Teller-Ulam design Hydrogen Bomb

The Teller–Ulam design is a nuclear weapon design which is used in megaton-range

thermonuclear weapons, and is more colloquially referred to as "the secret of the
hydrogen bomb". It is named after two of its chief contributors, Hungarian born
physicist Edward Teller and Polish born mathematician Stanisław Ulam, who developed
the design in 1951. The idea is generally thought to pertain specifically to the use of a
fission bomb "trigger" placed near an amount of fusion fuel, known as "staging", and the
use of "radiation implosion" to compress the fusion fuel before igniting it. There are a
number of other additions and variations to this idea posited by different sources.

The basics of the Teller–Ulam configuration: a fission bomb uses radiation to

compress and heat a separate section of fusion fuel.

The first device to be based on this principle was detonated by the United States in the
"Ivy Mike" nuclear test in 1952. In the Soviet Union, this design was known as Andrei
Sakharov's "Third Idea". Similar devices were developed by the United Kingdom,
France, China, and Israel, though no specific codenames are known for their designs.

Public body of knowledge concerning nuclear weapon design

Detailed knowledge of actual fission and fusion weapons is classified to some degree in
virtually every industrialized nation. In the United States, such "knowledge" can by
default be classified as Restricted Data even if it is created by persons who are not
government employees or associated with weapons programs, in a legal doctrine known
as "born secret" (though the constitutional standing of the doctrine has been at times
called into question, see United States v. The Progressive, et al.). Born-secret is rarely
invoked for cases of private speculation. The official policy of the United States
Department of Energy has been not to acknowledge the leaking of design information, as
such acknowledgement would potentially validate the information as accurate. In a small
number of prior cases, though (see prior restraint), the U.S. government has attempted to
censor weapons information in the public press, with limited success.

Though large quantities of vague data have been officially released, and larger quantities
of vague data have been unofficially leaked by ex-bomb designers, most public
descriptions of nuclear weapon design details rely to some degree on speculation, reverse
engineering from known information, or comparison with similar fields of physics
(inertial confinement fusion is the primary example). Such processes have resulted in a
body of unclassified knowledge about nuclear bombs which is generally consistent with
official unclassified information releases, related physics, and is thought to be internally
consistent, though there are some points of interpretation which are still considered open.
The state of public knowledge about the Teller–Ulam design has been most reliably
shaped from a few specific incidences outlined in a section below.

Basic principle

The basic principle of the Teller–Ulam configuration is based upon the idea that different
parts of a thermonuclear weapon can be chained together in "stages" which allow for the
full detonation of each. At a bare minimum, this implies a primary section which consists
of a fission bomb (a "trigger"), and a secondary section which consists of fusion fuel.
Because of the staged design, it is thought that a tertiary section, again of fusion fuel,
could be added as well, based on the same principle of the secondary. The energy
released by the primary compresses the secondary through the concept of "radiation
implosion", at which point it is heated and undergoes nuclear fusion.

One possible version of the Teller–Ulam configuration.

Surrounding the other components is a hohlraum or radiation case, a container which
traps the first stage or primary's energy inside temporarily. The outside of this radiation
case, which is also normally the outside casing of the bomb, is the only direct visual
evidence publicly available of any thermonuclear bomb component's configuration.
Numerous photographs of various thermonuclear bomb exteriors have been declassified.

The primary is thought to be a standard implosion method fission bomb, though likely
with a core boosted by small amounts of fusion fuel for extra efficiency; the fusion fuel
releases excess neutrons when heated and compressed, inducing additional fission.
Generally, an entity with the capacity to create a thermonuclear bomb has already
mastered the ability to engineer boosted fission. When fired, the plutonium-239 (Pu-239)
and/or uranium-235 (U-235) core would be compressed to a smaller sphere by special
layers of conventional high explosives arranged around it in a lens pattern, initiating the
nuclear chain reaction that powers the conventional "atomic bomb".

