containing nuclear tech

[Atrebates]

Well the Manhattan project should not open nukes to everyone, nuclear explosives are the one thing you never want spread- the whole idea is to hold them when others do not.

Any reasonably bright kid on a good physics course at Uni should know the basics of a bomb, uranium enrichment is more the limiter than bomb construction (because of the facilities required)

A simple A-bomb uses U-235/233 or plutonium-239 as fissile material
beryllium 9 (dunno why Be14 isn't used) or Polonium varieties are used to produce neutrons (used to begin fissile reaction of the above elements).
Compression by implosion or a series of explosions (causes extreme pressure) is used to speed reaction/bring the elements of the bomb together, if everything is close together it's easier to hit .

However there is no doubt that modern devices use undisclosed witchery to achieve higher efficiency.

 

[Head Serf]

This is from National Geographic August 2005

The number is how many bombs the country has. The article has a picture of the world that shows what countries have bombs for sure and what countries are currently capable of developing nuclear weapons or in the past had a nuclear weapons program:

Countries with the Bomb:
United States - 10,350
United Kingdom - 200
France - 350
Russia - 16,000
Israel - 200
Pakistan - 24- 48
India - 30- 35
China - 400

Countries who have stated they have the bomb but havn't proved so:
North Korea - 6- 8

Potential countries with bomb making abilities:
Canada
Brazil
Argentina
Spain
Algeria
Libya
South Africa
Belarus
Ukraine
Sweden
Germany
Kazakastan
Japan
Austrailia
Other european contries

I hope my list is useful

 

[Simo]

Australia could probably make a bomb and I have heard the rumour that we have secret USA nukes here and on subs but so far they are just conspiracy theories. We officially do NOT have nukes. We have a nuclear medical research facility in Sydneys south which is currently being rebuilt but it is a research facility and not a weapons or power facility. It is the only Nuclear reactor in Australia.

 

[HourlyDaily]

Maribyrnong in Melbourne - Commonwealth explosives testing facility. Not far away from one of our world famous immigration detention centres. Damn government.

 

[PriestOfDiscord]

Australia could probably make a bomb and I have heard the rumour that we have secret USA nukes here and on subs but so far they are just conspiracy theories. We officially do NOT have nukes. We have a nuclear medical research facility in Sydneys south which is currently being rebuilt but it is a research facility and not a weapons or power facility. It is the only Nuclear reactor in Australia.

That’s the thing: There are a bunch of nations that easily have the knowledge and infrastructure needed to develop nukes if they wanted them. I don't remember the exact figures, but there was one report I read on the subject that said that a nation like Germany or Japan could not only retool its extensive civilian nuclear power program towards bombmaking, but that in a single year after beginning such a weaponization program they could manufacture over one thousand warheads. I'm sure this is just as true for any of the major first world nations with a developed nuclear industry, and it would be practically as easy as flipping a switch for them to do so. After all, the research involved in bombmaking has been done and is more or less freely available to anyone interested in having it.

But if it is that easy, why does it take years for every nation to complete their weapons manufacturing program and enter the nuclear club? Secrecy. During the cold war, the superpowers realized it was in their best interest that civilian nuclear power should be monitored, even if they didn't trust the other side to do the monitoring. With the international framework designed to make everything as transparent as possible, it’s very hard to hide from the outside world that you are importing or manufacturing the materials needed for bombs. A country like North Korea can get away with it only because it is so completely isolated from the rest of the planet. And since it is extremely hard to keep such a politically damaging project away from open view, very few nations attempt it.

 

[Gogf]

I agree. Something like the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and nations being invaded for building nuclear arms would be a great modern twist to the game.

 

[moose7603]

We placed Nuclear weapons in South Korea as a deterrent from a massive attack by the then USSR and the N. Koreans, Since the demise of the USSR the threat has maintained with the rising N. Korean Military, of course none of this will ever be stated by the State Department but why else would the DOE maintain nuclear facilities their. As for Australia, they were mainly placed their in a pact with the former government, once again none of this has been officially made public, but once again, why build storage and Nuke Facilties if you dont have them, as for locations, Melbourne was the site of one such facility , at the time I was unable to look up where the other 3 sites were. You have to remember that this is not the first time the US put nukes in other countries, think of Turkey during the cold war. As for the point that we have SRBMs and ICBMs, if your repelling a massive invasion or want a very quick response to the use of nuclear weapons, ICBM's would be out of the question. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the US has taken all but a select handfull of silos off alert standby, it would take literally hours for the ICBM site in the continental US to hit either China/N.Korea. Thats why having localized nuclear weapons within close response range makes sense