But to replicate that process of fusion here on Earth-where we don’t have the intense pressure created by the gravity of the sun’s core-we would need a temperature of at least 100 million degrees Celsius, or about six times hotter than the sun. Our sun constantly does fusion reactions all the time, burning ordinary hydrogen at enormous densities and temperatures. These pro-fusion advocates also say that fusion reactors would be incapable of generating the dangerous runaway chain reactions that lead to a meltdown-all drawbacks to the current fission schemes in nuclear power plants.Īnd, like fission, a fusion-powered nuclear reactor would have the enormous benefit of producing energy without emitting any carbon to warm up our planet’s atmosphere.īut there is a hitch: While it is, relatively speaking, rather straightforward to split an atom to produce energy (which is what happens in fission), it is a “grand scientific challenge” to fuse two hydrogen nuclei together to create helium isotopes (as occurs in fusion).
Proponents claim that when useful commercial fusion reactors are developed, they would produce vast amounts of energy with little radioactive waste, forming little or no plutonium byproducts that could be used for nuclear weapons. Fusion reactors have long been touted as the “perfect” energy source. But these barriers are not insurmountable. Making weapons-grade uranium is very difficult and expensive, which is one reason so few countries have nuclear weapons. At first, there is only a slight increase in the concentration of U-235 atoms, so the process has to be repeated several times in the centrifuge to increase the enrichment. The force of the centrifuge separates the U-235 atoms from the U-238 atoms. The process of enriching uranium is done via a centrifuge after a gas has been created from the uranium. Three percent enrichment is sufficient for nuclear power plants, but weapons-grade uranium is composed of at least 90 percent U-235. īut for all of this to work, scientists have to first enrich a sample of uranium so that it contains 2 to 3 percent more U-235. The two atoms that result from the fission later release beta radiation (superfast electrons) and gamma radiation of their own, too. The splitting of an atom releases heat and gamma radiation, or radiation made of high-energy photons. That may not seem like much, but there are lots of uranium atoms in a pound (0.45 kilogram) of uranium The decay of a single U-235 atom releases approximately 200 MeV (million electron volts).
The process of capturing the neutron and splitting happens very quickly. As soon as the nucleus captures the neutron, it splits into two lighter atoms and throws off two or three new neutrons (the number of ejected neutrons depends on how the U-235 atom splits). The animation above shows a uranium-235 nucleus with a neutron approaching from the top.
#Nuclear fission generator free#
Fire a free neutron into a U-235 nucleus and the nucleus will absorb the neutron, become unstable and split immediately. It's also one of the few elements that can undergo induced fission. U-235 decays naturally by alpha radiation: It throws off an alpha particle, or two neutrons and two protons bound together. While there are several varieties of uranium, uranium-235 (U-235) is the one most important to the production of both nuclear power and nuclear bombs. Uranium is a common element on Earth and has existed since the planet formed.
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