# What countries are able to build nuclear weapons, assuming they wanted to **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 27, 2015, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329 "2015-07-27T16:48:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 9:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/21 "2015-07-28T09:19:51Z")
Fission bombs are equivalent to many kilotons of TNT, but if you want to do more serious damage you want fission-fusion-fission bombs equivalent to many megatons of TNT. So far, only five countries have those weapons, right? How hard would it be for India, Israel, Venezuela, etc. to build thermonuclear bombs? ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/22 "2015-07-28T10:01:03Z")
India claims to have already developed a thermonuclear weapon but the test involved wasn’t as big as it should have been if it was really one. Israel is rumoured to already have a thermonuclear design but hasn’t tested it. See here: > **[Thermonuclear weapon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermonuclear_weapon)** > > A thermonuclear weapon, fusion weapon or hydrogen bomb (H bomb) is a second-generation nuclear weapon design. Its greater sophistication affords it vastly greater destructive power than first-generation nuclear bombs, a more compact size, a lower mass, or a combination of these benefits. Characteristics of nuclear fusion reactions make possible the use of non-fissile depleted uranium as the weapon's main fuel, thus allowing more efficient use of scarce fissile material such as uranium-235 (235U... ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 5:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/23 "2015-07-28T17:05:48Z")
I’m hard pressed to imagine any nation that couldn’t develop nukes give a sufficient commitment of resources. What is a “reasonable timescale”? ---
**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/24 "2015-07-28T17:29:43Z")
It’s said that refining the uranium is the time-consuming part for U235 bombs. (What about plutonium bombs?) What’s the story about Iran’s centrifuges? How much did they cost? Is Iran now going to sell them second-hand, or what? Hey, about the centrifuge computer virus – anyone have the straight dope on that? ---
**Author:** ![Scandic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecb155/32.png) [@Scandic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scandic)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/25 "2015-07-28T17:44:43Z")
A nuclear bomb dropped from a plane or a nuclear bomb/warhead connected with a modern delivery system ? ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/26 "2015-07-28T18:11:20Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > NK is one of the poorest and most isolated countries on the planet. If they can do it, pretty much any country that valued it enough could. It’s worth remembering that nuclear weapons were invented in the 1940s, and existed before the invention of television. Pretty much any nation that can get its hands on fissionable material can make one if it really wants to. The hurdles are mainly political, not technical. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/27 "2015-07-28T23:34:34Z")
> [@Boyo\_Jim](#): > > I’m hard pressed to imagine any nation that couldn’t develop nukes give a sufficient commitment of resources. > > What is a “reasonable timescale”? My guess is five years to trinity, depends after that. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2015, 11:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/28 "2015-07-28T23:36:14Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > Fission bombs are equivalent to many kilotons of TNT, but if you want to do more serious damage you want fission-fusion-fission bombs equivalent to many megatons of TNT. ? Why, you simply want to hit the right target once. Multi meg nukes were an insurance policy for a near miss. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Alpheidae](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Alpheidae](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alpheidae)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/29 "2015-07-29T05:13:17Z")
> [@septimus](#): > > It’s said that refining the uranium is the time-consuming part for U235 bombs. (What about plutonium bombs?) For plutonium bombs, the difficulty is getting the explosive lensing right to compress the plutonium mass symmetrically. Uranium bombs are simple to design, but difficult to acquire the materials for. Plutonium bombs are easier to acquire the materials for, but more difficult to engineer. The Trinity Gadget was a plutonium design, and that’s the reason they chose to test that one - they only had enough purified uranium for one bomb and they were sure that it would work, so they didn’t want to use it on a test. They had plenty of plutonium, though, and there were doubts about whether the design was correct. ---
**Author:** ![Terminus\_Est](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terminus_est/32/3087_2.png) [@Terminus\_Est](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terminus_Est)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 6:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/30 "2015-07-29T06:07:30Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > It’s worth remembering that nuclear weapons were invented in the 1940s, and existed before the invention of television. Pretty much any nation that can get its hands on fissionable material can make one if it really wants to. The hurdles are mainly political, not technical. [Television is older than you think.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television) > [@](#): > > Philo Farnsworth gave the world’s first public demonstration of an all-electronic television system, using a live camera, at the Franklin Institute of Philadelphia on August 25, 1934, and for ten days afterwards. ---
**Author:** ![coremelt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4491bb/32.png) [@coremelt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coremelt)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 7:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/31 "2015-07-29T07:57:39Z")
> [@Declan](#): > > Why, you simply want to hit the right target once. Multi meg nukes were an insurance policy for a near miss. > > Declan Multimeg nukes were part of MAD. If you attack us not only will we destroy all your military installations, we’ll also kill 90 percent of your population as well. Kiloton nukes wouldn’t level cities the size of New York or LA, you need thermonuclear for that. Have a play with the Nuke Map here: > **[NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein](https://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/)** > > NUKEMAP is a website for visualizing the effects of nuclear detonations. You can see that a 100 kilo-ton fission bomb doesn’t even take out all of Manhattan. You need the 1.2 Mega-tonne B83 to do the job and even then Queens and the Bronx mostly survives. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/32 "2015-07-29T15:34:12Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Multimeg nukes were part of MAD. If you attack us not only will we destroy all your military installations, we’ll also kill 90 percent of your population as well. > Kiloton nukes wouldn’t level cities the size of New York or LA, you need thermonuclear for that. > > Have a play with the Nuke Map here: > [NUKEMAP by Alex Wellerstein](http://nuclearsecrecy.com/nukemap/) > > You can see that a 100 kilo-ton fission bomb doesn’t even take out all of Manhattan. You need the 1.2 Mega-tonne B83 to do the job and even then Queens and the Bronx mostly survives. The big bombs were primarily developed in the era of bomber strikes and wildly inaccurate ICBMs, on the theory that a 1.5 megaton bomb is going to be effective on most targets even if they miss by a mile or two. As warheads became more accurate, the yields went down- ISTR seeing an article with illustrations of a city being hit by say… one 9 megaton W53 from a Titan-II ICBM and the same city being hit by all eight 100kt W76 warheads from a single Trident missile in a sort of shotgun pattern. The upshot of the article was that using multiple smaller warheads can actually be more destructive because 3 psi overpressure is enough to wreck most things, and you can get a wider area covered by 3 psi overpressure by using multiple smaller warheads in a pattern than you can with a single huge warhead. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2015, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/33 "2015-07-29T21:44:03Z")
> [@coremelt](#): > > Multimeg nukes were part of MAD. If you attack us not only will we destroy all your military installations, we’ll also kill 90 percent of your population as well. > Kiloton nukes wouldn’t level cities the size of New York or LA, you need thermonuclear for that. Mad moved on, and instead of the 5 megaton warhead on the Titan 2, they added smaller devices to the bus (minuteman 2), and called it the claw of death. 3 to 5 warheads coming down independently , covering a greater area, and not restricted to natural or artificial geography, thats a dead city, if you wanted a counter city fire plan. But going with the big nukes for a moment, they were tools in the chest depending on what you wanted to take out. A one hundred k ton air burst is not going to do very much to a rail yard, you want a ground burst for that, and you want the local geography fucked up, so that some poor smuck is not gonna be conscripted to simply replace a few warped and glowing in the dark rails, that calls for one megaton party favors. Same with a ship yard, you need to concider a few things, before sending in the strike package, as your using up your supply of available weapons real fast. Declan ---
**Author:** ![OldOlds](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/a3d4f5/32.png) [@OldOlds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OldOlds)\ **Post date:** [August 1, 2015, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329/34 "2015-08-01T02:23:31Z")
> [@AK84](#): > > Caricatures aside, North Korea actually has a [pretty good level of industry](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea#Industry) > > Their problems are more to do with (some spectacular) mismanagement, ideology and economic competitiveness. Not technical. I think John’s statement was fair. I don’t think that building a bomb requires Willow Run levels of industrial might, and North Korea’s isolation certainly isn’t going to help them access the really nifty toys. As far as I know it’s the enrichment equipment (i.e., centrifuges) that are tough to get hold of or build. So I think John’s right that North Korea sets a reasonable lowest known boundary. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-countries-are-able-to-build-nuclear-weapons-assuming-they-wanted-to/726329.md?page=1)