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The blame slinging seems a bit unwarranted given the understandable constraints on detonation tests. The two plauisble outcomes even as a laymen are either the

The blame slinging seems a bit unwarranted given the understandable constraints on detonation tests. The two plauisble outcomes even as a laymen are either the plutonium's decay results in less energetic nuclear explosions as lost to atomic decay or the breakdown products "poison" it to a dud which cannot sustain fission. The other unlikely result is a "meltdown state". The decay chains would presumably be calculable without any destruction. The composition could potentially be destructively tested by centrifuges and chromatography suitable for weapons grade radioactives - possibly resulting in just some low level possibly atomic waste instead of a detonation.

baybal2 7y ago
That has more to do with metallurgy than with nuclear physics. It's clear that decay and fission products need at least 100 years to accumulate in any significant amount to affect munition performance. Pure plutonium has 6 metallurgical phases, and alloys used in pits add even more to metallurgic issues. Imagine an implosion design going through a brittle failure instead of an orderly compaction of a hollow pit? Or worse, one side of a pit went through phase transition, and the other don't and you don't even get a fizzle.