Nukes and You

[Zabuza825]

Nuclear weapons that work via fission are exceptionally simple devices,.

I did snip quite a bit for brevity, but yes that statement and paragraph is not wrong. However it still doesn't change the fact that in real life, it takes many years for countries to develop a nuclear bomb. The bomb itself is a simple mechanism, but the path there is not so simple.

This is largely due to the significant amount of resources needed to secure and produce the nuclear fissile material. For example, the difficulty with uranium weapons comes from creating enough of the isotope Uranium-235 for you to be able to turn it into a weapon. The predominant isotope of Uranium (Uranium-238) is NOT fissile, and must be "enriched" for you to get isotopes. Uranium-235 is one of the easier ones to discover, and in fact was the one used in the Hiroshima bomb. But it still required a LOT of research and MASSIVE facilities to produce, at least on the scale that allowed the US to produce an actual bomb out of it.

So yeah, to summarize what I'm saying, the bomb itself might be a simple device, but the path that leads to the bomb is not.

Now, all of that having been said, all of these challenges are the very same ones that developing fuel for nuclear power has. So yeah, if we're talking purely about realism and NOT about whether or not we should allow it, a country has nuclear reactors then theoretically they would also have the capacity to create a nuclear weapon if it doesn't already have one. A good real life example of this is Japan IRL - it has an extensive nuclear power industry and a lot of expertise in nuclear technology, and because of that many observers believe that even though it doesn't have nuclear weapons and has never developed them, if it chose to develop one it would be able to relatively quickly.

On possible restrictions:
Just a quick thing that popped into my head. I'm all for nations starting with nuclear weapons technology. However, one possible restriction to consider is that, regardless of whether someone says their country is a nuclear power or is becoming one, they cannot bring said nukes to bare until they've concluded a/several satisfactory thread(s)...could be backstory, could be continuing development, could be whatever. For example, say Zab concludes a good quality thread about Akitsu's nuclear development and subsequent abandonment; even though he doesn't have a nuclear armed state, he'd be allowed to use them if he so chose because he's shown clear maturity in how to handle them.

I like this idea!

EDIT: Changed order of some sentences.