Nuclear fission

Nuclear fission is a reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei. The fission process often produces neutrons and gamma rays, and releases a very large amount of energy even by the energetic standards of radioactive decay. The free energy released by the fission of one uranium-235 atom is about 100 million times the energy released by burning one carbon atom in air to produce CO2. Nuclear fission was discovered by chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann and physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Robert Frisch. Hahn and Strassmann proved that a fission reaction had taken place on 19 December 1938, and Meitner and her nephew Frisch explained it theoretically in January 1939. Frisch named the process "fission" by analogy with biological fission of living cells. In their second publication on nuclear fission in February 1939, Hahn and Strassmann predicted the existence and liberation of additional neutrons during the fission process, opening up the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction by assembling a critical mass of fissile material. For heavy nuclides, it is an exothermic reaction which releases 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, for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be greater than that of the starting element. The fission barrier must also be overcome. Fissionable nuclides primarily split in interactions with fast neutrons, while fissile nuclides easily split in interactions with "slow" i.e. thermal neutrons, usually originating from moderation of fast neutrons. The ability of three isotopes (U-233, U-235, and Pu-239) to sustain a nuclear chain reaction allows nuclear power plants to operate in a delayed critical state for a controllable energy release, and also...