The secondary is usually shown as a column of fusion fuel and other components
wrapped in many layers. Around the column is first a "pusher-tamper", a heavy layer of
unenriched uranium-238 (U-238) or lead which serves to help compress the fusion fuel
(and, in the case of uranium, may eventually undergo fission itself). Inside this is the
fusion fuel itself, usually a form of lithium deuteride, which is used because it is easier to
weaponize than liquified tritium/deuterium gas (see Ivy Mike experiment). This dry fuel,
when bombarded by neutrons, produces tritium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen which can
undergo nuclear fusion, along with the deuterium present in the mixture. (See the article
on nuclear fusion for a more detailed technical discussion of fusion reactions.) Inside the
layer of fuel is the "spark plug", a hollow column of fissile material (plutonium-239 or
uranium-235) which, when compressed, can itself undergo nuclear fission (because of the
shape, it is not a critical mass without compression). The tertiary, if one is present, would
be set below the secondary and probably be made up of the same materials.

A more simplified explanation of the above would be as follows:

1. An implosion assembly type of fission bomb is exploded. This is the primary

stage. If a small amount of tritium gas is placed near the primary explosion, it will
be compressed and a fusion reaction will occur; the released neutrons from this
fusion reaction will induce further fission in the plutonium-239 or uranium-235
used in the primary stage. The use of fusion fuel to enhance the efficiency of a
fission reaction is called boosting. Without boosting, a large portion of the fissile
material will remain unreacted; the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs had an
efficiency of only 1.4% and 14%, respectively, because they were unboosted.
2. Energy released in the primary stage is transferred to the secondary (or fusion)
stage. The exact mechanism whereby this happens is unknown (see speculation
regarding this below). This energy heats and compresses the fusion fuel, which is
necessary to induce fusion; the fusion reaction releases neutrons as a product.
Generally, increasing the kinetic energy of gas molecules contained in a limited
volume will increase both temperature and pressure (see gas laws).
 3. The fusion fuel of the secondary stage may be surrounded by depleted uranium,
which is normally completely stable and atomically unreactive. However, when
bombarded by the neutrons released in the secondary stage, the U-238 atoms
begin splitting and undergo a fission reaction.

Actual designs of thermonuclear weapons may vary. For example, they may or may not
use a boosted primary stage, use different types of fusion fuel, and may surround the
fusion fuel with beryllium (or another neutron reflecting material) instead of depleted
uranium to prevent further fission from occurring.

The basic idea of the Teller–Ulam configuration is that each "stage" would undergo
fission or fusion (or both) and release energy, much of which would be transferred to
another stage to trigger it. How exactly the energy is "transported" from the primary to
the secondary has been the subject of some disagreement, but is thought to be transmitted
through the x-rays which are emitted from the fissioning primary. This energy is then
used to compress the secondary. There are five proposed theories:

• Neutron pressure from the primary explosion. This was allegedly Ulam's first
concept and was abandoned as unworkable.
• Blast wave from the primary explosion. This was allegedly Ulam's second
concept and was abandoned as unworkable.
• Radiation pressure exerted by the x-rays. This was the first idea put forth by
Howard Morland in the article in The Progressive.
• X-rays creating a plasma in the radiation case's filler (a polystyrene plastic foam).
This was a second idea put forwards by Chuck Hansen and later by Howard
Morland.
• Tamper/Pusher ablation. This is currently believed to be the actual mechanism.

Radiation pressure

The radiation pressure exerted by the large quantity of x-ray photons inside the closed
casing might be enough to compress the secondary. For two thermonuclear bombs for
which the general size and primary characteristics are well understood, the Ivy Mike test
bomb and the modern W-80 cruise missile warhead variant of the W-61 design, the
radiation pressure was calculated to be 73 million bar (atmospheres) (7.3 TPa) for the Ivy
Mike design and 1,400 million bar (140 TPa) for the W-80

Foam plasma pressure

Foam plasma pressure is the concept which Chuck Hansen introduced during the
Progressive case, based on research which located declassified documents listing special
foams as liner components within the radiation case of thermonuclear weapons.

