Lets say some advanced country with a well developed peaceful nuclear program wanted to develop nuclear weapons, secretly of hte entire world.
How hard would it be?
How long would it take them?
How much personnel would be required?
Could it be kept secret?
How much would it cost?
Countries such as Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, or Sweden.
Pretty much any first world country could do it in fairly short order. In the case of Australia, Canada, Germany and Italy I believe there are even arrangements in place for sharing of nuclear weapons from the cold war days.
The major difficulties with obtaining nuclear weapons are fuel enrichment and explosive lensing. The latter can probably be figured out by a couple of grad students and a computer these days. The former tends to be fairly expensive and requires either breeder reactors (for Pu239) or lots of centrifuges (for U235). Centrifuges are used anyways for refining raw uranium into energy grade uranium, but getting weapons' grade (90%ish) is expensive as fuck and will never go unnoticed. As for breeder reactors, those are fairly easy to notice too. So basically - any industrialized nation with some nuclear infrasctructure and access to uranium ore can make nukes, but everyone else will find out about this quickly.
They have the "japan option"
If you already have power reactors then you have plutonium (though production rate is small and extraction may intrude on reactor operation time)
If you've already got nuclear power then you can make some nukes without it being obvious that that's what you're doing
The real difficulty is that people who are knowledgeable in the process tend to be smart and thus will be concerned with the intended application. This can easily lead to information being leaked
Few questions
>everyone else will find out
Does this means everyone else's intelligence service?
>Pu239 U235
What's the difference with regards to nuclear weapons technology?
Basically all I know is plutonium = atomic and uranium = fusion
>getting weapons' grade (90%ish) is expensive as fuck
How expensive is as fuck? ###m USD? #b USD? ##b USD?
I get developing a sophisticated nuclear program is ##b, but if it's already established, how much would making nukes really cost?
>Centrifuges are used anyways for refining raw uranium into energy grade uranium,
If ur running centrifuges anyway, how will people know if ur going weapons grade?
Also
How long would it take?
The plutonium needs to be extracted, and the parameters of a reactor designed for breeding as much plutonium as possible are hardly optimal for power generation.
>Does this means everyone else's intelligence service?
Yes
>What's the difference with regards to nuclear weapons technology?
>Basically all I know is plutonium = atomic and uranium = fusion
U235 is absolutely great because even an idiot can make a gun type nuke from it. It's really difficult to produce in high purities, however. Plutonium is easier, but requires implosion type devices AFAIK. I am not actually a nuclear engineer so I haven't studied the math much.
>How expensive is as fuck? ###m USD? #b USD? ##b USD?
>I get developing a sophisticated nuclear program is ##b, but if it's already established, how much would making nukes really cost?
It depends on the infrastructure you already have. U235 is seperated through the use of centrifuges or other inertia-based seperation, since it is chemically indistinguishable from U238, the much more common isotope. The exact cost I can't tell you, because most countries only do a little enriching, if at all - reactors only need a few % to get started. And no one has been making U nukes since the 40s, besides South Africa. Everyone else has been using plutonium breeders.
>If ur running centrifuges anyway, how will people know if ur going weapons grade?
There is a significant difference between 2% enrichment and 97% enrichment.
Well if you're in one of the countries OP listed, and you can manage the politics of approving and funding a secret atomic weaponry program within the transparent and cumbersome environment of a working democracy, you can no doubt manage the reservations of some patriotic scientists.
Engineers who can match 1960s era technology can't be in that short supply.
>significant difference between 2% enrichment and 97% enrichment.
What kind of differences?
How is the engineering different?
The engineering isn't. The number of centrifuges you build is.
Well, in 2003 the Bush administration managed to cook the books enough to convince a lot of people that Iraq was building centrifuges and developing nukes, even though they weren't.
They convinced a lot of people, including the intelligence community at large.
This is taking into account the fact that Arabs are fucking retarded and couldn't engineer a disassembled Chinese sedan without foreign assistance.
I can't see how it would really be that untenable to conceal the enrichment of uranium/plutonium under the veil of a well established, world class atomic infrastructure.
Pretty hard, man. Once I tried for an entire afternoon, and all I managed to get was a 0.3 kt fizzle.
Convincing the public that someone is doing it is not equivalent in any way to concealing you are doing it from an intelligence service.
you're absolutely right
the main point was they DID fool most of the CIA and MI6
like spooks were chasin' nukes for months after the invasion
it was a pretty obvious conspiracy that certainly didn't extend throughout the government.
That's pretty pathetic, man.
Fuckin' grade school tier.
You are assuming anyone was fooled. This is getting into /pol/ territory, but basically - the CIA wasn't deceived. Nor was the MI6. The administrations wanted the war, they cooked up the evidence. This isn't fucking rocket science, it's politics. And I much prefer we stick to rocket (or nuclear) science.
takes about 200billion USD to do it.
Well, the premise is inherently political since it's about the scale versus detection.
Also you tend to refer to the CIA and Mi6 as unitary monolithic single minded entities with access to a comprehensive collective knowledge base rather than complex, bureaucratic, and highly partitioned with many least privilege individuals.
what are you basing that on?
it's how much iran has spent so far
Oh, don't be fucking naive. The interests pushing for war in Iraq were multiple, powerful and definitely able to sway the US administration into doing it. The agencies might be clusterfucks, but they are still capable of doing politics. This has nothing to do with concealing a nuclear weapons' program, by the way. So stop this discussion or take it to /pol/.
Yeah, but they're building up from nothing. Less than nothing.
The countries listed already have nuclear tech and infrastructure.
The only way Pakistan got nuclear tech was by stealing it from the Dutch.
Why don't you quote the estimates for NK/Pak/Ind? These guys managed to acquire nukes unlike Iran.
>Yeah, but they're building up from nothing. Less than nothing.
What are you talking about? Iran had tech acquisitions from a number of countries(Pak included), which would include the infrastructure for nuclear enrichment to nuclear reactors.
>under the veil of a well established, world class atomic infrastructure.
Actually, that's part of what makes it harder. You're under a lot more free roaming observation, usually by law of treaty, and probably have a lot more potential internal whistle blowers to boot.
Then again, no one would ever suspect Canada.
Well both the CIA and MI6 specifically warned this was bullshit, they were just ignored.