MAKO Wrote:As for the United States building a bomb in the 1940's, that's true. It's also true that we had some of the world's leading physicists involved in the project. Furthermore, it is estimated that the total amount spent by the United States government in developing the atomic bomb was somewhere around $20 billion. Translated into today's dollars, that's more like $250 billion. Question. Do you really think that any country could recruit some of the best nuclear physicists in the world, spend an absolute pile of money, build huge plants to refine the uranium, and acquire the machine tools necessary to build a bomb without getting noticed?
As for a "dirty bomb", you can get good radioactive material from a whole lot of medical equipment. Compact that material and then explode it and, presto, you've got a "dirty bomb."
But, what you fail to realize is that there would be no research required to build such a facility, as there was in the 1940's. That reduces costs tremdously.
Furthermore, there is much better COTS equipment available than back then. Remember, alot of that stuff was custom.
As for the physicists, I do think they're available. Because you no longer need the world's top nuclear physicists, they aren't doing research, they are just being trained in an established field. And US universities love to train international students in those type of fields. :rolleyes: Nevertheless, there are some very smart Russians around too.
Pakistan got them...others could too.
The costs aren't prohibitive. Rather it's escaping the world's scrutiny that is. Like you wrote earlier, radiation can be detected. That's why the US gets so upset when places like N. Korea start "re-activating" old nuclear power plants. Suddenly it's tough to be sure what's going in those facilities.
Secondly, while the US has U mines, I tend to believe other sites in the world do too. But, I'm no geologist so I don't know where they are. Are they in the M East? Africa? Can you mine raw U ore and get away w/ it?
There are challenges to starting a nuclear program, especially from scratch. But, I don't think they are the ones you cite.
As for the dirty bomb, there was discusion a few weeks ago that U was lousy material for such a bomb. The 238 isotope is not very radioactive, it's very dense material, difficult to transport, and doesn't spread well.
But other elements do exist as you mentioned, in medical devices, and perhaps even old smoke detectors. (I believe some designs used to use Am...they still may.)