The sequence of firing the weapon (with the foam) would be as follows:
 1. The high explosives surrounding the core of the primary fire, compressing the
fissile material into a supercritical state and beginning the fission chain reaction.
2. The fissioning primary emits x-rays at the speed of light, which "reflect" along the
inside of the casing, irradiating the polystyrene foam (see below for a note on
what "reflection" means in this context).
3. The irradiated foam undergoes a phase transition, becoming a hot plasma, pushing
against the tamper of the secondary, compressing it tightly, and beginning the
fission reaction in the spark plug.
4. Pushed from both sides (from the primary and the spark plug), the lithium
deuteride fuel is highly compressed and heated to thermonuclear temperatures,
and begins a fusion reaction.
5. The fuel undergoing the fusion reaction emits a large flux of neutrons, which
irradiates the uranium-238 tamper (or the uranium-238 bomb casing), begins to
itself undergo a fission reaction, providing about half of the total energy.

This would complete the fission-fusion-fission sequence. Fusion, unlike fission, is

relatively "clean"—it releases energy but no harmful radioactive products or large
amounts of nuclear fallout. The fission reactions though, especially the last fission
reaction, release a tremendous amount of fission products and fallout. If the last fission
stage is omitted, by replacing the uranium tamper with one made of lead, for example, the
overall explosive force is reduced by approximately half but the amount of fallout is
relatively low.

Current technical criticisms of the foam plasma pressure focus on unclassified analysis
from similar high energy physics fields which indicate that the pressure produced by such
a plasma would only be a small multiplier of the basic photon pressure within the
radiation case, and that the foam materials intrinsically have a very low absorption
efficiency of the gamma and x-ray radiation from the primary. Most of the energy
produced would be absorbed by the walls of the radiation case, and the tamper around the
secondary. Analyzing the effects of that absorbed energy led to the third mechanism:
ablation.
Tamper-pusher ablation

The third proposed mechanism is that the primary compression mechanism for the
thermonuclear secondary is that the outer layers of the tamper-pusher, or heavy metal
casing around the thermonuclear fuel, are heated so much by the x-ray flux from the
primary that they ablate away, exploding outwards at such high speed that the rest of the
tamper recoils inwards at a tremendous velocity, crushing the fusion fuel and the spark
plug.

The sequence depicted is:

1. Bomb before detonation. The nested spheres at the top are the fission primary; the
cylinders below are the fusion secondary device.
2. Fission primary's explosives have detonated and collapsed the primary's fissile pit.
3. The primary's fission reaction has run to completion, and the primary is now at
several million degrees and radiating gamma and hard x-rays, heating up the
inside of the hohlraum (radiation case) and the shield and secondary's tamper.
4. The primary's reaction is over and it has expanded. The surface of the pusher for
the secondary is now so hot that it is also ablating or expanding away, pushing the
rest of the secondary (tamper, fusion fuel, and fissile spark plug) inwards. The
spark plug starts to fission. Not depicted: the radiation case is also ablating and
expanding outwards (omitted for clarity of diagram).
5. The secondary's fuel has started the fusion reaction and shortly will burn up, and
then blow the remaining components of the bomb apart.

Rough calculations for the basic ablation effect are relatively simple: the energy from the
primary is distributed evenly onto all of the surfaces within the outer radiation case, with
the components coming to a thermal equilibrium, and the effects of that thermal energy
are then analyzed. The energy is mostly deposited within about one x-ray optical
thickness of the tamper/pusher outer surface, and the temperature of that layer can then
be calculated. The velocity at which the surface then expands outwards is calculated and,
from a basic Newtonian momentum balance, the velocity at which the rest of the tamper
implodes inwards.

