I’m assuming the science of making one is out there. Why then countries like Iran who so want to develop atomic weapons haven’t been able to do so?
In: Physics
It isn’t the science. It is the engineering, logistics and testing.
Even though the engineering part is not simple, it isn’t that difficult either. However, it is probably a good idea that certain parts are tested. “It should work” is probably not a good design standard for nuclear weapons. Although lots of testing can be done without the actual nuclear material, at the end of the day, it is probably a good idea to test at least one live device. This test cannot be hidden from the seismologic, radioactivity and intelligence gathering sensors and satellites around the world.
Also fissile material is hard to extract from raw uranium. And the US, at least, keeps a pretty close eye on equipment that could potentially be used to make the extraction equipment. This is becoming a lot more difficult as equipment technology advances though.
Finally, the uranium supply chain is monitored fairly strictly. This is a pretty self interested effort – none of the major powers of the world (US, Russia, China etc) want other countries to proliferate nuclear weapons. They’d much prefer keeping this capability to themselves as far as possible.
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