How were 2 countries able to discover and build nuclear weapons from scratch, simultaneously during the 1940s but most countries today can’t build them without decades of effort?
In: Physics
The hardest part about building an atomic bomb isn’t actually building the bomb
It’s getting your hands on the enriched uranium that you need to make the core.
The tools for enriching uranium are carefully tracked and it takes a lot of large centrifuges to go from yellow cake uranium to enriched weapons grade uranium.
In the 1960s the US government did a study (Nth country study) and had 3 physics PhDs design some nuclear weapons. They had no prior nuclear physics or weapons experience yet all three came up with what was agreed would be working designs.
The next tricky stage would be making it small enough to deliver on a missile because dropping it out the back of a fat bomber doesn’t really give you first or second strike capability these days
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