Nuclear arms timeline

Question 1 : no

for a country to have an operational nuclear weapon there are some phases it souled pass , they all take a considerable time because they are very sophisticated, dangerous or expensive. If you examine the nuclear weaponry engineering "know how" you can see it takes a long time to do all the tests, optimization,  etc.

Add to that the fact that a country with this knowledge  do not want to share it, you reach the conclusion that with the exception of espionage ( like the USSR nuclear program ) a country can not "get" all of this knowledge.

It is well known that e=mc2, but the harnessing of atomic energy is not so simple !

Question 2 : yes

The other point you must consider here is the complexity of the materials, fissionable elements are not easy to get . A country can not buy these materials ready for use , they have to be fabricated.

A third point is the actual making of a bomb, which again, is not so simple because for a mechanism to start an optimal chain reaction it has to be very precise.

Nuclear engineering is a complex business you may look at the following site for more info on the subject.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_engineering

The sad fact is that nuclear weapons are not that hard to construct: Al Qaeda agents in Philadelphia and Chicago were busted cold with "suitcase" bombs last month.  The triggers they used were of WWII design, and both weapons had enough 94\Pu/239 to go high-order. 

What a pity that the materials they bought came from a covert US supplier, and had been "denatured" with 95\Am/239.  The radiation signature is somewhat different from that of "active" plutonium, which made it relatively easy to track them by satellite.  The fuel they paid well over $1.25 billion for, was dead as a doornail. Now, at $7,500.00 for a 2,000 pound bunker buster, we can return that money to Al Qaeda in the form of 2,857 bunker busters, and six weeks of the First Marine Division, and six weeks of the Reagan Task Force in the Persian Gulf, to keep them company. 

Thank you, Al Qaeda, for the kind and timely donation to the United States Treasury.  With a few more of these suitcase bomb attacks, we can finish those little darlings completely.  Isn't it encouraging when a plan comes together?

BTW, the Al Qaeda agents told our guys everything they wanted to know . . . before they got an all expenses paid excursion to Guantanamo Bar. I do hope that they enjoy the company of the bartender and the quality of their drinks.

But as Senator Tom Daschle learned, when a leftist liberal has a sufficient sense of fanatacism and a bitter enough mean streak, they will always resort to biological or chemical weapons -- and they, sadly, are much easier to make than nuclear weapons.