A truck driver uncovers secrets about the first nuclear bombs (2008)

Little Boy was dropped over Hiroshima, not Nagasaki.

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?"

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

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?

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.

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?

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.

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

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

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.

I think HN adds to that tone by including "truck driver" in the title of the post. I suppose the inference is that truck drivers are not very smart; therefore, giving the title an interesting contrast. But the reality is that people become truck drivers (as well as any other profession) for any number of reasons.

I think you are reading way too much hostility into this post. I think it's clear that David Samuels has a lot of respect for Coster-Mullen, all he's doing is establishing him as a "person," by giving his notable personality traits. I thought this article was an inspiring account of how somebody with no formal training in the subject was able to recreate an incredibly complex machine, simply through his own intelligence and hard work. The sentence you quote is definitely not ridicule, but simply an accurate description of Coster-Mullen's approach, I certainly don't think the Samuels was intending to criticize a positivist worldview and most certainly not to be "corrosively anti-geek." Furthermore, through the article, Samuels repeats how impressed he is at how much Coster-Mullen figures out simply through basic reasoning, math and geometry, I mean it includes a complete description of how he painstakingly tracked down a vintage car so he could measure the size of a box in a photograph. I really have you no idea how you managed to read this article as suggesting that Samuels believes Coster-Mullen is deserving of ridicule, instead he seems very impressed, as does everyone else who is interviewed in the article. (Still not even sure how you got "anti-geek," Coster-Mullen doesn't even seem like a "geek," just a normal person with a family and a hobby, who is simply very good and dedicated at it.

An article that simply repeated the facts about what Coster-Mullen had discovered about the bomb would simply be his book. Everybody has their quirks, and an accurate representation of the person (because indeed, the article is about John Coster-Mullen, not the atomic bomb) should include more than a bare listing of facts about their life. Of course it seems a bit ridiculous, but what hobby on such close inspection doesn't? I think reading it as a criticism is very far removed from the author's intention.

I do agree however that the title of the article (on HN) should probably simply be "Atomic John," it's okay for an article title to be a little bit mysterious, and using a subtitle creates a bit of the wrong impression in this case. (I am not sure about what the actual guideline is however)

What about it?

Almost certainly.

I prefer "on the spectrum", because, let's be honest, everyone is.