Price of a nuke

[Tom Mazanec]

How much would a nuclear bomb cost, if you could buy one at the store?

[antoniseb]

Do you mean if a minimal sized Hydrogen bomb was getting mass produced with all the efficiencies of modern industry? or do you mean based on supply and demand in the world today what would they cost? Or do you mean with material and labor costs in the market today, what would it cost?

[Tom Mazanec]

Actually, I thought those three would be about the same.
How about giving the three answers, or at least which ones you want to.

[antoniseb]

Actually, I thought those three would be about the same.
How about giving the three answers, or at least which ones you want to.

I don't have three answers. The question you ask is difficult, and I didn't want to spend the time required for three answers... hence my request to narrow what you're asking. I take it, since you thought they's be the same, that any answer would do. I am also assuming you are asking for some reason having to do with spaceflight or astronomy.

[Ara Pacis]

Well, if I know a guy who works with them and wants to stick it to the man and will steal one for me (and then hide out in Bolivia), I might be able to get it for next to nothing, more if he wants me to pay for his retirement.

[Tom Mazanec]

Not "any" answer ($9.95?), one that is actually close to what a nuke would cost, if they could legally be purchased in, say, a gun store.
And no, nothing astronomical, else I would have posted this in Space/Astronomy Questions and Answers, instead of Science and Technology.

[Shaula]

It is a really hard question to answer - with most goods you are paying for more than the cost of the raw materials, you are paying for the development and other costs. The costs of the raw materials is tough as well - a lot of the specialist ones are very expensive now because they are tightly regulated and only made by a few highly specialist teams. If these things were made commercially then the prices would probably bear little relationship to the actual materials cost.

And when you say nuclear bomb - do you mean a uranium one? Plutonium? Fission-fusion bomb?

It is really hard to tease out actual per-unit costs for these things since the programs they are currently built under tend to include things like safety and security in their budget. Presumably if they were available at the corner store then secure storage sites would not be required!

[Swift]

There is also (thank goodness) not a free market of suppliers and customers for such items, so it is hard to set a fair market price. And, they are not made in such large numbers, that you get the discounts of scale common in most other goods. Lastly, as Shaula pointed out, I suspect a lot of the cost is in developing the technologies.

[JustAFriend]

You can't really put a free-market price on something that should never be on the free-market.

[Ara Pacis]

You can't really put a free-market price on something that should never be on the free-market.

Sure you can: Slavery.

Back to the topic. Perhaps if he wants to do the work himself you could just price him the material cost for the U or Pu, explosive lenses, neutron reflector and generator. Just assume that it became legal and some upstart wanted to manufacture them from plans without having to do R&D. Just as soon as he tells us what type of nuke he wants. Or should we just quote him Little Boy as a price leader?

[Grey]

The cost to produce a Minuteman, the only land-based ICBM currently in service in the United States, is $7 million. I'm not sure how much of that is the "physics package" and how much is the delivery device, but hey, what good is a nuclear weapon if you can't launch it?

[NEOWatcher]

Sure you can: Slavery.

Unfortunately there was an unrestricted free market for that at one time, so it's not really the same.

[Extravoice]

Word on the street is that there is 1 MT bomb available "free for the taking" off the coast of Georgia if you can find it.

The US government says that if you find it, they want it back. Spoil sports.

[Squink]

Quick calc of essential fission starting material costs:

Fusion or fission bomb, you need a fission core. Plutonium runs about $4000 a gram. Uranium (0.7% U235) about $140 a kg.
Little Boy contained 64 kg of enriched Uranium.
A plutonium device needs at least 16 kg of Pu 239 in order to function.

Assuming purchased Pu is 100% Pu239:
16000 * $4000 = $64,000,000 per bomb, plus parts and labor.

Assuming purchased U is 0.7% U235 (and enriching it to 90%) (7.8g prod/kg starting material)
8205kg * $140 = $1,150,000 per bomb, plus parts and labor. Perhaps double that due to inefficiency of enrichment.

[BigDon]

Okay wait now!

A large part of the cost is the process of getting it to all fit in a small, mobile package.

Some proof of concept nuclear devices were made the size of buildings, because it's easier and small size wasn't the point of the experiment.

It's odd to look at an entire building as a nuclear warhead by the way.

[HenrikOlsen]

You can't really put a free-market price on something that should never be on the free-market.

You can if it IS on the free market. Never mind if it shouldn't be.

[Solfe]

As I read through this thread, this line from Contact kept popping up in my head:
"First rule in government spending: why build one when you can have two at twice the price?"

[Strange]

Word on the street is that there is 1 MT bomb available "free for the taking" off the coast of Georgia if you can find it.

One went missing off the coast of Okinawa as well: Broken Arrow.
"I don't know what's scarier, losing nuclear weapons, or that it happens so often there's actually a term for it."



"Tom! There are two gentlemen in dark suits and sunglasses here to talk to you..."

[tlbs101]

According to a report or book listed by Brookings ( http://www.brookings.edu/projects/ar...ilverberg.aspx ) the US has spent $5.5Trillion to produce all nukes since 1940. According to http://www.rense.com/general47/global.htm the US has produced approximately 70,400 weapons of various yields and configurations for that $5.5T.

