How Is Energy Released During Nuclear Fusion
Each proton is pushing every other proton with about 20 n of force about the force of a hand resting on a person s lap.
How is energy released during nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is a reaction in which two or more atomic nuclei are combined to form one or more different atomic nuclei and subatomic particles neutrons or protons. While both fission and fusion release energy the process and amount is very different. If the cores to merge have a lower mass than iron energy is released. Hydrogen is the simplest of all atoms.
This is a point we will return to later but for now we will concentrate on the simplest form of nuclear fusion that of hydrogen. To illustrate suppose two nuclei labeled x and a react to form two other nuclei y and b denoted x a y b. The energy itself comes from some of the mass deteriorating into photons. Released in fusion reactions.
Additional neutrons are also released that can initiate a chain reaction. The energy released by fission in these reactors heats water into steam. Fission exploits the instability of nuclei of heavy elements like uranium which can be split using neutrons producing fragments with a lower total mass. Energy is released in a nuclear reaction if the total mass of the resultant particles is less than the mass of the initial reactants.
The difference in mass between the reactants and products is manifested as either the release or absorption of energy. Fusion can occur with many different kinds of atom. In fact over a third of all the different kinds of atoms when fused release energy. Uranium and plutonium are most commonly used for fission reactions in nuclear power reactors because they are easy to initiate and control.
When fusion occurs in the sun its due to quantum tunneling causing hydrogen atoms to bind forming helium. Energy is released because two hydrogen atoms have more energy then one helium atom and when they bind the excess is released into space. The 2 hydrogen atoms have more energy then one helium atom. So fusion occurs when 2 hydrogen atoms fuse into helium.
When each atom splits a tremendous amount of energy is released. The enormous energy that s released from this splitting comes from how hard the protons are repelling each other with the coulomb force barely held together by the strong force. The binding energy of the nucleus is a measure of the efficiency with which its constituent nucleons are bound together. This process is called nuclear fusion.
The particles a and b are often nucleons either protons or neutrons but in general can be any nuclei. This nuclear fusion reaction releases or absorbs a lot of energy in the form of gamma rays and kinetic energy of the emitted particles this large amount of energy transforms matter to a plasma state. This difference in mass arises due to the difference in atomic binding energy between the atomic nuclei before and after the reaction. Fusion reactions between light elements like fission reactions that split heavy elements release energy because of a key feature of nuclear matter called the binding energy which can be released through fusion or fission.
When the helium forms the excess binding is released. Nuclear fission involves splitting atomic nuclei and is the process used in nuclear power stations.