I have to agree with @Alessan at almost 100 years old, and essentially no computers when invented, I would assume any state level actor could do this, so long as they can get the enriched Uranium. I’m open to being wrong about that, but I need convincing.
North Korea developed its nuclear weapons program with the assistance of the Soviet Union and other countries, and through its own efforts:
Soviet Union
In the 1960s, the Soviet Union helped North Korea build the Yongbyon Nuclear Research Center, which included a research reactor and plutonium reprocessing plant. The Soviet Union also trained North Korean nuclear scientists.
And when you’re starving your own people, there’s money left over for a massive military program - their version of putting a man on the moon.
This is the fundamental problem with this whole discussion. Too many people are stuck on the idea that developing nuclear weapons means replicating what the US has, or at least what the Soviets used to have.
It doesn’t mean that. As a deterrent against a local aggressor, an old style Hiroshima bomb is more than adequate. A 15Kt yield will destroy an army in the field, and can be delivered in many ways. Hell, in a place like Ukraine, with lots of land, a line of nuclear landmines is all you need. Is that how the US would do it? No, of course not. But it’s entirely possible, and other countries can (and probably will) make different choices, and accept greater risks.
Well, to be fair, the guys also needed two small cities - Oak Ridge, TN, pop. 75,000 and Hanford, WA, pop. 45,000 - built from scratch working 24/7 to produce the uranium and plutonium. The sites were set near hydropower to satisfy the enormous power requirements.
People always seem to forget the amazing engineering achievements necessary outside Los Alamos. They weren’t using Mr. Fusion plants than ran on household waste.
No, but at that time there weren’t hundreds of operating nuclear plants all over the world.
Didn’t that make the engineering achievements that much more impressive?
Making 2 or 3 crude fission bombs so big and heavy you need to deliver by ocean container or suicide airliner is 1940s engineering for a large country with lots of resources to throw at the problem.
Making dozens of fusion bombs you can deliver by bread van / panel truck is 1950s engineering for a large country with lots of resources to throw at the problem.
Making hundreds or thousands of fusion bombs you can bolt onto a missile launched by a fighter-sized airplane, or dropped directly as a freefall bomb by such a plane is 1970s engineering for a large country with lots of resources to throw at the problem.
The big question in 2024 is: “How much have the tech changes since ~1975 (so ~50 years) made parts of that job easier or harder?” Computation itself is a lot easier. Most of the rest of what it takes is about as challenging as ever.
Of course a 2024 bad actor (government or private) who’s happy with one or two 1940s weapons has an easier problem than one who’s trying to build an arsenal of modern weapons and modern delivery systems.
Estimates for the Sentinel missile system are at $140 billion and rising, so yes you need that kind of cash money and other resources. Even though the rub is that you can never, ever use your fully operational missile system; furthermore, it doesn’t produce electricity for your cities or anything directly useful like that.
Ballistic-missile submarines are not super cheap, either.
Or as a scientist once put it
Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy… the FEAR to attack.
Nevermind.