Applying the more detailed form of those calculations to the Ivy Mike device yields
vaporized pusher gas expansion velocity of 290 kilometers per second and an implosion
velocity of perhaps 400 kilometers per second if 3/4 of the total tamper/pusher mass is
ablated off, the most energy efficient proportion. For the W-80 the gas expansion velocity
is roughly 410 kilometers per second and the implosion velocity 570 kilometers per
second. The pressure due to the ablating material is calculated to be 5.3 billion bar (530
TPa) in the Ivy Mike device and 64 billion bar (6.4 PPa) in the W-80 device.

Comparing the implosion mechanisms

Comparing the three mechanisms proposed, it can be seen that:

• Radiation pressure:
o Ivy Mike: 73 million bar (7.3 TPa)
o W-80: 1.4 billion bar (140 TPa)
• Plasma pressure:
o Ivy Mike: (est.) 350 million bar (35 TPa)
o W-80: (est.) 7.5 billion bar (750 TPa)
• Ablation pressure:
o Ivy Mike: 5.3 billion bar (530 TPa)
o W-80: 64 billion bar (6400 TPa)

The calculated ablation pressure is one order of magnitude greater than the higher
proposed plasma pressures and nearly two orders of magnitude greater than calculated
radiation pressure. No mechanism to avoid the absorption of energy into the radiation
case wall and the secondary tamper has been suggested, making ablation apparently
unavoidable. The other mechanisms appear to be unneeded.

United States Department of Defense official declassification reports indicate that foamed
plastic materials are or may be used in radiation case liners, and despite the low direct
plasma pressure they may be of use in delaying the ablation until energy has distributed
evenly and a sufficient fraction has reached the secondary's tamper/pusher.

Proposed design variations

A number of possible variations to the weapon design have been proposed:

• Either the tamper or the casing have been proposed as being made of uranium-238
for the final fission stage.
• In some descriptions, additional internal structures exist to protect the secondary
from receiving excessive neutrons from the primary.
 • The inside of the casing may or may not be specially machined to "reflect" the x-
rays. X-ray "reflection" is not like light reflecting off of a mirror, but rather the
reflector material is heated by the x-rays, causing the material itself to emit x-
rays, which then travel to the secondary.

Two special variations exist which will be discussed in a further section: the
cryogenically cooled liquid deuterium device used for the Ivy Mike test, and the putative
design of the W88 nuclear warhead — a small, MIRVed version of the Teller–Ulam
configuration with a prolate (egg or watermelon shaped) primary and an elliptical
secondary. Most bombs do not apparently have tertiary stages — the U.S. is only thought
to have produced one such model, the massive 25 Mt B41 nuclear bomb, and the Soviet
Union is thought to have used multiple stages in their 50 megaton Tsar Bomba. If any
hydrogen bombs have been made from configurations other than those based on the
Teller–Ulam design, the fact of it is not publicly known, with the possible exception of
the Sloika design discussed below.

In essence, the Teller–Ulam configuration relies on at least two instances of implosion

occurring: first, the conventional (chemical) explosives in the primary would compress
the fissile core, resulting in a fission explosion many times more powerful than that
which chemical explosives could achieve alone. Second, the radiation from the fissioning
of the primary would be used to compress and ignite the secondary, resulting in a fusion
explosion many times more powerful than the fission explosion alone. This chain of
compression could then be continued with an arbitrary number of secondaries, and would
end with the fissioning of the natural uranium tamper, something which could not
normally be achieved without the neutron flux provided by the fusion reactions in the
secondary. Such a design can be scaled up to an arbitrary strength, potentially to the level
of a doomsday device, though usually such weapons are not more than a dozen megatons,
which is generally considered enough to destroy even the largest practical targets.

History
Main History of the Teller–Ulam design

Original "Super"

The idea of a thermonuclear fusion bomb ignited by a smaller fission bomb was first
proposed by Enrico Fermi to his colleague Edward Teller in 1941 at the start of what
would become the Manhattan project. Teller spent most of the Manhattan Project
attempting to figure out how to make the design work, to some degree neglecting his
assigned work on the Manhattan Project fission bomb program. His difficult and devil's
advocate attitude in discussions led Oppenheimer to sidetrack him and other "problem"
physicists into the super program to smooth his way.

