http://web.archive.org/web/20240512204543/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_design
(Archive link in case it’s changed.)
This article is a surprisingly entertaining read for a few reasons:
- one or more people who wrote it clearly have very strong opinions about how nuclear weapons should be built
- the article contains a surprising amount of detail, including stuff that seems like it’d be classified or at least censored
- due to both of the above, there’s a ton of
[]that I doubt will ever be resolved
Having talked about this same questiom with a family member who was in the field of nuclear engineering, what he told me basically boiled down to this:
It is fairly accurate, but not actually as detailed as it seems. There are several major obstacles that variously will stump you, get you killed, and/or put you on the radar of a national security apparatus.
But yeah, although not exactly “easy,” the basics apparently aren’t that complicated to work out if you know the science.
I actually wonder how much in the article is actually deliberate misinformation meant to trip up anyone trying to build their own device.
For example, this bit caught my attention:
That seems really finicky to me.
this makes sense if you consider timescales involved
It is finicky. That’s why only a handful of countries have actually managed to create their own thermonuclear warheads. It’s more about being able to build the needed infrastructure and acquire the source material than understanding the physics.
there’s about zero public information about interstage for example