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
Several reasons:
1. Obtaining sufficient fissile material is very hard. It takes a large scale industrial operation. You are either:
Refining enough Uranium 235 or manufacturing enough plutonium through a nuclear reactor. Either way requires enormous industrial capacity and cannot be easily hidden. Which brings us to reason 2:
2. everyone is watching. You can’t hide it. Countries have tried. . .but really, it’s impossible to hide the production of it. And the pursuit of it is so destabilizing, that a country risks everything from soured relations, to sanctions to attacks on its facilities if it pursues it.
3. A uranium bomb is relatively simple to engineer, but a plutonium weapon is very complex. A uranium weapon can be created by firing a plug at sufficient speed into a sphere of uranium to create a critical mass. A plutonium weapon would fizzle if you tried this. So the only way to make plutonium to go boom, is to implode it. That is a highly highly highly complex engineering challenge and while countries can figure it out, it’s among the most closely guarded secrets and takes a massive effort to develop – again, one which is not easily hidden from the world.
The nuclear club is pretty small considering the power of the weapon that it gives states, and the reason for this is, it’s hard to do, impossible to hide, incurs significant downsides in terms of becoming a threat on the world scene, and at the end of the day isn’t very useful in part because, you’ll never be able to actually use it, only threaten to use it.
Any country that actually used a weapon in an act of war would pretty much be instantly vaporized. Because as hard as atomic weapons are to make, we have thermonuclear weapons that can destroy entire large cities and be delivered anywhere on the planet via ICBMs in about 1/2 from issuing launch codes, and those are 100x as hard to make.
And even the threat of using it could easily prompt a pre-emptive strike. Atomic weapons are among the least useful tactical weapons and to get strategic importance it’s basically impossible short of being one of the great powers in the world. So, for vast majority of states, it’s just bad to pursue, costs enormous resources and creates enormous instabilities, and gains very little in terms of security.
Because everyone that knows how to make the bombs was already hired by the other countries and I’m SURE if you have the knowledge to quickly whip up a lil nuclear kaboom you’re gonna have some eyes following you around and if they catch you tryna help isis or whatever build nukes you’ll probably just be taken out so why risk it
Iran could develop nuclear weapons any time they want. Practically any country with a domestic civilian nuclear industry, and particularly any country with the ability to enrich uranium domestically, could make weapons relatively easily. It’s basically as simple as running the fuel used for nuclear reactors in a centrifuge for a much longer time to make a purer fuel, and then attaching the warhead to a delivery system (which Iran already has).
The reason Iran has not yet developed nuclear weapons is because they do not want them (at least at this precise moment). There would be a guarantee of Israeli escalation, Saudi Arabia would probably try to get nuclear weapons too, and they would become more isolated internationally than they already are. Their current strategy is what’s called “nuclear hedging”—basically signaling to other countries that they could develop nuclear weapons if they want to, but not actually taking the final step and developing them.
It’s basically really hard to gather all the components you would need, and even harder to do it secretly.
And even then the bomb itself needs to work in a really specific way. (You can’t just light a fuse and run to a safe distance.)
Making the bomb isn’t difficult. Miniaturizing it to put on a ballistic missile is extremely difficult.
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.
It’s the fissionable material. The bomb part is pretty easy. The stuff that goes boom in the middle is hard to refine.
The powers that be keep a tight lid on all natural uranium sources. Nobody really wants this out on the open market.
The natural ore is mostly U-238 which won’t explode. Separating it out and getting the U-235 means you have to gassify it, spin it until the extra weight of those protons pull it down, and then siphon off the top. Re-solidify it, and pack it into pellets. The equipment to do this is more than just spinning a bucket over your head and people also keep watch on any country that buys the sort of stuff needed to make it. When Iran does this, Israel specifically goes out of their way to sabotage it. There are some wild stories in cybersecurity about it.
It isn’t hard.. multiple countries had nuclear bombs in the works before the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Now only the worst kinds of countries in the world have them to scare any potential invaders off.
Iran could definitely get the resources and help needed from their main ally Russia but is it worth it if they risk getting invaded by the US, or having politicians secretly murdered by Israeli Mossad agents?
There was an experiment conducted in 1967 called the Nth country experiment that showed that anybody can design a nuclear bomb using only publicly available information. The experiment hired 3 physicists with no prior knowledge of nuclear physics and asked them to build a bomb using only declassified information. In just 2 and half years they had designed a functional bomb.
You can read more about it here: [Nth country experiment ](https://www.amusingplanet.com/2023/03/the-1967-experiment-that-proved-anyone.html?m=1)
Uranium ore is rare. There are trace amounts that exist in the earths crust, most of it is found in only 5 countries in the world.
There are two types of Uranium. U-235 & U-238. U-238 is the most common, less than 1% is U-235.
Uranium has to be converted to a gas in order to enrich it. Uranium has to be enriched in order to use it for nuclear purposes. Enrichment generally occurs in gas centrifuges. After the Uranium is converted to gas, it’s put in these centrifuges. The centrifuges separate the U-235 from the U-238.
The longer you spin the gas in the centrifuge, the more enriched it becomes.
A nuclear reactor uses 5% enriched Uranium. A nuclear weapon uses 90+% enriched uranium.
So, to begin with, the country wanting to build the weapon has to…
1. Get the uranium to begin with.
2. Obtain the capability to enrich it.
3. Enrich it.
This is all before even building the bomb itself.
These centrifuges are not small. They’d need an area about the size of a football field to do this. It’s difficult to build something that large while constantly being watched.
I have little doubt that these countries have the uranium to accomplish building one *somewhere*.
We know for a fact that they already have uranium enriched to 60%. It would take mere weeks to enrich that above 90%. Its believed that they already have enough to make 10.
Essentially, nothing is really stopping them except for the superpower countries watching them and making treaties, most of which they’ve broken.
I’d be pretty surprised if they *don’t* already have some.
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