Comment by lazide
2 days ago
The difficulty with creating nuclear weapons has been 99% in refining and processing the fuel, not the structure of them, for a very long time.
2 days ago
The difficulty with creating nuclear weapons has been 99% in refining and processing the fuel, not the structure of them, for a very long time.
True for fission bombs. Less true for fusion bombs. The principal makeup and manufacturing of fusion device parts like tampers are still unknown to the public. Having a supply of HEU does not tell you how to assemble a functional triple stage device or how to utilize tritium, an isotope that measurably decreases in purity by the day.
You need a fission bomb to ignite a fusion bomb btw.
[flagged]
Was something I said unclear?
The purpose was to clarify that the obstacles to constructing modern nuclear weapons is not accurately characterized as "99%" fuel-related. Even if a group were to obtain a stockpile of ready HEU and plutonium-239, there is knowledge they simply will not have because they did not spend a trillion USD testing different bomb configurations last century. The difference in yield is two orders of magnitude.
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seriously, what was the point of this comment?