Nuclear weapon designs are physical, chemical, and engineering arrangements that

cause the physics package [1] of a nuclear weapon to detonate. There are three existing
basic design types. In many existing designs, the explosive energy of deployed devices is
derived primarily from nuclear fission, not fusion. (This includes fission of any U-238 tamper
or casing due to fusion produced neutrons.)
 Pure fission weapons were the first nuclear weapons built and have so far been the
only type ever used in warfare. The active material is weapons grade uranium (uranium
with a high percentage of U-235) or plutonium (plutonium-239 ), explosively assembled
into a chain-reacting  critical mass by one of two methods:
 Gun assembly: one piece of fissile uranium is fired at a fissile uranium target at the
end of the weapon, similar to firing a bullet down a gun barrel, achieving critical
mass when combined.
 Implosion: a fissile mass of either material (U-235, Pu-239, or a combination) is
surrounded by high explosives that compress the mass, resulting in criticality.
The implosion method can use either uranium or plutonium as fuel. The gun method
only uses uranium. Plutonium is considered impractical for the gun method because
of early triggering due to plutonium-240  contamination and due to its time
constant for prompt critical fission being much shorter than that of U-235.