Apparently not very, as the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory showed in 1964-67 with the "Nth Country Experiment":
The experiment consisted in paying three recent young physicists who had just received their PhDs, though had no prior weapons experience, to develop a working nuclear weapon design using only unclassified information, and with basic computational and technical support.
[...]
The experiment ended on April 10, 1967, after only three man-years of work over two and a half calendar years. According to a heavily redacted declassified version of the summary, it was apparently judged by lab weapons experts that the team had come up with a credible design for the technically more challenging implosion style nuclear weapon. It is likely that they would have been able to design a simpler gun combination weapon even more quickly
Now, thirty years later, I imagine the job would be even easier.
4 comments:
I imagine that, with more information more readily available today than then (thanks to the internet!), we would be looking at a matter of months, not years, to develop a nuclear weapon. I would say it's pretty much impossible to prevent anyone from having the technical expertise to build a bomb.
My question is, what's your point? If it's that we shouldn't worry about countries and orgs who are actively developing nuclear weapon programs (since virtually anyone could do so), I disagree.
Not at all.
But the key concern is creating a world where people don't want to use nuclear weapons. Of course it's good to delay proliferation as much as you want, but realize that this will eventually fail.
There are many countries - in fact almost all developed countries - that have the ability develop nukes, but choose not to. They're just not interested.
Ask yourself why countries like North Korea or Iran might be interested in nuclear weapons, but Canada and Finland aren't. What can be done, not to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons, but to prevent Iran from wanting nuclear weapons?
... Ami.
Canada doesn't have nukes?
I had always assumed that their partnership in NORAD included nukes, but I never bothered to verify that.
But to answer the question:
"Ask yourself why countries like North Korea or Iran might be interested in nuclear weapons, but Canada and Finland aren't."
Could it be that Canada and Finland don't feel the need to have nukes because their association with the US (and EU nuclear powers) provides them the deterence of nukes without the investment in the program? There is no additional deterent provided for their investment since the US or England would retaliate against anyone who attacked them. And there is significant downside for them to develop nukes (the costs, loss of the ability to pretend moral superiority, etc).
Countries build nukes for 3 reasons:
1. To provide a threat to potential enemies in order to have a stronger hand in negotiations. This is probably where North Korea and Iran fit. Unfortunately, it's difficult to know for certain if a country is in this group or the first strikers.
2. To provide a deterent to other countries that have nukes or to even the playing field. India, England, France, Israel, etc would probably fit into this category.
3. To use them in a first strike against an enemy. The US is the only country which has been proven to fit into this category though the Germans and Japanese were also in this group during WWII, we just got there first and stopped their programs. Our fear is that Iran is also in this group or would provide the weopons to terrorists who would use them.
You're right that containment won't work forever, but I'm glad that you agree that we should attempt to delay proliferation as long as possible.
Why do Iran and North Korea want nukes, but not Canada and Finland? Very simply, it's because Iran and NK see an advantage to having them, while Canada doesn't. What's the advantage? It can gain them the ability to bully their neighbors and increase their borders and gain concessions from the rest of the world.
Are Iranians and NKans inherently violent? No more than Germans were inherently violent in the '30's and '40's (i.e. they aren't, but the leaders of the country are). The only way I can see to dissuade them from wanting nukes is to change the leaders, or change the leaders' minds.
I doubt peaceful means can be used to accomplish the latter, but we should try them. If they are done to their fullest reasonable extent and still prove ineffective, then other options should be considered.
I consider military options legitimate only after all other reasonable (to me, and I know this is an area of disagreement) measures have been taken.
I'm willing to say I could be wrong about their ambitions, because I've never been to Iran or North Korea. Their actions and rhetoric, however, is that of bullies trying to get others to give them what they want out of fear.
I'm anticipating you'll say that the US is the one acting like a bully here. I disagree, as I think everything we've said is in response to their bullying attempts, not an initiation of bullying.
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