07.06B Nuclear Fission And Nuclear Fusion (2024)

FAQs

What is nuclear fission and nuclear fusion? ›

The phenomena of nuclear fusion and nuclear fission have one unique point in common: the atom. The process of fission, as its name suggests, consists of the division of a heavy atom into 2 light atoms. With fusion, the phenomenon is reversed: two light atoms combine to form a larger atom.

Both fission and fusion are nuclear reactions that produce energy, but the processes are very different. Fission is the splitting of a heavy, unstable nucleus into two lighter nuclei, and fusion is the process where two light nuclei combine together releasing vast amounts of energy.

While the atomic bombs built during the Manhattan Project used the principle of nuclear fission, the thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb was based upon nuclear fusion. While fission is most easily achieved with heavy elements, such as uranium or plutonium, fusion is easiest with light elements.

Can fusion reactors be used to produce weapons? No. Although hydrogen bombs do use fusion reactions, they require an additional fission bomb to detonate. Working conditions of a magnetically-confined fusion reactor require a limited amount of fuel in the reactor.

A long-recognized drawback of fusion energy is neutron radiation damage to exposed materials, causing swelling, embrittlement and fatigue.

Is nuclear energy safe? The answer is unequivocally yes. Safety is in the DNA of every U.S. nuclear energy plant. That's one of the benefits of nuclear energy: U.S. plants are among the safest and most secure industrial facilities in the country.

Furthermore, fusion does not produce highly radioactive, long lived nuclear waste. “Fusion produces only low level radioactive waste — more than fission does — but this low level waste does not pose any serious danger,” said González de Vicente.

Depiction of the deuterium (D) and tritium (T) fusion reaction, which produces a helium nucleus (or alpha particle) and a high energy neutron. Fusion reactions power the Sun and other stars. In fusion, two light nuclei merge to form a single heavier nucleus.

The main idea of the hybrid concept, simply, is to use of fusion neutrons to activate a subcritical fission chain. In fact, a fusion facility which produces a steady state or pulse type neutrons is coated by a subcritical fissionable blanket.

Modern nuclear weapons work by combining chemical explosives, nuclear fission, and nuclear fusion. The explosives compress nuclear material, causing fission; the fission releases massive amounts of energy in the form of X-rays, which create the high temperature and pressure needed to ignite fusion.

Is Hiroshima still radioactive? ›

Hiroshima does not have harmful radiation levels today. The residual radiation from the bomb decayed quickly after the explosion, and the city has since maintained radiation levels comparable to natural background radiation elsewhere.

Tsar Bomba, Soviet thermonuclear bomb that was detonated in a test over Novaya Zemlya island in the Arctic Ocean on October 30, 1961. The largest nuclear weapon ever set off, it produced the most powerful human-made explosion ever recorded.

The primary challenge is that while it's relatively straightforward to make fusion happen — we did it all the time with thermonuclear weapons — it's much more difficult to make the reaction slow and controlled while extracting useful energy from it.

Twelve states currently have restrictions on the construction of new nuclear power facilities: California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont.

The thermonuclear Tsar Bomba was the most powerful bomb ever detonated.

In nuclear fission, atoms are split apart, which releases energy. All nuclear power plants use nuclear fission, and most nuclear power plants use uranium atoms. During nuclear fission, a neutron collides with a uranium atom and splits it, releasing a large amount of energy in the form of heat and radiation.

Nuclear fusion is the process by which two light atomic nuclei combine to form a single heavier one while releasing massive amounts of energy.

Since the nucleus of each atom is positively charged, there is a natural force that repels the atoms and keeps them from getting close enough to “fuse.” The fusion process, therefore, must use extreme temperatures and pressures to overcome the forces that naturally want to repel the atoms, and instead push their nuclei ...

Fusion occurs when two atoms slam together to form a heavier atom, like when two hydrogen atoms fuse to form one helium atom. This is the same process that powers the sun and creates huge amounts of energy—several times greater than fission.