“Building a basic nuclear weapon is not easy, but not all that hard either. In 1964 the U.S. Army decided to see just how difficult it was. They hired two professors that had Ph.Ds in physics, but no experience with nuclear weapons or access to nuclear secrets. The two were given the task of designing an atomic bomb using only information available to the general public. It took them roughly two years, but in the end they designed an implosion style weapon that could have been made in a local machine shop which could have produced an explosion similar to the Hiroshima bomb.” [1]

Grab Some Uranium

Or preferably Plutonium. You’ll need some sort of large atom that releases high velocity neutrons anyways. The explosion of a nuclear bomb happens because the atoms are are literally blasting each other with neutrons, breaking into smaller atoms which shoot off even more neutrons in the process, breaking even more atoms which shoot off even more neutrons! This process happens in an extremely small amount of time (way less than a second) and is called a chain reaction. The process of breaking the atoms into smaller atoms is called fission. As these atoms are ripping each other apart they are releasing an enormous amount of energy. The amount energy released is described in the famous formula E=mc^2. And trust me, it’s a lot.

Reach Critical Mass

This is the amount of mass (or atoms) needed to create this kind of nuclear chain reaction. You’ll need about a baseball sized chunk of weapons-grade quality stuff weighing around 35 lb. The good news is Uranium Ore is being conventionally mined on every continent so there’s a chance you might have some under your backyard. With some luck, and a lot of digging you can be well on your way to building your first nuke!

Make it go SUPER-critical:

This is the tricky part. You might want to hire a team of scientists and engineers to take care of this for you if you’re lazy. But if your determined to cut costs and do it yourself, here’s the basic idea on what you have to do to get a real quality explosion.

In order for this bomb to detonate in a fiery explosion and not just a shockwave of radiation, you must hold the materials together long enough for the Uranium to go supercritical. This is not easy to do, as the atoms would much rather shoot away from each other than be violently ripped apart. To do this it is conventional to use detonations all around the material to hold it together. But the pressure must also be distributed uniformly, or the uranium will find a weak point and leak out.

And now you have a Nuclear Warhead!

You’ll still have to build a sophisticated rocket for launching it but the hard part is now all behind you. Congratulations 🙂

So What?

So it took me about an hour on google to figure out the basic mechanics behind a nuclear bomb, and I’ve never even taken a chemistry class. What does this mean? Well, It means that any country (or individual) with a few smart scientists, a lot of money, and the ability to use google could potentially engineer a nuke in a few years. I wouldn’t be surprised if most countries already have nuclear weapons, and the NPT [2] is just a way of trying to keep everybody calm.

Links for Further Study:

[1] http://www.unmuseum.org/buildabomb.htm

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_the_Non-Proliferation_of_Nuclear_Weapons

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-critical-mass.htm