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Plutionium is one problem, but AFAIK not the greatest for this type of device.

Greater problem is precise machining and fuse technology necessary, which makes it an enormous and expensive project even today.

The rifle design is just the reverse. There technology is a lot simpler, but rich enough Uranium 235 is a lot harder to come by.

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another complexity is that the plutonium core is not just any weapon-grade plutonium: it has to be casted in unstable delta phase (which has unusually low density; the implosion's task is to switch it into alpha-phase which is much dense: this process makes core critical and explosion happens). Not to mention toxicity of the material itself.

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