[edpc]

I think they’re full of it. They have the material and the technology to make an atomic bomb is seven years old. However, IMHO - they lack the technical expertise to remove the 240 from their available plutonium to make it weapons grade.

[ThunderSleeps]

That's the trick, right? As I understand it - and I'm far from an expert in the field, just an engineer by temperament, training, and long experience... It is relatively easy, but in-efficient and limiting, to make a nuclear weapon from Uranium. The bigger bang-for-the-buck (and size, weight, etc) is from Plutonium. However refining Plutonium to the required purity levels (particularly removing the P-240 from the P-239) is extremely difficult. But you have to as the P-240 is so unstable it would cause pre-trigger and a fizzle.

Once you've solved all those physics/science/engineering problems you have to then solve a whole new set to make it small enough and rugged enough to transport to your target. Something between a shipping container and a small cone on the end of a missile - depending on how you intend to deliver it.

All that is a lot of sophisticated science and engineering for a Country that has demonstrated it has a hard time with (relatively) simple "rocket science." Though they are getting better, in fits and starts, at that. They are probably advancing in nuclear weapons technology too. Hard to gauge progress (both for us and them) when they aren't testing actual devices...