What is so difficult about developing nuclear weapons that makes some countries incapable of making them?
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The main problem is the nuclear fuel that powers the bomb. Uranium is a fairly rare element on its own, but to make a bomb you need lots of a very rare isotope of uranium (U-235) that’s chemically identical but weighs ever so slightly less.
To separate out this rare isotope you need to turn it into a gas and spin it in a centrifuge. But this is so slow you need a gigantic factory with *thousands* of centrifuges, that consume as much electrical power as a small city.
Another fuel, plutonium, is refined differently, but it also takes a massive industrial operation to make. Either way, this is all too expensive for a small group to do, only medium and large countries can afford it.
But the even bigger problem is that all this factory infrastructure is impossible to hide. If you’re making nuclear bombs, you probably have enemies who want to stop you, and a giant factory full of delicate equipment is an easy target.
So to make a bomb, you need to be rich enough to build both a gigantic power-sucking factory *and* a military powerful enough to protect it from people who would like to stop you.
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