How was the USA/Russia able to build nuclear weapons in the 1940s, but countries today aren’t able to just as easily?
In: Technology
Weapons-grade uranium isn’t cheap or easy to produce, you need a vast array of equipment and a large amount of specific types of uranium to process.
It’s costly, labor intensive, and serves no civilian purpose. For that reason, most nations that aren’t military superpowers aren’t interested.
The few that are are effectively rogue states, autocratic nations that want nuclear capability to back up their regional harassment and deter invasion.
It’s hard for them to do it because they have very few allies willing and able to suply the hardware and expertise, and a great many enemies interested in stopping the production.
The US and Russia didn’t have these limiting factors in the 1940s and 50s, they could produce and test nuclear weapons freely with support from their global allies.
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