Credit controversy

Stanisław Ulam, a coworker of Teller's, made the first key conceptual leaps towards a
workable fusion design. Ulam's two innovations which rendered the fusion bomb
practical were that compression of the thermonuclear fuel before extreme heating was a
practical path towards the conditions needed for fusion, and the idea of staging or placing
a separate thermonuclear component outside a fission primary component, and somehow
using the primary to compress the secondary. Teller then realized that the gamma and X-
ray radiation produced in the primary could transfer enough energy into the secondary to
create a successful implosion and fusion burn, if the whole assembly was wrapped in a
hohlraum or radiation case. Teller and his various proponents and detractors later
disputed the degree to which Ulam had contributed to the theories underlying this
mechanism.

Testing

The "George" shot of Operation Greenhouse in 1951 tested the basic concept for the first
time on a very small scale, raising expectations to a near certainty that the concept would
work.

In November 1, 1952, the Teller–Ulam configuration was tested at full scale in the "Ivy
Mike" shot at an island in the Enewetak atoll, with a yield of 10.4 megatons (over 450
times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Nagasaki during World War II). The
device, dubbed the Sausage, used an extra-large fission bomb as a "trigger" and liquid
deuterium—kept in its liquid state by 20 short tons (18 metric tons) of cryogenic
equipment—as its fusion fuel, and weighed around 80 short tons (70 metric tons)
altogether.

A photograph of Operation Castle thermonuclear test, Castle Romeo shot.

The liquid deuterium fuel of Ivy Mike was impractical for a deployable weapon, and the
next advance was to use a solid lithium deuteride fusion fuel instead. In 1954 this was
tested in the "Castle Bravo" shot (the device was code-named the Shrimp), which worked
far better (2.5 times) than expected and yielded 15 megatons, the largest U.S. bomb ever
tested.

Efforts in the United States soon shifted towards developing miniaturized Teller–Ulam
weapons which could easily outfit Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Submarine
Launched Ballistic Missiles. By 1960, with the W47 warhead deployed on Polaris
submarines, megaton-class warheads were as small as 18 inches (0.5 m) in diameter and
around 700 pounds (320 kg) in weight. Further innovation in miniaturizing warheads was
accomplished by the mid-1970s, when versions of the Teller–Ulam design were created
which could fit ten or more warheads on the end of a small MIRVed missile (see the
section on the W88 below).

Soviet developments

The first Soviet fusion design, developed by Andrei Sakharov and Vitaly Ginzburg in
1949 (before the Soviets had a working fission bomb), was dubbed the Sloika, after a
Russian layer cake, and was not of the Teller–Ulam configuration. It used alternating
layers of fissile material and lithium deuteride fusion fuel spiked with tritium (this was
later dubbed Sakharov's "First Idea"). Though nuclear fusion was technically achieved, it
did not have the scaling property of a "staged" weapon. The fusion layer wrapped around
the fission core could only moderately multiply the fission energy (modern Teller–Ulam
designs can multiply it 30-fold). Additionally, the whole fusion stage had to be imploded
by conventional explosives, along with the fission core, multiplying the bulk of chemical
explosives needed substantially.

Their first Sloika design test, Joe-4, was detonated in 1953 with a yield equivalent to 400
kilotons of TNT (only 15%–20% from fusion).

The Tsar Bomba was a massive bomb developed by the Soviet Union, and demonstrated
how the concept of "staging" could be used to develop arbitrarily powerful weapons.

