No Stupid Questions

Nope. Exploding a nuclear bomb/warhead is a complicated and fickely thing. Everything must happen in the right speed and order, or it will be a dud. It will be a radioactive thing, yes, and might spread some seriously bad stuff around, but thats "just" some radioactive stuff in a few ten meters radius instead of blowing up a city.

It doesn't work that way bro

Nukes are actually extremely hard to set off. H-bombs even moreso. It requires extremely, extremely precise explosively-driven compression.

Gun-type firing mechanisms are simpler, but by no means “simple”.

Some nuclear bombs are so hard to make explode that they need another nuclear bomb to ignite them.

If you could set off a nuke by jarring it, parts of America wouldn't be there today.

Nah I stuck a screwdriver in there, it's fine

Nuclear bombs are not like conventional bombs. It is very difficult to make them explode. They aren't volatile. The way the ones dropped on Japan detonated was something like two halves of a core hit each other super super hard and were propelled by a bunch of shot gun shells. Compare that to things like black powder where it's just fire.

I don't think fires or bombs on nuclear sites are good, nor do I necessarily believe there were nuclear weapons, but I don't think they'd detonate like what you're thinking. Like how a fire at a fireworks factory causes a horrible chain reaction where everything blows up. Nothing like that.

No they won't

Nukes are extremely hard to build and ensure they can explode. You're talking extremely precisely timed explosives that with even a mili second off, will make your heavy nuke turn into a dud. Throwing a bomb right on top of one will not make it go off.

What CAN happen is that an explosion like that ruptures the nuke had throws the fissile material around, effectively making your nuke a dirty bomb.

Also, since they've been bombing nuclear facilities I can guarantee you that they have boat loads of very shitty (radioactive) chemicals laying around there which with these bombings now will also be spread around everywhere

1. They are bombing precisely because they haven’t got any weapons. If they had weapons, their nuclear weapons programme wouldn’t be attacked. This is how N Korea gets away with its shit. The attack is because they almost have nuclear weapons, and is intended to ensure the programme doesn’t bear fruit.

2. Nuclear weapons need a very precisely placed and timed set of shaped explosions within the device in order to ram the material together in such a way as to achieve fission. Nuclear weapons cannot be detonated by exterior explosions, fire, earthquake, hurricane or anything else other than its own detonation system.

No. That's not how it works. It could spread nuclear material though.

Edit: if it existed where they're claiming, which it doesn't.

You can explode a nuclear bomb by activating the firing mechanism. This will make the mushroom cloud. If you blow something up NEXT to a nuclear bomb, you can scatter the bomb components and create a dirty bomb, which is just a regular explosion plus SOME radiation.

Nuclear bombs are extremely stable when not armed. If you blow one up with external explosives it will just break.

A nuclear bomb requires precise explosions delivered by shaped charges to achieve fission. You could strap C4 to the sides of a nuke and set them off, and you probably wouldn't create a nuclear explosion. It's a very delicate kind of weapon with very sophisticated engineering.

Nuclear weapons require extremely specific events to successfully detonate, blowing them up with explosives will destroy the mechanisms that make it possible. It will most likely spread the nuclear fuel out though by breaking the shielding and structure that was keeping the radioactive material on the inside.

Reminder that the US accidentally dropped a nuclear bomb on itself but since it wasn't armed it didn't explode.

But also the most qualified nuclear inspectors on the planet say Iran doesn't have nukes.

If there were nukes in those bunkers, they would have moved them as soon as Israel attacked. Sauce: journalist who works in the Middle East.

Not necessarily. Nuclear weapons generally require fairly precise timing in order to go critical and properly explode.

If the timing is off, it'll still spread nuclear material around, but it won't make the large mushroom cloud style explosion.

1. No it likely wouldn't make them explode if they hypothetically were there.

2. It's reasonably certain that Iran didn't and doesn't have any usable nukes at the moment. The claim is that they were working on building them and that the bombing was to stop them from completing any such projects.

3. There are conflicting opinions about whether they were really working on building nukes. One might reasonably also say that if they weren't working on it before, they are NOW.

4. IIRC there was some kind of religious fatwa against Iran building nukes, which made the claim somewhat credible that they weren't building them. It looked to me like they were instead getting the precursor materials together without doing the final refining and assembly, so that if the fatwa was lifted and the clerics said build the nukes, they could do so relatively quickly. That's just me though, and I don't have any special sources of info.

Nuclear weapons require very precise detonators to explode, unlike conventional exposives which generally require only heat (and can blow up in the way you describe).

It's unclear, but most international experts agree that Iran has not yet actually put the nuclear material into any detonators. The problem is that Iran has been refining and stockpiling nuclear payloads, which could fairly easily be put into a bomb. That's what most of the world wants to prevent.

You can read IAEA's press releases for each attack. They go through the precise function and nature of each building and access the potential danger. Though they haven't updated for the US's latest bombing.