File:W-87 warhead diagram.svg

Original file(SVG file, nominally 550 × 1,052 pixels, file size: 23 KB)

Summary

Description
English: Diagram of a W87 nuclear warhead, showing its variation of the Teller-Ulam design. On the top is a spherical secondary, while at the bottom is a spherical primary.

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 (bottom) 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 [1] published in U. S. News and World Report in 1995 and reprinted in the 1999 Cox Report. More images available online at Howard Morland's "The Holocaust Bomb: A Question of Time".
Source Own work
Author Fastfission, HowardMorland
Other versions File:W-87 warhead diagram.png

Licensing

Public domain I, the copyright holder of this work, release this work into the public domain. This applies worldwide.
In some countries this may not be legally possible; if so:
I grant anyone the right to use this work for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

Captions

Add a one-line explanation of what this file represents

Items portrayed in this file

depicts

File history

Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.

Date/TimeThumbnailDimensionsUserComment
current00:26, 9 November 2009Thumbnail for version as of 00:26, 9 November 2009550 × 1,052 (23 KB)Fastfission~commonswikione other very minor thing fixed (casing)
13:55, 8 November 2009Thumbnail for version as of 13:55, 8 November 2009550 × 1,052 (22 KB)Fastfission~commonswikiditto
13:53, 8 November 2009Thumbnail for version as of 13:53, 8 November 2009550 × 1,052 (22 KB)Fastfission~commonswikitweak primary position
13:51, 8 November 2009Thumbnail for version as of 13:51, 8 November 2009550 × 1,052 (22 KB)Fastfission~commonswikitweak primary size
13:50, 8 November 2009Thumbnail for version as of 13:50, 8 November 2009550 × 1,052 (22 KB)Fastfission~commonswiki{{Information |Description={{en|1=Diagram of a W87 nuclear warhead, showing its variation of the Teller-Ulam design. On the top is a spherical ''secondary'', while at the bottom is a spherical ''primary''. The outer casing (blue
The following pages on the English Wikipedia use this file (pages on other projects are not listed):

Global file usage

The following other wikis use this file: