Nuclear energy
Nuclear energy is released during the splitting or fusing of atomic nuclei. The energy of any system, whether physical, chemical, or nuclear, is manifested by its ability to do work or to release heat or radiation. The total energy in a system is always conserved, but it can be transferred to another system or changed in form.
Until about 1800 the principal fuel was wood, its energy derived from solar energy stored in plants during their lifetimes. Since the Industrial Revolution, people have depended on fossil fuels-coal and petroleum-also derived from stored solar energy. When a fossil fuel such as coal is burned, atoms of hydrogen and carbon in the coal combine with oxygen atoms in air; water and carbon dioxide are produced and heat is released, equivalent to about 1.6 kilowatt-hours per kilogram or about 10 electron volts (eV) per atom of carbon. This amount of energy is typical of chemical reactions resulting from changes in the electronic structure of the atoms. A part of the energy released as heat keeps the adjacent fuel hot enough to keep the reaction going.
The Atom.
The atom consists of a small, massive, positively charged core (nucleus) surrounded by electrons. The nucleus, containing most of the mass of the atom, is itself composed of neutrons and protons bound together by very strong nuclear forces, much greater than the electrical forces that bind the electrons to the nucleus. The mass number A of a nucleus is the number of nucleons, or neutrons and protons, it contains; the atomic number Z is the number of positively charged protons.
The binding energy of a nucleus is a measure of how tightly its neutrons and protons are held together by the nuclear forces. The binding energy per nucleon, the energy required to remove one neutron or proton from a nucleus, is a function of the mass number A. The curve of binding energy implies that if two light nuclei near the left end of the curve coalesce to form a heavier nucleus, or if a heavy nucleus at the far right splits into two lighter ones, more tightly bound nuclei result, and energy will be released.
Nuclear Energy from Fission.
The two key characteristics of nuclear fission important for the practical release of nuclear energy are both evident in equation. First, the energy per fission is very large. In practical units, the fission of 1 kg of uranium-235 releases 18.7 million kilowatt-hours as heat. Second, the fission process initiated by the absorption of one neutron in uranium-235 releases about 2.5 neutrons, on the average, from the split nuclei. The neutrons released in this manner quickly cause the fission of two more atoms, thereby releasing four or more additional neutrons and initiating a self-sustaining series of nuclear fissions, or a chain reaction, which results in continuous release of nuclear energy.
Naturally occurring uranium contains only 0.71 percent uranium-235; the remainder is the non-fissile isotope uranium-238. A mass of natural uranium by itself, no matter how large, cannot sustain a chain reaction because only the uranium-235 is easily fissionable. The probability that a fission neutron with an initial energy of about 1 MeV will induce fission is rather low, but can be increased by a factor of hundreds when the neutron is slowed down through a series of elastic collisions with light nuclei such as hydrogen, deuterium, or carbon. This fact is the basis for the design of practical energy-producing fission reactors.
In December 1942 at the University of Chicago, the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi succeeded in producing the first nuclear chain reaction. This was done with an arrangement of natural uranium lumps distributed within a large stack of pure graphite, a form of carbon. In Fermi's "pile," or nuclear reactor, the graphite moderator served to slow the neutrons.
Nuclear Power Reactors.
The first large-scale nuclear reactors were built in 1944 at Hanford, Washington, for the production of nuclear weapons material. The fuel was natural uranium metal; the moderator, graphite. Plutonium was produced in these plants by neutron absorption in uranium-238; the power produced was not used.