08-08-2021 - Fission Nuclear

 

Nuclear fission

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"Splitting the atom" and "Split the atom" redirect here. For the EP by Massive Attack, see Splitting the Atom. For the album by Noisia, see Split the Atom.

Induced fission reaction. A neutron is absorbed by a uranium-235 nucleus, turning it briefly into an excited uranium-236 nucleus, with the excitation energy provided by the kinetic energy of the neutron plus the forces that bind the neutron. The uranium-236, in turn, splits into fast-moving lighter elements (fission products) and releases several free neutrons, one or more "prompt gamma rays" (not shown) and a (proportionally) large amount of energy.

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Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces gamma photons, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay.

Nuclear fission of heavy elements was discovered on 17 December 1938, by German Otto Hahn and his assistant Fritz Strassmann in cooperation with Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner. Hahn understood that a "burst" of the atomic nuclei had occurred.^[1][2] Meitner explained it theoretically in January 1939 along with her nephew Otto Robert Frisch. Frisch named the process by analogy with biological fission of living cells. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which can release large amounts of energy both as electromagnetic radiation and as kinetic energy of the fragments (heating the bulk material where fission takes place). Like nuclear fusion, in order for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be greater than that of the starting element.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fission