Nuclear Weapons Experts: Bomb Building Inside and Outside the Laboratory

This chapter looks at the expertise deployed in the development of nuclear weapons. Although apparently highly ‘technical’, and science-based, this expertise also encompasses much that is ‘social’. First, a significant element of nuclear weapons expertise involves ‘tacit knowledge’, knowledge that is learned and passed on to others through shared ‘hands-on’ experience rather than explicit written documentation. Second, the content and significance of such knowledge is always (in principle) open to debate in which disagreement parallels social interests. Finally, the contested terrain of such debates is not restricted to within nuclear weapons laboratories; instead the proponents may seek to enrol wider support through ‘heterogeneous engineering’ — actively attempting to shape the social world, as well as the technical.