On 1: I foggily recall an undergrad publishing plans for an atom bomb in the late 70s or early 80s. It was a bit of a scandal, but... You couldn't get the key parts, as you note.
1. The absolute hardest part about building a nuke is getting fissile material, not "secrets" or information. 2. Nobody who studies nuke issues (and doesn't have a contract with the Pentagon) has any strong faith that ballistic missile defense would work in a real-world crisis.https://twitter.com/Mantia/status/1013559718759956481 …
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He didn't publish them, but he wrote it as an undergrad thesis. Still turned into a news story. (And his "design" probably wouldn't have worked. But that's beside the point.) The "student figures out nuke secrets!" story has been a journalist trope since **1946**, as an aside.
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OTOH,
@JustinCKasper built a nuclear reactor in his dorm room...
https://www.realclearscience.com/lists/best_science_pranks/homemade_nuclear_reactor.html … -
But our yield was incredibly small, which I'd say supports
@NuclearAnthro's first point.
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It can intercept some warheads.. but some doesn't cut it in an all out nuclear war. But people want to believe that it could for their own comfort
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That’s still a maybe. It hasn’t been tested in a realistic environment, and hasn’t had to deal with the discrimination issues associated with real countermeasures.
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Indeed. Most of those systems have been tested on cruise missiles or intermediate range ballistic missiles or srbm's
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"I refuse to consider your system functional unless it can intercept TRUE scotsmen!"
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That's not a fallacy to say it's not been tested on ICBM's or to say that even if they did work on them reliably that it wouldn't have a meaningful impact. Learn what a no true Scotsman fallacy is
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Well, I learned the first of these from an old Barney Miller episode.
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Nuclear arms are the nation-scale equivalent of the Mexican standoff: If shooting starts, nobody wins.
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I did a "what do you want to learn" science lesson for schoolkids once. They wanted to learn how to make bombs. Way too easy, so teaching them to build nukes seemed the safe option.
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"The absolute hardest part about building a nuke is getting fissile material, not "secrets" or information." YES!!!!!! FINALLY!
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@Mantia A nuance of item 1 is weapons-grade enrichment. It's also the most expensive, yet poorer nations resort to very high speed centrifuge technology. India obtained much of first raw supply via Canada/USA source CIRUS/NRX-based reactors designed to prevent weaponization -lulzThanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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Somewhat topical - do you believe Aum Supreme Truth built and detonated a nuke in Australia?
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Sadly, I agree.
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GMD works... by being bad enough to keep us in stable deterrence relationships :)
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Regarding number one, yes!!!!! You either manufacture or steal. If you manufacture, everyone will know you're doing it. If you steal, well, good luck with that. :-) I'm more worried about the BC part of NBC....
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