Attempts to use a Sloika design to achieve megaton-range results proved unfeasible. After
the U.S. tested the "Ivy Mike" device in 1952, proving that a multimegaton bomb could
be created, the Soviets searched for an additional design. The "Second Idea", as Sakharov
referred to it in his memoirs, was a previous proposal by Ginzburg in November 1948 to
use lithium deuteride in the bomb, which would, in the course of being bombarded by
neutrons, produce tritium. In late 1953 physicist Viktor Davidenko achieved the first
breakthrough, that of keeping the primary and secondary parts of the bombs in separate
pieces ("staging"). The next breakthrough was discovered and developed by Sakharov
and Yakov Zel'dovich, that of using the X-rays from the fission bomb to compress the
secondary before fusion ("radiation implosion"), in the spring of 1954. Sakharov's "Third
Idea", as the Teller–Ulam design was known in the USSR, was tested in the shot "RDS-
37" in November 1955 with a yield of 1.6 Mt.
The Soviets demonstrated the power of the "staging" concept in October 1961, when they
detonated the massive and unwieldy Tsar Bomba, a 50 Mt hydrogen bomb which derived
almost 97% of its energy from fusion. It was the largest nuclear weapon developed and
tested by any country, but was far too large for the Soviets to use as a weapon.

British developments

In 1954 work began at Aldermaston to develop the British fusion bomb, with Sir William
Penny in charge of the project. British knowledge on how to make a thermonuclear
fusion bomb was rudimentary, and at the time the United States was not exchanging any
nuclear knowledge because of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946. However, the British were
allowed to observe the American Castle tests and used sampling aircraft in the mushroom
clouds, providing them with clear, direct evidence of the high compression produced in
the secondary stages by radiation implosion.

Because of these difficulties, in 1955 British prime minister Anthony Eden agreed to a
secret plan, whereby if the Aldermaston scientists failed or were greatly delayed in
developing the fusion bomb, it would be replaced by an extremely large fission bomb.

In 1957 the Operation Grapple tests were carried out. The first test, Green Granite was a
prototype fusion bomb, but failed to produce equivalent yields compared to the
Americans and Soviets, only achieving approximately 300 kilotons. The second test
Orange Herald was the modified fission bomb and produced 700 kilotons—making it the
largest fission explosion ever. At the time almost everyone (including the pilots of the
plane that dropped it) thought that this was a fusion bomb. This bomb was put into
service in 1958. A second prototype fusion bomb Purple Granite was used in the third
test, but only produced approximately 150 kilotons.

A second set of tests was scheduled, with testing recommencing in September 1957. The
first test was based on a "… new simpler design. A two stage thermonuclear bomb which
had a much more powerful trigger". This test Grapple X Round C was exploded on
November 8 and yielded approximately 1.8 megatons. Two final air burst tests on
September 2 and September 11, 1958, dropped bombs that yielded almost 3 megatons—
Britain's most powerful tests.

American observers had been invited to this second set of tests. After their successful
detonation of a megaton-range device (and thus demonstrating their practical
understanding of the Teller–Ulam design "secret"), the United States agreed to exchange
some of their nuclear designs with Great Britain, leading to the 1958 US-UK Mutual
Defence Agreement. Instead of continuing with their own design, the British were given
access to the design of the smaller American Mk 28 warhead and were able to
manufacture copies.

Other countries
The People's Republic of China developed their first Teller–Ulam device only 32 months
after their first fission test, the shortest fission-to-fusion development time yet known.

The details of the development of the Teller–Ulam design in other countries are less well
known. The People's Republic of China detonated its first device using a Teller–Ulam
design June 1967 ("Test No. 6"), a mere 32 months after detonating its first fission
weapon (the shortest fission-to-fusion development yet known), with a yield of 3.3 Mt.
Little is known about the Chinese thermonuclear program, however. Very little is known
about the French development of the Teller–Ulam design beyond the fact that they
detonated a 2.6 Mt device in the "Canopus" test in August 1968. In 1998 India claimed to
detonate a "hydrogen bomb" in its Operation Shakti tests ("Shakti I", specifically),
though seismographic readings have led many non-Indian experts to conclude that this is
unlikely, or at least it was unlikely to have been a success as claimed, because of its low
yield (claimed to be around 45 kt, though outside experts estimate it at around 30 kt, both
extremely low for a successful thermonuclear detonation). However, even low-yield tests
can have a bearing on thermonuclear capability, as they can provide information on the
behavior of primaries without the full ignition of secondaries.[

Public knowledge

The Teller–Ulam design was for many years considered one of the top nuclear secrets,
and even today it is not discussed in any detail by official publications with origins
"behind the fence" of classification. United States Department of Energy (DOE) policy
has been, and continues to be, that they do not acknowledge when "leaks" occur, because
doing so would acknowledge the accuracy of the supposed leaked information.

