How much expertise is needed to make a nuclear bomb? Would a large operation be required?
Unfortunately, government studies have concluded that once a terrorist organization had the needed nuclear material, a handful of skilled individuals might be able to make a crude nuclear bomb using commercially available tools and equipment, without any large fixed facilities that might draw attention, and without access to classified nuclear weapons information. Getting nuclear material and making a crude nuclear bomb would be the most complex operation terrorists have ever carried out, but the risk that a sophisticated group could pull it off is very real. Roughly 90 percent of the effort in the Manhattan Project was focused on making nuclear bomb material; getting stolen nuclear material would allow terrorists to skip the hardest part of making a nuclear bomb. The simplest type of nuclear bomb, known as a “gun-type” bomb, slams two pieces of nuclear material together at high speed. The bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, for example, was a cannon that fired a shell of HEU into rings of
Related Questions
- If all the resources needed to design a working nuclear bomb are readily available, isn nuclear proliferation inevitable?
- How difficult would it be for terrorists to get the materials needed to make a nuclear bomb?
- How much expertise is needed to make a nuclear bomb? Would a large operation be required?
