Atomic bomb in the garage: what is needed to create handicraft and serious nuclear weapons

It is quite easy to fabricate the atomic bomb at the handicraft level, says science expert Alexei Parnovsky. But to create serious nuclear weapons, the effort and money of a completely different level are needed, and this must be understood before making a discussion there is nothing complicated about collecting a nuclear charge of a gun (Trinity, Little Boy) in the garage, if you have access to Uranium-235 and explosives.

The problem is that it will be quite heavy, weak - units of kiloton - and dangerous during transportation. With it, you can destroy or seriously damage brick or concrete buildings in several quarters and cause radiation contamination within the neighborhood and a couple of km in the leeward direction.

If you have plutonium, tritium or dietide lithium, a neutron source, as well as industrial production equipment (in particular, for casting with plutonium), you will be able to collect a nuclear charge with a bustling charge. The upper limit of such charges is approximately 500 kt, but in general machine-building enterprises can hardly be made more than 50-100 kt.

Such a charge can be destroyed/seriously damaged the whole neighborhood and cause radiation contamination of tens of km in the leeward direction. However, the shelf life will be quite insignificant and powerful charges will be quite large in size. Real long-term thermonuclear charges according to the Teller-Sylam scheme can only be made at specialized enterprises, but they already allow to obtain megaton power or hundreds of CT scan in compact performance.

The megaton charge can completely destroy a large industrial enterprise or several neighborhoods of the city, radiation contamination will be at about the same level as in charge with bousting. That is, each increase in capacity and charge of charge requires a qualitative improvement in the level of production (as well as the qualification of staff and the resonance of the whole operation).