bought a device rather than built it yourself
the game enters a cat-and-mouse phase where a large fraction of US resources
will be devoted to finding your device and blowing it up, if they succeed then
you die shortly after.

If you get the device and just tell the US secretly that you have it then the
cat-and-mouse game starts without the need for public posturing on either side
and you (and most of the senior leadership of your country) are likely to find
yourself on the unpleasant end of soft-power attempts at regime change and
not-so-soft attempts that come from a busboy with a silencer.

There is a somewhat fuzzy critical mass of devices and reliable delivery
mechanisms that are required before you are a threat with enough credibility
to use your nukes as a shield. NK probably has a few nukes, but their
artillery along the DMZ and the proximity of same to Soeul is really the only
thing keeping Kim Jong Il alive; your hypothetical country has almost no hope
of hitting the US and if it is not close to a US ally that its people actually
care about then all bets are off. If Sudan suddenly declared that it had
bought a nuke then you could probably measure Bashir's future lifespan in
weeks...

~~~
billswift
As a deterrent to invasion, use as a super-mine against ground troops would be
perfectly adequate and requires no fancy delivery system; just adequate
security as to exactly where it was located.

~~~
dschobel
so you're going to... nuke yourself? yikes.

~~~
billswift
Nope, you fall back so the nuke is behind the enemy's lines; classic ambush
tactics. As an example, the Iraqis could have left a nuke buried behind
themselves to knock out substantial US forces, if they had one. I haven't seen
anything about it, but how much precautions the military took would tell you
how seriously the gov't actually took their own claims about Iraqi nukes.

