Are Atomic weapons really that hard to build?

reply to post by pheonix358

I think it was mainly organ waving that helped develop the really big ones.

Most modern ones have multiple warheads...vs. one big warhead. Essentially, you get more bang for your buck. Each warhead has a smaller radius, but you can overlap, and essentially create an overall larger impacted target area. Not to mention, mid range counter-measures would have to have a kill vehicle for each warhead to negate the threat.

Not necessarily all that hard to build, but pretty hard to get the parts to do it, since they are so heavily regulated by the government. Particularly the fissionable material. Hard to make that in your basement.

Originally posted by inverslyproportional
reply to post by pheonix358

 

I believe your mistaking atom vs thermo nuclear weapons, one if a really big fire cracker, the other is thousands of times stronger.

They basically use an atomic weapon as a trigger for the thermo nuclear reaction, so basically an a bomb is the primer for a bullet, or fuse for a grnade or artillery round.

But both can be built easily, the hard part is the knowhow, and the nuclear material

A full thermonuclear weapon is much more difficult and there is much less known design available openly. It took the US at maximum effort and large infrastructure 8-9 years to get a first practical weapon (first LiD device), vs 2-3 for the first fission device when nearly all the theory had to be invented on the spot.

There is no known cases of developing full radiation implosion thermonuclear weapons without a significant experimental test program. Even it took the UK a few tries until they got it right.

Apparently there is another fundamental breakthrough for the W-47 polaris warhead (first small enough weapon for a missile) which has never been made open source, and this was really the key.

Originally posted by ArchAngel_X
"Are Atomic weapons really that hard to build?" I think it depends on what kind of bomb you want...

Thermonuclear bombs can destroy vast areas with the least amount of fallout - which is good if you plan on occupying the area - but take an incredible amount of research and resources to properly develop to a deliverable stage.

Large thermonuclear weapons yield an enormous amount of fallout. A large fraction of the yield is fission, and fission products are the primary part of fallout.