NUCLEAR PHYSICS #1 : UNDERSTANDING FISSION AND FUSION

Its so wonderful to be here talking about this today, particularly because it marks the official beginning of a much prepared for series to give my fellow Steemians (and beyond) a total and wholesome understanding of the field of Nuclear Physics.

^{Image from Maxpixel under CCO license}

At the end of the day, please do not ask me if you will be able to practically able to make a Nuke, I won't answer that you know. But knowledge of this niche of physics (Nuclear Physics) is not limited to bombs, but can also be applied to a whole lot of things one of which is the NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS .

BUT FIRST, LET’S TALK LITTLE NUCLEAR POWER PLANTS

As an appetizer, lets brush the surface of the Nuclear Power-plant (would be discussed in more detail in the future of the series)

You see, the goal majorly is to get this turbine to turn, and one of the major ways to get the turbines to turn by passing steam through the chambers. But wait, where do we get this steam from, the simple answer is Heat.

But heat is a form of energy that must be created from other sources of energy, In the case of my earlier writing we discussed the generation of heat from burning of fossil fuels e.g drax power station England.

But here we are also producing heat, but not from burning of fossils but using a nuclear reactor to generate heat energy for turbine driving. Before we go into more details of the procedure lets see the Einstein mass energy relationship.

EINSTEINS MASS ENERGY EQUATION:

I refer to this equation as the equation of life and death as it was the very equation that caused the death of thousands of people during the second world war, and also the equation that has given millions of homes constant electricity supply. This equation is termed as the mass energy equation given by

E=mc2

This simply tells us about how that relativity exists between mass and energy, mass and energy are therefore interconvertible, apart from converting matter into heat energy through combustion, even much more energy can be realized from a small mass. This is because of its multiplying effect (square of the speed of light which is about 300,000km/sec).

Therefore, the magnitude of heat released from say 0.05 grams of material (usually uranium) is multiplied by (3.0 * 10⁸)².

(0.05310⁸)².=0.45*10¹⁶

SO HOW DO WE GET THE ENERGY FROM MATTER.

The reason we cannot exploit this energy from every material is simply because chemically speaking, most materials is stable in configuration, either they are stable as an element or strive to attain stability as a compound. However there are certain elements in nature that aren’t stable e.g. Uranium, Plutonium etc.

These materials are referred to as plutonium and when they are subjected under certain conditions can split of join together.

The process via which a radioactive nuclei splits into 2 smaller nuclei is known as nuclear fission. And the process via which a radioactive nucleus joins together to form a new nuclei is known as nuclear fusion.
The following equations illustrates the process of fission and fusion respectively

²³⁵₉₂U+¹₀n = ¹⁴¹₅₆Ba + ⁹²₃₆Kr + 3¹_{0
Fission equation}

2²₁H== ³₂He + ¹₀n
_{Fusion equation}

Now follow me!!!

Fission Reaction

In the fission reaction, a heavy nuclei (Uranium 235) was split into simpler nuclei (Barium and Krypton) in this case. At the point where fission was discovered in 1938, the brains behind it (Otto Hahn, Fritz Strassman) bombarded a sample of Uranium with neutrons (as shown in the above equation and image).

Now notice that in the above experiment that a 3 neutrons were released during the process, now this 3 moles of neutron particle would re-bombard its neighbouring uranium nuclei i.e when ²³⁵U absorbs the released nuclei, another fission is induced.

WATCH THIS In the previous case, a single neutron bombarded an Uranium nuclei and produced 3 additional nuclei, these 3 additional nuclei would further be reabsorbed by the residual Uranium again. Logically, we would have about 6 neutrons produced. This process is called a chain reaction and can be regarded to as an exponential sequence.

Now these neutrons released by the process leads to a generation of tremendous amount of heat energy, these is majorly owing to the fact that after every phase of fusion process, the neutrons released is in form of a mass (very small mass) and its unit is called “atomic mass unit” (a.m.u), therefore the quantity of heat energy released by this small mass is given by mc².

HOW THN DOES THE REACTION STOP

A question that went through my mind during my research of these topic is these,

1.) If the chain reaction keeps going on and on and on, would it ever stop?

2.) Even when it stops, what is the guarantee that it won’t have created much havoc in the process?

I will answer the first question now and just touch a little of the second answer, the second answer would be explained in more detail future post in this series, where we would be considering more on nuclear power plants and bombs.

#staytuned

BACK TO BUSINESS

The chain reaction due to fission would of course stop. But the question is how, remember we made mention of how that Uranium 235 residue is what is used to absorb the neutrons released from the previous process?

There would come a point in the process whereby the uranium residue would no longer be available to continue the chain reaction process, when that happens, the neutrons wouldn’t be absorbed anymore by the Uranium residue and the reaction would stop.

The minimum mass of the Isotope that will ensure a continuous chain reaction is known as ”critical mass”. Provided the mass of Uranium is lesser than these critical mass there would be no chain reaction.

The critical mass majorly depends on the purity and shape of the material used at the start of the fission

To the second question that might be in your mind friends, one thing I can assure you of is that we would be having something more or less like an explosive release of energy if the reaction is not quickly controlled. Details of how the reaction can be controlled would certainly be treated in future posts In the series.

WAIT WE HAVEN’T SAID MUCH ABOUT FUSION

Don’t tell me I have spent all the time talking fission without saying much about fusion, Hmmnnn. So I don’t bore you out, let’s ride

As defined earlier; In fusion the process simply involves joining two lighter nuclei to produce an heavier one.

For those who might not want to take the pain to scroll up to look at the equation, I got you covered its right here;

2²₁H ===> ³₂He + ¹₀n
_{Fusion equation}

The equation above shows that we have 2 deuterium atoms (deuterium is an isotope of Hydrogen, simply put, a form of Hydrogen known as heavy water because it has a higher mass). Combine to form Helium 3 which is also a form of Helium. This process is also accompanied by a release of energy.

The 2 light neutrons have similar charges (positive) and hence repel, there therefore exists a high electrostatic barrier which must be overcome for the fusion process to occur in the first place. To overcome these energy barrier, either or both of the partaking nuclei must possess sufficient energy (Kinetic).

Another equation of fusion that might shed more light is this
²₁H+³₁H ===> ⁴₂He + ¹₄

Here we have a deuterium atom combining with a tritium atom to produce Helium 4. In the former Helium 3 was realized but here a more stable Helium 4 is realized.

You might wonder why an element with a molar mass 3 and atomic number being 2 and an element with a molar mass of 4 and atomic number of 2

WHY FISSION IS EASILY REALIZABLE THANS FUSION

As said earlier fusion cannot occur if there Is no minimum amount of energy (Kinetic) possessed by either or both atomic nuclei. Now I need you to note here that these energy is no small energy. In fact this energy an energy source high enough to induce a fusion is one gotten from fission, now you get the gist right?. So when you detonate a fission bomb, then we can induce a fission reaction (LOL).

CONCLUSION

Now that we have seen how energy can be created in fission and fusion, we now know the tremendous power possessed by matter.

And of a Truth, the Earth consist of tremendous energy.
Do you know that only a few percent of the total energy in the world today is used. Food for thought

REFERENCES

For further readings, feel free to hit these links

Fusion versus fission

Fission and fusion Basics

Nuclear Power Plant

Nuclear power plant Energy explained

https://www.britannica.com/science/Einsteins-mass-energy-relation

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