Question: how do scienctist make nukes?

Dilwar Hussain answered on 13 Nov 2013:

Hi,

Firstly, nuclear weapons are very complicated to design and much of it is kept a secret by those countries that have them but the way they work is understood which are described below.
The nuclear weapon works on the principle of starting an uncontrolled fission or fusion. A neutron hits a small pellet of polonium or beryllium (which are elements in the periodic table) and causes a fission reaction (which is basically a continuous reaction). The actual explosion takes place in a small sphere of uranium-238 called a ‘tamper’ which gets very hot. At the centre is a ball of plutonium surrounded by explosives. The fission reactions set off the explosives which cause the ball of plutonium to be so tightly squeezed that it collapses in on itself and this gives the huge blast.