I understand the technology is difficult. My question is more about how is it that some countries have achieved a nuclear arsenal and other countries are still trying? You’d imagine if the scientists and engineers of one country could manage it, those of another country would eventually get it too. Seems an odd convenience that the most dangerous weapons on earth are prohibitively difficult to make. So few humans are smart enough to make them that only 9 countries have achieved it?
In: Engineering
Similar to the dichotomy of the purpose and meaning of the race to the moon(accurate nuke of any size going to anywhere on earth, or space exploration, you decide!), it seems trivial in theory but is extremely complex in the heat of the moment. Plenty of countries have the raw resources and skill to take themselves to space but it is only a handful that actually makes the effort.
Any country at this point in history, which would be capable of generating a nuclear arsenal, would effectively know better than waste their finances on such a thing. radioactive heavy metals are tough material to mine and whilst chemistry can make it easy to purify, at some point you’re going to be working metals which are both extremely toxic and rough on your tools. Dialing in a design to an effective weapon requires tests, and tests are dirty. If you’re attempting to do such covertly, you lose the moment your enrichment facilities leak or your tests transport very obvious isotope signatures of specific reactions over anyone else. It’s not so much of an achievement as it is a money-sink.
To top it off, to get to the ‘top’ and build hydrogen bombs, you generally have to get a working knowledge of fission bombs which are used to trigger the fusion reaction in most cases. So you’d need to know how to get your bomb to lightly mega-boom inside itself for extremely tiny slices of seconds before fully mega-booming, which actually can be cleaner with less fallout since the fusion part isn’t made of enriched heavy metals for the most part.
Also keep in mind that some countries have had nuclear programs but they either shuttered due to cost or external political pressure. Essentially it’s expensive if you aren’t direct allies with Russia or the United States.
Also most nations are signatories to Non proliferation treaty of Nuclear arms. So countries like Germany have all the necessary resources and information it choose to not develop the weapons.
Other bits are that if a country is NATO then they are covered by the US’ arsenal since the arms are a pretty significant deterrent in the alliance
Nuclear weapons require the synthesis of nuclear fuel.
There are basically two ways to do this:
1. Huge factories which consume large amounts of energy
2. Have some preexisting nuclear fuel and use it to ‘breed’ more in a reactor
Breeding nuclear fuel is difficult without a significant supply of existing fuel to experiment with, and hiding huge power-hungry factories from American meddlers is even more difficult.
TLDR: It’s not the technology so much as the difficulty getting the fuel.
The basic technological principles behind a nuclear weapon is well documented and relatively easy to obtain. Working out the specifics is more difficult but not outside the realm of possibility for a team of trained physicists and researchers with enough resources.
The real difficulty of constructing a nuclear weapon is obtaining weapons grade uranium and plutonium.
Naturally mined Uranium cannot be made in a nuclear weapon without enrichment and the enrichment process is both difficult and expensive to undertake. As a smaller nation it would be nearly impossible to conduct such an operation without the outside world taking notice and acting to stop you.
A lot of it isn’t the intelligence. Time, resources, and the fact that no country is supposed to/allowed to establish a nuclear arsenal anymore is a big thing. North Korea is one of the only countries trying to build theirs at the moment but their lack of resources, education systems, and quality labor makes it tough to. Other countries that have tried, like Iran, have issues with sustaining resources primarily as well as they have to try and do it mostly in secret, and containing that large of a nuclear signature isn’t a small feat. Any country catches wind of a change in the atmospheric readings and they start asking questions.
Many countries can build nuclear weapons, but they don’t.
When you have nuclear weapon, everyone will be more cautious to you, some will stop supporting you finacially and gonna apply a lot of ban to you to punish you for having “mass destroy weapon”
Would you still want to play with neighbor kid if you know he can destroy your entire family whenever he can ?
Most countries could but simply are not interested in building them. The countries that fail, like North Korea, have an economy the size of Vermont.
On the one hand you most likely need some quality technology in terms of detector material and whatnot to even know what you’re doing and not running it blindly. Then you’d need fuel.
Uranium isn’t particularly scarce and it’s scattered all over the place, but the ration between 235 (the one you want) and 238 (the one that could be used for breeding but not directly) is 0.7:99.3 so for convenience let’s say for 1 kg of uranium-235 you’d need 100 kg of natural uranium. And the way you turn one into the other is by centrifuges. Meaning you spin them really fast and because 238 is slightly heavier than 235 (the number indicates the number of core particles and thus the weight), it gets drawn slightly more to the outside.
So you have to spin it really really fast and really really long to get it towards the <90% ration that you’d need for weapons. Not to mention that this costs a lot of energy that you’re not going to use because you plan to waste it on nukes.
So additionally to the detectors and stuff you need to buy high end centrifuges, all of which puts you on a watchlist. And once you have all of that you need to build 2 chunks of material slightly below the rate upon which they naturally go into chain reaction mode. And those 2 chunks are then propelled towards each other with some high velocity directional explosives (another thing that puts you on a watchlist) because otherwise the reaction would take place too soon or too late and you just end up splattering the material all over the place (dirty bomb).
And given all of the steps worked successfully you still need to test it silently, which is pretty impossible as it will send of shockwaves that can be detected and above ground also produces traceable radiation. Also people don’t like above ground testings anymore because it’s basically pissing in the common pool that we all swim in.
And last but not least these weapons also naturally decay, so your unless you restock it your arsenal will become smaller each year.
So a lot of struggle for weapons that no sane person would ever use because even if they “win”, whatever they would win would be much less valuable than without it.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that most countries are _not trying_. Many could develop nukes if they wanted to — they have chosen not to. This choice is reinforced through treaties and a world situation in which they feel more secure not pursuing that path than pursuing it.
The technology itself does require certain hurdles but those hurdles are, by now, not so difficult that they are truly unobtainable even to poor or underdeveloped nations. If North Korea and Pakistan can develop nukes, then pretty much anyone can, if they are willing to spend the resources and time on it. But also, importantly, if they are willing to spend the _political_ capital on it: going down that road means either violating an important treaty (the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) or not being a member of it, and both of those come with significant economic and political consequences. Additionally, if you are trying to secretly build a nuclear weapon outside of the treaty regime, you risk calling down the wrath of other nations who, through war or sabotage, may try to stop you.
The technology is tricky, but it is not the factor that makes it prohibitive. Its trickiness just adds time and difficult, so you can’t simply say, “I want a nuke” and tomorrow have one. But it is not what keeps nations from eventually getting it. The technology is nearly 80 years old. It is not as hard as it once was.
All the sanctions and export restrictions do is buy you time. Eventually, any nation that puts in the resources and keeps at it can probably pull it off.
Latest Answers