Photographs of warhead casings, such as this one of the W80 nuclear warhead, allow for
some speculation as to the relative size and shapes of the primaries and secondaries in
U.S. thermonuclear weapons.
Aside from images of the warhead casing (but never of the "physics package" itself),
most information in the public domain about this design is regulated to a few terse
statements by the DOE and the work of a few individual investigators.

Below is a short discussion of the events which lead to the formation of these "public"
models of the Teller–Ulam design, with some discussions as to their differences and
disagreements with those principles outlined above.

DOE statements

In 1972 the DOE declassified a statement that "The fact that in thermonuclear (TN)
weapons, a fission 'primary' is used to trigger a TN reaction in thermonuclear fuel
referred to as a 'secondary'", and in 1979 added, "The fact that, in thermonuclear
weapons, radiation from a fission explosive can be contained and used to transfer energy
to compress and ignite a physically separate component containing thermonuclear fuel."
To this latter sentence they specified that "Any elaboration of this statement will be
classified." The only statement which may pertain to the spark plug was declassified in
1991: "Fact that fissile and/or fissionable materials are present in some secondaries,
material unidentified, location unspecified, use unspecified, and weapons undesignated."
In 1998 the DOE declassified the statement that "The fact that materials may be present
in channels and the term 'channel filler,' with no elaboration", which may refer to the
polystyrene foam (or an analogous substance).

Whether these statements vindicate some or all of the models presented above is up for
interpretation, and official U.S. government releases about the technical details of nuclear
weapons have been purposely equivocating in the past (see, i.e., Smyth Report). Other
information, such as the types of fuel used in some of the early weapons, has been
declassified, though of course precise technical information has not been.

The Progressive case

Most of what is known today in the public domain about the Teller–Ulam design comes
from a 1979 article in a left-wing magazine. This edition is available online.

Most of the current ideas on the workings of the Teller–Ulam design came into public
awareness after the DOE attempted to censor a magazine article by U.S. antiweapons
activist Howard Morland in 1979 on the "secret of the hydrogen bomb". In 1978 Morland
had decided that discovering and exposing this "last remaining secret" would focus
attention onto the arms race and allow citizens to feel empowered to question official
statements on the importance of nuclear weapons and nuclear secrecy. Most of Morland's
ideas about how the weapon worked were compiled from highly accessible sources—the
drawings which most inspired his approach came from none other than the Encyclopedia
Americana. Morland also interviewed (often informally) many former Los Alamos
scientists (including Teller and Ulam, though neither gave him any useful information),
and used a variety of interpersonal strategies to encourage informational responses from
them (i.e., asking questions such as "Do they still use spark plugs?" even if he was not
aware what the latter term specifically referred to).

Morland eventually concluded that the "secret" was that the primary and secondary were
kept separate and that radiation pressure from the primary compressed the secondary
before igniting it. When an early draft of the article, to be published in The Progressive
magazine, was sent to the DOE after falling into the hands of a professor who was
opposed to Morland's goal, the DOE requested that the article not be published, and
pressed for a temporary injunction. The DOE argued that Morland's information was (1)
likely derived from classified sources, (2) if not derived from classified sources, itself
counted as "secret" information under the "born secret" clause of the 1954 Atomic
Energy Act, and (3) was dangerous and would encourage nuclear proliferation.

