[tjradcliffe]

It's worth remembering this the next time you hear some hysteria about Iran's "nuclear program" which they have been supposedly working on for the past 30 years without actually producing a bomb.

Basic nuclear weapons are really, really simple to build. This is especially true of uranium bombs. Is there any case of a weapon being deployed operationally without ever being test-fired, other than dropping Little Boy over Nagasaki? That's how simple uranium bombs are.

Gas centrifuges (when not being sabotaged) make uranium enrichment pretty simple, and they have been around since the '80's as a fairly well-understood technology. There were warnings back then that they would lead to a wave of proliferation, which to an extent they have.

So the only plausible way Iran could have been "working on" nuclear weapons for 30 years without producing one is if they aren't working very damned hard. Their economy is about half the size (GDP per capita) than the US economy was in the early '40's but much more concentrated in terms of the state's ability to control it.

So it isn't lack of resources that is holding things up. It is most likely lack of political will: Iran would like to be seen to be working on a Bomb, but for whatever reason isn't actually doing much toward building one. If they were, they would have one by now.

A team of competent high school students with a billion dollar budget could manage it in a year.

[Edit: this is not a defense of the theocratic monsters that run Iran, I just don't think they are as big a nuclear threat as is commonly assumed.]

[stillsut]

Of. Course. they could build a bomb; just as the most technologically deficient society in the world (N Korea) already has.

Building and testing a bomb accomplishes nothing positive for Iran's agenda: representing the threat that they could produce a bomb is invaluable to Iran's agenda. It is clearly for that reason the country is willing to absorb "crippling" sanctions in order to continue enrichment. Otherwise, why give up so much treasure?

[logicallee]

Though to be fair, everything is "really, really simple to build" and "the only plausible way they could have been `working on' it is if they aren't working very damned hard" when you're reading a negative, top HN comment.

I know there are few undertakings as trivial as nuclear physics. It's not even interesting enough to have to test it. I would deploy straight to production without a second thought - wouldn't you?

They need to fire their CTO like yesterday - it's a wonder they're they're still in business. I have half a mind to show them how to do it in Angular over the weekend. :)

It's only nuclear physics. This stuff was solved 70 years ago.

[TeMPOraL]

Well, to be fair, building a crude atomic bomb is really not that difficult.

> They need to fire their CTO like yesterday - it's a wonder they're they're still in business. I have half a mind to show them how to do it in Angular over the weekend. :)

Well note that most of the startups here are not doing any difficult or novel tech; it's the same old boring web + mobile stuff that every other high-schooler with a JavaScript book could do. The "hard things" startups face are mostly about staying in business (and only long enough to have "an exit" and kiss the surprised users goodbye), which is a class of problems you don't have when you're building a first nuclear bomb for the government.

[Kroem3r]

You can imagine the pretty natural go-go-stop behavior. "Good for prestige: go for it." versus "Going to have Mossad and cruise missiles all over the place; shut it down!" versus "Bring it on you !@#~!!!~!ers!" versus "We are entitled to do this under the various treaties; opposition will highlight the hypocrisy in the geopolitic" versus "Um, duh?"

[turbojerry]

Iran's Supreme Leader: "Using Nuclear Weapons is Un-Islamic" -

http://www.dw.de/irans-supreme-leader-using-nuclear-weapons-...

'Mr Bush expresses anger that US intelligence agencies played a role in removing the option of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

He describes the "eye-popping declaration" in the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judging with "high confidence" that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme.'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11722375

[dscrd]

That's showing incredible restraint (and, might I add, virtue) from them, considering that their ideological enemy, Israel, has nukes and is more than willing to use them.

[user9756]

Oh No no no! That does sound like a "a defense of the theocratic monsters that run Iran"!

Remember that Iran has suppressed dissidents who question how the rich 1%, the banks and corporations run the country!

Those monsters in Tehran have preemptively attacked other states and destroyed their infrastructure! Iran has occupied territory and is killing civilians indiscriminately! Even bombing schools and hospitals!

Also they support various dictators in the World like Saudi Arabia in the ME. And they helped neo nazists take power in Ukraine. Oh god the evil. And I'm barely touching the surface.

The only thing they have going for them is that they accept homosexuals. Which we all know is the litmus test for a free and non-monstrous regime.

[TeMPOraL]

> 'Mr Bush expresses anger that US intelligence agencies played a role in removing the option of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme.

Wait. Am I reading this correctly? Does it say that Mr Bush is angry that he couldn't go to war?

[iSnow]

Have you already forgot how trigger-happy he was in the case of Iraq? Even to the point of ignoring anyone who spoke up against the doctored evidence of an Iraqi WMD programme.

[sschueller]

Interesting is also the hysteria coming from the US wenn the US is the only nation that ever dropped a bomb not once but twice on a population.

The rest of the world should be demanding the US get rid of its arsenal as the US can't be 'trusted' with them. As they have proven they are willing to use them.

