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Pretty difficult, actually. NAZI Germany tried to build nukes and failed, as did WW2 Japan. The Soviet Union had to steal the secrets to the bomb from turncoat Americans (Rosenberg's). France and England had to get it from us. China got it from the Soviet Union and gave it to Pakistan. India developed their nukes independently, as did the coalition of Israel, South Africa, and Taiwan.

Building # 100,001 is much easier than building #1.

Then once you've got it, you still need to know how to work on a metal (Uranium and Plutonium are metals) that is extraordinarily brittle and hot, yet needs to be machined to tolerances more demanding than aircraft parts. How many nations on this planet can even manufacture mere aircraft parts? Not many.

Actually most aircraft parts have extremely sloppy tolerances. I know first hand that Cessnas will happily chug along with ice or goose sized holes on the wings. Unless you mean the tolerances for jet engine parts. Mass producing is hard, yes, but any decent physics grad. student can do .0005" without much trouble. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if pre-machined parts are on the market. Everything else is in Moscow. I saw CD ROM's of the Moscow police databases for sale on the street. Officier's names, home addresses, case info.

Refining U235 is a nasty process, and getting Plutonium requires a breeder reactor. Then once you've got it, you still need to know how to work on a metal (Uranium and Plutonium are metals) that is extraordinarily brittle and hot, yet needs to be machined to tolerances more demanding than aircraft parts. How many nations on this planet can even manufacture mere aircraft parts? Not many.

Why refine? Russia and Central Asia are awash in these materials.

Then once you've got all of that figured out, you've got to have electronics that can withstand intense radiation, and in at least one case, must be extraordinarily well-timed.

Either half of Iraq has kidney stones or they have been buying medical equipment to scavenge electronics for a plutonium implosion device. A U-235 gun requires no electronics at all. You could build one that employed a flint-lock if you had a perverse sense of techno-irony.

Oh, and you have a fixed amount of time to use it, 'les the natural decay (read: half-life) of the uranium, tritium, or plutonium reduces the fissionable mass below the critical mass level,

Obviously you overengineer for a long shelf life. Bio's are obviously readily available (ask the anthrax mailer) and can be employed without the restraint the mystery man mailer has exhibited.

Building # 100,001 is much easier than building #1.

Trouble is (for them, not us), they're building #1. While it may well be based on plans provided by an outside source, as al-Qaida found out, you better know where those plans are coming from.

(From Southack)Then once you've got it, you still need to know how to work on a metal (Uranium and Plutonium are metals) that is extraordinarily brittle and hot, yet needs to be machined to tolerances more demanding than aircraft parts. How many nations on this planet can even manufacture mere aircraft parts? Not many.

Depending on the design, tolerances are somewhat fungible. Of course, the looser the tolerance, the larger the bomb must be in order to work.

Regarding working uranium/plutonium, they ARE extremely hard to work. Not only are they brittle/hot (and in the case of plutonium) toxic, but they are EXTREMELY dense (very hard to cut) and their densities are variable (under certain non-explosive conditions, a non-critical mass of uranium/plutonium will reach critical mass).

I don't know where the reference to Moscow police databases come from, though.

(More Southack)Refining U235 is a nasty process, and getting Plutonium requires a breeder reactor.

Why refine? Russia and Central Asia are awash in these materials

And there's honor amongst thieves? Ask al-Qaida just how trustworthy their nuclear sources were. From what I remember, the Russian Mafiya gave them some materials that was just radioactive enough to do a few clicks on the ole' Geiger counter.

There's not all that much fissionable uranium that is naturally-occuring (and no natural plutonium). In order to make a functional nuclear device, you need somewhere near 99%-pure uranium or plutonium (and that 99% had better be the right isotope).

(More Southack)Then once you've got all of that figured out, you've got to have electronics that can withstand intense radiation, and in at least one case, must be extraordinarily well-timed.

But you can't load a uranium gun bomb onto a missile and have anything resembling a decent yield. Without a reliable and timely detonation, the remainder of nuclear weapons designs are nothing more than radioactive firecrackers with not all-that-much conventional explosives to do serious damage.