Image:W-88 warhead diagram.svg

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.

[edit] Licensing

Use of this work which I have created is allowed under the terms of the CC-BY-SA license (see below). Credit must be given to "Wikimedia Commons." You can contact me if you would like to negotiate other licensing terms (which I am generally happy to do). Those who wish to use this in the course of teaching may do so without any limitations. --Fastfission

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