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
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.
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