Dettagli

Diagram of a W88 nuclear warhead, showing its variation of the Teller-Ulam design. On the top is an oblate primary, while at the bottom is a spherical secondary.

The outer casing (blue/purple) is that of a MIRV warhead reentry vehicle (very schematic) which would protect the warhead from the heat of the atmosphere after its launch into space. The "physics package" of the primary and secondary is surrounded by a uranium-238 reflector casing (gray), inside of which is filled with polystyrene foam (tan) which aids in the transfer of radiation from the primary to compress the secondary. The primary (top) is a tamper of some sort (gray), followed by precisely arranged high explosives (yellow), followed by a plutonium core (blue), filled with tritium gas (green). The spherical secondary is a uranium-235 or uranium-238 tamper (blue), followed by lithium deuteride fusion fuel (red), followed by a uranium-235 or plutonium "sparkplug" (blue).

This is not drawn with any precision or scale and are meant only to illustrate a general concept.

Based primarily on diagrams appearing in Dan Stober and Ian Hoffman, A convenient spy: Wen Ho Lee and the politics of nuclear espionage (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001) and in a 1999 article from the San Jose Mercury News also by Dan Stober, Reid Brown, and Karl Kalher. Images available online at Howard Morland's "The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time".

Re-drawn by User:Fastfission using Inkscape.

Licenza

Quest'opera è stata rilasciata nel pubblico dominio dal suo autore, Fastfission. Questa norma si applica in tutto il mondo. In alcuni paesi questo potrebbe non essere legalmente possibile. In tal caso: Fastfission garantisce a chiunque il diritto di utilizzare quest'opera per qualsiasi scopo, senza alcuna condizione, a meno che tali condizioni siano richieste dalla legge.

If you want to credit someone, credit "Wikimedia Commons." Otherwise don't credit anyone, that's fine by me. --Fastfission 15:19, 14 April 2008 (UTC)