Nuclear Fission Vs Nuclear Fusion

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Nuclear Fission/Fusion
There is a lot of information to gather and learn while talking about/discussing nuclear fusion and nuclear fission. Nuclear fission can be defined as a nuclear reaction in which a heavy nucleus splits spontaneously or on impact with another particle, with the release of energy. Nuclear fusion can be defined as a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei of low atomic number fuse to form a heavier nucleus with the release of energy.
Nuclear fission takes place when a large, somewhat unstable isotope is bombarded by high-speed particles, usually neutrons. These neutrons are then sped up or accelerated and then slammed into the unstable isotope, causing it to fission, or break into smaller particles. An example of nuclear fission is when nuclear fission produces electricity inside nuclear reactors and is used to heat up the water to power the reactor. A pioneer in researching and discovering fission is Otto Hahn …show more content…

It is a nuclear process, where energy is produced by smashing together light atoms. It is the opposite reaction to fission, where heavy isotopes are split apart. How fusion works is deuterium and tritium, both of the heavy isotopes of hydrogen, fuse together, their component parts are recombined into a helium atom and a fast neutron. As the two heavy isotopes are reassembled into a helium atom, you have ‘extra’ mass leftover which is converted into the kinetic energy of the neutron, according to Einstein’s formula: E=mc2. A pioneer who discovered nuclear fusion is a scientist by the name of Hans Bethe, discovering it in the 1930’s. Beginning in the 1940’s researchers began to seek out or find new ways to initiate and control fusion reactions to produce useful energy on Earth. Researchers later began work on a device called the tokamak. The tokamak is defined as a toroidal (resembling a torus) apparatus for producing controlled fusion reactions in hot

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