![]() “When the great powers decided to reduce their stockpiles, we were left with fairly substantial quantities of plutonium,” said Rosner. Once the weapon has been taken apart, the process of dealing with what’s left is identical for both the older and the more sophisticated bombs. ![]() "The overwhelming likelihood is that everything falls apart as before.” What do you do with the leftover uranium or plutonium? He still isn’t optimistic that the current dialogue between Pyongyang and Washington has enough political will to see the Korean peninsular through to denuclearization. Department of State.īefore any nuclear dismantling can even take place, the right political atmosphere needs to exist, said Plant. had dismantled 85 percent of its declared stockpile of nuclear weapons since 1967 when it had more than 31,000 war-ready nuclear warheads, according to the U.S. The people doing it could be electrocuted or exposed to the nuclear material or other toxic chemicals.īut a country, knowing its own design, should be able to disassemble its own modern nuclear weapons, and many have. Plant agrees the worst-case scenario is accidental detonation, but there are other possible perils if disassembly goes wrong. “It’s very unlikely that it would blow up if a mistake was made in the process of disassembly, unless it was designed to blow up in that eventuality, which is possible though not likely,” said Rosner. It would be significantly harder and therefore less likely that a team of engineers could disassemble a hydrogen bomb without knowing the exact design sequence, but still not technically impossible. "It’s less about the nuclear material and more about the engineering,” said Tom Plant, director of Proliferation and Nuclear Policy at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, an independent think tank in the United Kingdom. Other experts agree that unpacking the design is the most challenging part of the process. They’re mechanical artwork with amazingly clever designs.” ![]() “From a mechanical engineer’s perspective, they’re like a highly tuned Swiss watch. You have to be awfully careful,” said Rosner. “There are many different designs and so the disassembly is very difficult. There aren’t that many ways of designing them and so if the Americans had to deal with the North Korean bombs, for example, it wouldn’t be much of a mystery to them,” said Rosner.īut the more sophisticated and destructive hydrogen bombs that the Americans, British, Chinese, French and Russians possess is a different story. “The design of atomic bombs is what I’d call an open secret. To unpick a nuclear device, engineers need to know the exact sequence in which the pieces were originally put together. “It’s a case of taking it apart piece by piece.” “It’s like any other kind of machine,” explained Robert Rosner, chair of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists Science and Security Board. It all begins with the blueprints that designers used to build the weapon in the first place, according to experts. Nuclear disassembly is a coordinated process, which involves politicians, scientists and engineers working together. How to disassemble an armed "Swiss watch" It’s a long and complex procedure, but experts say it’s one worth doing. But when agreements are reached, scientists and engineers can provide a variety of tools to take apart some of humanity's most deadly weapons and store or repurpose the dangerous nuclear material. Negotiations on nuclear disarmament are politically tricky. North Korea, on the other hand, while notoriously difficult to predict, could eventually scale back its nuclear program if its diplomatic rapprochement with the West continues. The exact number of the country’s warheads is unknown, but many analysts say its cache is slowly growing in size. ![]() Most nuclear nations recognized by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons - namely, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States - have set about reducing their arsenals. (Inside Science) - There are enough nuclear weapons in the world to cause atomic Armageddon many times over, according to scientists, who estimate that no country could fire more than 100 nuclear warheads without wreaking such devastation that their own citizens back home would be killed.
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