Maybe closer than we think. Randall Parker sends this item along, and it's chilling. UC Berkeley Physicist Richard Miller writes in Technology Review:

"That bomb was never tested. It didn't have to be. A bomb based on U-235 can use a "gun" style configuration, and this was considered so reliable (and uranium was so difficult to separate) that no test was needed.... Why were we shocked to find calutrons in Iraq? Because we were too stupid to have anticipated them. The inspectors were looking for centrifuges, for laser separation, for diffusion plants in other words, for some modern method of preparing nuclear material. Apparently, nobody guessed that Saddam Hussein would revert to the simplest, most reliable method, the one that had worked for the United States in its desperation five decades earlier."

UPDATE: Vodkapundit asks "what if Hitler had the Bomb?" He says: "we'd probably never have known," then uses that as a launching board for a very good post on Saddam and Weapons for Mass Destruction. The money lines:

"...do realize that the more secure Saddam’s rule appears, the more likely it is that his chemical, biological, and (someday) nuclear weapons will someday be used. People follow the orders of the man whose wrath they fear. People tend to ignore the orders of men of limited life span who think nothing of friendly casualties. Stability is the best friend of the tyrant – let’s see to it that he has none."