Maybe not todays president or the next but are the checks and balances strong enough to prevent a future president from dropping another bomb?

[girvo]

Truly, I feel the cat is out of the bag at this point. Too many countries, the largest most powerful ones in the world have nuclear weapons. Even if they could be persuaded to get rid of them, the knowledge would exist still, and could be rebuilt rapidly. I despise nuclear weaponry, or any weapon of mass destruction, but at this point there are conventional weapons which are nearly as powerful, or at least just as damaging (and not as costly to build, so they can be used more). Nuclear weaponry scares the living daylights out of me... but I don't see them ever going away, nor the possibility of us blowing ourselves off the face of the planet disappearing either.

[AnimalMuppet]

I don't think this is quite right. Little Boy (Hiroshima) was test-fired at Trinity. Fat Man (Nagasaki) was the one that was dropped without ever being tested, but it was plutonium.

[wefarrell]

Both the Trinity test and Fat Man were implosion type weapons:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design#Implosion...

I don't think Little Boy's design was tested prior to being dropped on Hiroshima.

[AnimalMuppet]

Ah. My error, I thought Trinity was a uranium/Little Boy type.

[tadfisher]

Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima, not Nagasaki.

[trhway]

yep, even North Korea has managed to do even plutonium device (though of course employing Russian specialists in 199x helped it)

[geon]

Why do you assume they don't have a bomb?

[gambiting]

Because it's close to impossible to build a functional bomb without testing it. And since they haven't tested one, everyone assumes that they don't have one. And if they do, why would they NOT test it,to show everyone that they are not bluffing? Basically, the theory is based on the assumption that if they had a bomb, they would have demonstrated it to the world.

[InclinedPlane]

Iran undoubtedly has the capability to produce nuclear weapons today. Period. They have the centrifuge capability and capacity and they even have enough on hand enriched Uranium to make the process much faster, if and when they do decide to make a nuclear weapon.

As for why it has taken them so long, there are many reasons. One is that development of nuclear weapons was not a priority for them for a long time. The other is that centrifuge technology is actually very, very difficult. It took until that technology was disseminated (by way of the AQ Khan network in the '90s) for Iran to have a reasonable shot at producing nuclear weapons. And it took longer for them to perfect the technology and then begin increasing the capacity.

More so, Iran has been tiptoeing through the geopolitical minefield of acquiring nuclear weapons very, very carefully. If they had wanted they could have tested a nuclear weapon perhaps years ago, but there would be so many negative consequences of that it would be questionably worth it. Instead they've deftly manipulated public perception and international politics to their favor. Today they have a greater capacity to produce nuclear weapons than the US did in 1945, and yet they are not considered a nuclear power, and they do not face the serious repercussions that, say, North Korea or even Libya have faced from their nuclear program. Part of this comes down to the fact that the public at large and high level politicians are rather ignorant of scientific and technological issues, let alone advanced topics like nuclear weapons manufacture, so it is far easier for them to believe the lie that Iran is nowhere near producing nuclear weapons.

But make no mistake, as I mentioned, Iran is a nuclear capable state. They could field a weapon in a matter of at most months, perhaps as little as days. They've been allowed to stockpile 5% and 20% enriched Uranium and to maintain a vast infrastructure of Uranium enrichment centrifuge cascades. 5% and 20% may seem like a very, very far distance from the 80-95% enrichment needed for making bombs, but that is due to ignorance of the process. It takes 75% of the isotopic separative work to enrich natural Uranium to 5% as it does to reach weapon's grade HEU, and 95% of the work to get to 20% enrichment. Which means that starting with a stockpile of 20% enriched Uranium one can produce HEU with only 1/20th the amount of work as it would take using natural Uranium, and from 5% only 1/4 of the work.

Given Iran's known enrichment facilities they could send their known stockpiles through them and have bomb grade material in a very short amount of time. Moreover, there is no guarantee that they do not have secret facilities as well. Such facilities are shockingly easy to hide, the world discovered North Korea's facilities only when the state itself revealed them.

Every other component for making a nuclear bomb is comparatively trivial to engineer. Iran could quite easily be testing such components without any outside knowledge they are doing so, such activities are enormously easy to hide because at most they amount to the explosion of a small amount of high explosives, which can be done underground, for example. It would be easy for them to have already practiced making the fissile cores of bomb designs using natural Uranium metal. All it would take is Iran's leaders to say "go for it" and then not long after they would have run their Uranium stockpiles through their enrichment facilities, then formed and installed their cores and have their weapons waiting for use.

Iran has been very sophisticated in their pursuit of nuclear weapons, since they now have the ability to field them should the situation arise and yet are facing almost none of the consequences of having a weapons program.

[contingencies]

{{citation-needed}} ... otherwise that just sounds like a lot of partisan clap-trap like UANI ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UANI#Leadership