Ah, but my pure research will not actually construct an atomic weapon, that is something for a technician, not a scientist. Knowing how to build a 200MT H plant is good science, actually building one is foolhardy politics and using it is criminal insanity.
I had actually picked the H plant pseudo-randomly, probably because I was reading about the Tsar planta recently. The Russian President ordered it built in 1961, it was completed and tested just 151 days later. Just in time for the Cuban Missile crisis. It was tested without the uranium casing that would have doubled its yield, but generated a huge amount of radioactive fallout. A fully blown tsar planta would have 100MT yield, enough to give a person 3rd degree burns 100km from ground zero. The biggest plant ever tested by the USA had 15MT yield.
If the Ruskies could build a tsar planta on 151 days notice back in 1961, the current rhetoric about Iran trying to build nuclear weapons is clearly ludicrous. If they wanted one they would just build one.
But back to science, balancing the value of a 1% increase in solar cell efficiency against a 100% increase in atomic weapon yield is a job for politicians, not scientists. Since politics is an integral part of the scientific process it follows that science has political factions. Left and right, hawks and doves, greens and ... whatever the opposite is.
-- DM personal opinion only
