What happens when a nuclear reaction takes place?

Question

Is it like a Nuclear bomb? or just what?

Answer 1

There are 2 types of nuclear reactions.
Fission: a particle such as a neutron is shot at a large atom nucleus and it splits. This releases a great deal of energy and leaves extra neutrons to hit more nuclei and much radioactive waste products. This is the uranium or plutonium bomb like was used in Nagasaki and Hiroshima. (atomic bomb)
It is also the reaction done in nuclear reactors to produce heat to generate electricity. In an enclosed reactor, it is a safe process and the chain reaction is controlled. The problem is the waste products.
Fusion: In fusion 2 smaller nuclei are shot at each other and sometimes they fuse.There is a great deal of heat released. There is no left over radioactive waste.
This is the hydrogen bomb(thermonuclear). We are working on it to harness it for other use.
Einsteins law says E=mc^2
A large amount of energy =a small amount of mass x the speed of light squared.
Law of conservation of matter says you can not create or destroy matter. With a nuclear reaction you transform a small amount of matter into energy.

Answer 2

kind of depends on the type of nuclear reaction.

Since we can only artificially create self sustaining fission reactions I will assume this is the type you are referring to. what happens is a single atom of fissionable material splits by hitting it with a neutron, which destabilizes the atom and it breaks apart releasing a lot of energy and several more neutrons which can cause the same reaction again and again it's an exponential progression. Very quickly the amount of energy increases and boom.

In a nuclear reactor they introduce control rods which absorb some of the neutrons keeping the reaction from accelerating out of control until an explosion results the energy release in the form of heat is harnessed and used to generate steam to perform mechanical work, like driving a turbine for electricity.

Of course this a a very basic explanation but I though it best to keep in relatively simple.

Answer 3

It relies upon on the variety of nuclear weapon. Early ones relied on U235, in that style of reaction a quickly neutron struck a Uranium atom, ensuing in the splitting (fissioning) of the atom's nucleus. This split releases, on favourite, one hundred and eighty MeV (million electron volts, a unit of potential), and 2.5 quickly neutrons, a number of which will pass on to strike more beneficial Uranium nuclei, ensuing in a series reaction. Plutonium depending guns use Pu239, which releases 2 hundred MeV and 2.9 neutrons in line with fission, giving more beneficial performance for the chain reaction. Fusion bombs, also wide-spread as hydrogen bombs, use potential derived from 2 atoms fusing at the same time to type a unmarried, new atom. maximum use "heavy hydrogen" (deuterium and tritium) and fuse them into Helium, alongside with the launch of of about 17 MeV (D-T reaction). by the fashion, that is comparable to the reaction that takes position in the sunlight. even as a lot less potential is released in line with reaction, many more beneficial reactions can take position throughout a fusion chain reaction, permitting for a lengthy way more beneficial potential yields than with a fission warhead. The capture is that fusion takes a large quantity of warm temperature and stress to commence. maximum present day warheads are 2 level guns that use a smaller fission gadget to provide the necessary temperature and stress to keep up a more beneficial efficient fusion gadget. maximum of those use a Deuterium - Lithium 6 fusion reaction, in which the Lithium is switched over into Helium and Tritium in a procedure that is purely too lengthy to get into right here. So I actual have provided some hyperlinks below.

Answer 4

Nuclear particles rearrange themselves and give off energy.

A bomb is one example, the Sun is another. And they can be tiny and almost unnoticeable, too.

Answer 5

Protons and neutrons rearrange themselves in nuclei. Seldom you have a bomb. But you do have energies 1 000 to 1 000 000 bigger than in a chemical reaction.