Text Ticker: How the bomb spread
The New York Times reviews several new books about the development and spread of nuclear know-how.
“Since the birth of the nuclear age,” they write, “no nation has developed a nuclear weapon on its own, although many claim otherwise.”
Either this is a tribute to American know-how (with lots of help from European refugees) or to the many, many men and women who have been involved in the industry of sharing nuclear secrets.
As a kid, I would spend loads of time studying the schematics for the 1945 bombs in the World Book. Once, at a party, a Harvard historian of science told me that those pictures were probably false and intentionally misleading.
Dr. Younger disparages what he calls myths suggesting that “all the secrets of nuclear weapons design are available on the Internet.” … "we should doubt assertions that the information required to make a nuclear weapon is freely available.”
[go!]
