The energy released by the weapon creates a fireball that reaches several tens of million degreestemperatures in the same range as the center of the sun (which also runs. The stronger the binding energy per nucleon, the less mass per nucleon.Įxample for neutron, proton and them bound together in deuterium: In fusion weapons (also called thermonuclear or hydrogen weapons), the energy from an initial fission explosion is used to fuse hydrogen isotopes together. Mass defect is directly proportional to the binding energy. average energy per nucleus is higher before the reaction and lower after the reaction.Īfter the reaction - the resulting elements are closer to the iron atomic number The surplus energy is the energy taken out of the system, i.e. The total energy released in a reactor is about 210 MeV per 235 U fission, distributed as shown in the table. More number of neutrons are released in fission as compared to fusion and hence, more nucleons take part in fission. The surplus energy in the nuclear reaction is achieved when heavy elements are split (fission), or light element are fused (fusion). Since energy released per mass is more in fusion as compared to fission, more energy is released in it. It is abundant in the universe, as natural atomic evolution tends to get close to it from both ends of atomic number spectrum. Both the lighter and heavier elements tend to have smaller binding energy. However, when comparing the energy released by the fission/fusion of different radioactive isotopes a quantity known as the Decay Energy or Q value is used to compare the energy released by a specific decay to other decays. The literature presents the binding energy chart per element, with its peak at iron (~56 nucleons). Natural systems tend to evolve to lower, not higher energy states. The more energetic a binding, the more difficult it is to break the binding, the more stable the atom made out of such bindings. The more difficult it is to split the atom, the more stable the atom is. The higher the binding energy per nucleon, the more difficult it is to split the atom. The higher the binding energy of nucleus, the more energy is stored per nucleon in the system. The stronger the nucleus is bound, the higher its binding energy. Given (1) and (2), the smaller the nucleus, the stronger it is bound. The less nucleons in a nucleus, the closer in average they are, so the strong force per each is higher and easily overcomes electromagnetic repulsion. The more nucleons in a nucleus, the bigger the nucleus is, so the average distance of a nucleon to each another is higher, hence the long-distance electromagnetic repulsion tends to overcome short-distance strong nuclear force, up to the point of occasional alpha decay in elements of transuranic end of the spectrum. Please kindly point out and explain these errors. To me, each of them seems to make sense, but some of them are contradictory, so obviously - wrong.

I did some research of that topic and cannot come to a single comprehensive and consistent description.īelow are related statements I gathered or can think of, describing the problem area. What is the nature of nuclear energy? This is closely related to the correct explanation of mass defect.

Energy released fusion vs fission