AN602 had a "three-stage" design: the first stage is the necessary fission trigger. The second stage was two relatively small thermonuclear charges with a calculated contribution to the explosion of 1.5 megatons, which were used for radiation implosion of the third stage, the main thermonuclear module located between them, and starting a thermonuclear reaction in it, contributing fifty megatons of explosion energy. As a result of the thermonuclear reaction, huge numbers of high-energy fast neutrons were formed in the main thermonuclear module, which, in turn, initiated the fast fission nuclear reaction in the nuclei of the surrounding uranium-238, which would have added another fifty megatons of energy to the explosion, so that the estimated energy release of the AN602 was around 100 megatons.