That works out to US$78million, each.

[Solfe]

I would place the value on a Davy Crockett much lower than. I might pay $78 million not to be the guy firing it. It had a range of 1.7 miles. I don't care if it only had a "sub-kiloton" warhead, I would want to be many more miles away than the 1.7 mile range.

[SkepticJ]

The claim that the ionizing radiation would be the most deadly effect sounds fishy to me. I think the shock wave from the equivalent of ten tonnes of TNT going off a few hundred meters from your location would ruin your day more than the flux of x-rays.

[Solfe]

I googled around and came across this article. I can't tell if the author is being tongue in cheek or is going for the whole 1950's nuclear happy vibe.

This thing looks like an Atomic Molotov Cocktail.

[tlbs101]

I would place the value on a Davy Crockett much lower than. I might pay $78 million not to be the guy firing it. It had a range of 1.7 miles. I don't care if it only had a "sub-kiloton" warhead, I would want to be many more miles away than the 1.7 mile range.

I used to work at the test site (but long after atmospheric and Davy Crockett testing were completed).

The old joke around the test site was that they name the test after the poor soldier who was assigned to press the fire button -- presumably in memorium. That probably contributed (a little bit) to the device never being fully deployed.

I got to see the whole Davy Crockett setup, including an empty grenade case and the firing control console, at the National Museum of Nuclear Science -- just two weeks ago.

And... I agree that a 20 Ton device should cost far less than a 20 kiloton or 20 Megaton device.

[Solfe]

The claim that the ionizing radiation would be the most deadly effect sounds fishy to me. I think the shock wave from the equivalent of ten tonnes of TNT going off a few hundred meters from your location would ruin your day more than the flux of x-rays.

As far as atomic weapons go, it may be nothing. It MIGHT not vaporize you, but I suspect it would be exactly like having Godzilla stomp on you.

In the second link I posted, it is actually a modeler doing research for a project. He has some mad scale modeling skills, but perhaps the research stopped at the looks of the weapon.

[Shaula]

The old joke around the test site was that they name the test after the poor soldier who was assigned to press the fire button -- presumably in memorium. That probably contributed (a little bit) to the device never being fully deployed.

The Mark 45 torpedo (11 kt) was deployed - and the Soviets had something similar. And that one would probably have been 100+ men dead every time you ordered one fired. Definite weapon of last resort. They also had nuclear depth charges. Personally I'd want those things launched from a carrier catapult....

[Trakar]

How much would a nuclear bomb cost, if you could buy one at the store?

That is more of a Market question than component question. With a large enough industrialization effort the prices of the individual components could easily plummet (could probably get overall price down into the range of a lower end luxury car). If you are talking current conditions, then you are talking black-market which has its own seperate market structure, so it is more a matter of what the party who has the device is willing to sell it for and how much the party who wants the device is willing to pay for it.

A few tens of (to a hundred or so) millions of dollars is probably a good rough estimate for most plausible situations.

[Trakar]

The cost to produce a Minuteman, the only land-based ICBM currently in service in the United States, is $7 million. I'm not sure how much of that is the "physics package" and how much is the delivery device, but hey, what good is a nuclear weapon if you can't launch it?

That is just the delivery platform cost, payload price is a seperate issue.

[Trakar]

Quick calc of essential fission starting material costs:

Fusion or fission bomb, you need a fission core. Plutonium runs about $4000 a gram. Uranium (0.7% U235) about $140 a kg.
Little Boy contained 64 kg of enriched Uranium.
A plutonium device needs at least 16 kg of Pu 239 in order to function.

Assuming purchased Pu is 100% Pu239:
16000 * $4000 = $64,000,000 per bomb, plus parts and labor.

Assuming purchased U is 0.7% U235 (and enriching it to 90%) (7.8g prod/kg starting material)
8205kg * $140 = $1,150,000 per bomb, plus parts and labor. Perhaps double that due to inefficiency of enrichment.

You're leaving out manufacturing, labor, shipping & handling, and let's not forget profit!

BTW - your mass of Pu is a bit heavy, you'd definitely be tickling the dragon's tail trying to stack that much into a pit assembly - if you are good with your lens design you can get by with almost half that much Pu. But then you are putting money into the design and manufacture which is probably more expensive than more Pu and a more robust and simple design.

[Trakar]

I would place the value on a Davy Crockett much lower than. I might pay $78 million not to be the guy firing it. It had a range of 1.7 miles. I don't care if it only had a "sub-kiloton" warhead, I would want to be many more miles away than the 1.7 mile range.

As long as there is a ditch nearby, no worries!

[BigDon]

The Mark 45 torpedo (11 kt) was deployed - and the Soviets had something similar. And that one would probably have been 100+ men dead every time you ordered one fired. Definite weapon of last resort. They also had nuclear depth charges. Personally I'd want those things launched from a carrier catapult....

Shaula, if I recall correctly things like this are usually delieved as a submunition to an ASROC. The rocket propels it over the submerged sub, then releases it over the submarines head to both lower the reaction time and increase the stand-off.