Morland and his lawyers disagreed on all points, but the injunction was granted, as the
judge in the case felt that it was safer to grant the injunction and allow Morland, et al., to
appeal, which they did in United States v. The Progressive, et al. (1979).
Through a variety of more complicated circumstances, the DOE case began to wane as it
became clear that some of the data they were attempting to claim as "secret" had been
published in a students' encyclopedia a few years earlier. After another H-bomb
speculator, Chuck Hansen, had his own ideas about the "secret" (quite different from
Morland's) published in a Wisconsin newspaper, the DOE claimed The Progressive case
was moot, dropped their suit and allowed the magazine to publish, which it did in
November 1979. Morland had by then, however, changed his opinion of how the bomb
worked, suggesting that a foam medium (the polystyrene) rather than radiation pressure
was used to compress the secondary, and that in the secondary was a spark plug of fissile
material as well. He published these changes, based in part on the proceedings of the
appeals trial, as a short erratum in The Progressive a month later.[ In 1981 Morland
published a book about his experience, describing in detail the train of thought which led
him to his conclusions about the "secret".

Because the DOE sought to censor Morland's work — one of the few times they violated
their usual approach of not acknowledging "secret" material which had been
released — it is interpreted as being at least partially correct, though to what degree it
lacks information or has incorrect information is not known with any great confidence.
The difficulty which a number of nations had in developing the Teller–Ulam design (even
when they apparently understood the design, such as with the United Kingdom), makes it
somewhat unlikely that this simple information alone is what provides the ability to
manufacture thermonuclear weapons. Nevertheless, the ideas put forward by Morland in
1979 have been the basis for all current speculation on the Teller–Ulam design.

Variations

There have been a few variations of the Teller–Ulam design suggested by sources
claiming to have information from inside of the fence of classification. Whether these are
simply different versions of the Teller–Ulam design, or should be understood as
contradicting the above descriptions, is up for interpretation.

Richard Rhodes' "Ivy Mike" device in Dark Sun

In his 1995 book Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb, author Richard Rhodes
describes in detail the internal components of the "Ivy Mike" Sausage device, based on
information obtained from extensive interviews with the scientists and engineers who
assembled it. According to Rhodes, though there was polystyrene in the "Mike" device, it
was not used as a plasma source — the radiation from the primary itself was enough to
compress the secondary. Whether or not this would apply only to the "Mike" device, or
the Teller–Ulam design in general, is not known, and potentially casts some doubt onto
the role of the foam, and to the exact mechanism of radiation "transport".

W88 revelations
In 1999, information came out implying that in some U.S. designs, the primary (top) is
prolate, while the secondary (bottom) is spherical.

In 1999 a reporter for the San Jose Mercury News reported that the U.S. W88 nuclear
warhead, a small MIRVed warhead used on the Trident II SLBM, had a prolate (egg or
watermelon shaped) primary (code-named Komodo) and a spherical secondary (code-
named Cursa) inside a specially shaped radiation case (known as the "peanut" for its
shape). A story four months later in The New York Times by William Broad reported that
in 1995, a supposed double agent from the People's Republic of China delivered
information indicating that China knew these details about the W88 warhead as well,
supposedly through espionage. (This line of investigation eventually resulted in the
abortive trial of Wen Ho Lee.) If these stories are true, it would indicate a variation of the
Teller–Ulam design which would allow for the miniaturization required for small
MIRVed warheads.

The value of a prolate primary lies apparently in the fact that a MIRV warhead is limited
by the diameter of the primary—if a prolate primary can be made to work properly, then
the MIRV warhead can be made considerably smaller yet still deliver a high-yield
explosion—a W88 warhead manages to yield up 475 kt with a physics package 1.75 m
(69 in) long, with a maximum diameter of 0.55 m (22 in), and weighing probably less
than 800 lb (360 kg). Smaller warheads can allow a nation to fit more of them onto a
single missile, as well as improve in more basic flight properties such as speed, mileage,
and range.

The calculations for a nonspherical primary are apparently orders of magnitude harder
than for a spherical primary, which would likely be of interest to an existing nuclear
power like the People's Republic of China (particularly as they no longer conduct nuclear
testing, which would yield invaluable design information).
Courtesy- Wikipedia