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Nuclear simulations are my hobby, and I have a few pet projects in the area. It is impossible to build a bona fide nuclear device for $2k (it is possible to bui

Nuclear simulations are my hobby, and I have a few pet projects in the area. It is impossible to build a bona fide nuclear device for $2k (it is possible to build a dirty bomb with this budget, but it is not interesting in any way). To achieve sustainable prompt criticality, you need high-quality starting material with low spontaneous fission, and a fast assembly (microseconds). "Gun-type" assembly is not used anymore even by new nuclear programs, as it is very inefficient (and still requires quite a lot of precision engineering). With implosion assembly, you need to learn quite a lot about shock compression, numerical simulations of detonations, and again it requires some precise engineering. "A nuclear bomb is like a half-ton Swiss watch", as somebody have said. I believe it is possible to build a nuclear device from scratch, but you need a few years, explosion testing rigs and radiography equipment, a team of engineers and physicists, and a few millions budget. If you don't have starting material, it will be much more expensive.

varjag 4y ago
$2k in 1978 money. More like 15k now!
- floodle 4y ago
  I get $9,088.22 on an online inflation calculator. Although I do wonder whether uranium is included in the consumer price inflation index!
  - varjag 4y ago
    I prefer to compare it to other industrial products. 1973 Ford F-100 (Sixth Generation): $2,889 - $17,387.85 https://www.thedrive.com/news/34333/heres-how-much-the-ford-f-150-has-increased-in-price-over-the-decades https://www.thedrive.com/news/34333/heres-how-much-the-ford-... Tho of course the end of decade added up to the inflation..
    - the_gipsy 4y ago
      So would we also get an H-bomb then? Because a 2022 car is much, much more technologically advanced than a 1973 one.
      - atemerev 4y ago
        Thermonuclear devices require complicated X-ray reflection modeling, ablation modeling, and some other very specialized stuff which barely even have open source libraries for this. There are some, still.
dTal 4y ago
>"Gun-type" assembly is not used anymore even by new nuclear programs How can you assert this with such confidence?
- atemerev 4y ago
  Because A.Q. Khan and other practitioners have shown that even if you have weapon-grade enriched uranium, it is better to work out a (relatively) crude implosion device, and it will still work better than gun-type.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago
  From Wikipedia >There are currently no known gun-type weapons in service: advanced nuclear weapon states tended to abandon the design in favor of the implosion-type weapons, boosted fission weapons, and thermonuclear weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon It seems like clearly the inferior method, the USSR never even bothered with them.
- smilespray 4y ago
  Not OP. Gun-type assemblies use uranium and are very wasteful in terms of fissile material. State-run nuclear programs have all gone for implosion designs, even North Korea.
Nokinside 4y ago
The only step that takes time and space is creating enough highly enriched uranium for the bomb. You need few hundred or thousand centrifuges running a some time. I have a friend who is nuclear physicist working for the nuclear proliferation issues in international organization. According to him, every country would do modern boosted fission weapon as their first nuke, and it can take less than year when you have easy access to experts and modern machines. Few subcritical tests (easy to hide) are needed to verify that everything works, numerical simulations do the rest. Boosted fission weapon is still considered a fission weapon, but it uses fusion to boost the yield. You need a breeder reactor or small particle accelerator to make the necessary tritium but basically anyone can do it. Including North Korea.
- atemerev 4y ago
  More like a few tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) centrifuges. Anyway, states like Iran go for the uranium way only because enrichment plants can be hidden and work underground, unlike plutonium production facilities which require open space and a lot of running water.

varjag 4y ago

$2k in 1978 money. More like 15k now!

floodle 4y ago
I get $9,088.22 on an online inflation calculator. Although I do wonder whether uranium is included in the consumer price inflation index!
- varjag 4y ago
  I prefer to compare it to other industrial products. 1973 Ford F-100 (Sixth Generation): $2,889 - $17,387.85 https://www.thedrive.com/news/34333/heres-how-much-the-ford-f-150-has-increased-in-price-over-the-decades https://www.thedrive.com/news/34333/heres-how-much-the-ford-... Tho of course the end of decade added up to the inflation..
  - the_gipsy 4y ago
    So would we also get an H-bomb then? Because a 2022 car is much, much more technologically advanced than a 1973 one.
    - atemerev 4y ago
      Thermonuclear devices require complicated X-ray reflection modeling, ablation modeling, and some other very specialized stuff which barely even have open source libraries for this. There are some, still.

dTal 4y ago

>"Gun-type" assembly is not used anymore even by new nuclear programs How can you assert this with such confidence?

atemerev 4y ago
Because A.Q. Khan and other practitioners have shown that even if you have weapon-grade enriched uranium, it is better to work out a (relatively) crude implosion device, and it will still work better than gun-type.
boomboomsubban 4y ago
From Wikipedia >There are currently no known gun-type weapons in service: advanced nuclear weapon states tended to abandon the design in favor of the implosion-type weapons, boosted fission weapons, and thermonuclear weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun-type_fission_weapon It seems like clearly the inferior method, the USSR never even bothered with them.
smilespray 4y ago
Not OP. Gun-type assemblies use uranium and are very wasteful in terms of fissile material. State-run nuclear programs have all gone for implosion designs, even North Korea.

Nokinside 4y ago

The only step that takes time and space is creating enough highly enriched uranium for the bomb. You need few hundred or thousand centrifuges running a some time. I have a friend who is nuclear physicist working for the nuclear proliferation issues in international organization. According to him, every country would do modern boosted fission weapon as their first nuke, and it can take less than year when you have easy access to experts and modern machines. Few subcritical tests (easy to hide) are needed to verify that everything works, numerical simulations do the rest. Boosted fission weapon is still considered a fission weapon, but it uses fusion to boost the yield. You need a breeder reactor or small particle accelerator to make the necessary tritium but basically anyone can do it. Including North Korea.

atemerev 4y ago
More like a few tens of thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) centrifuges. Anyway, states like Iran go for the uranium way only because enrichment plants can be hidden and work underground, unlike plutonium production facilities which require open space and a lot of running water.