Science A 52 Lecture 22 May 1, 2006 Nuclear Power. What is it? What are its problems and prospects?

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1 Science A 52 Lecture 22 May 1, 2006 Nuclear Power What is it? What are its problems and prospects? Lecture 22, 1

2 Nuclear Fission On of the most interesting accounts a fission and the discovery of the release of two or more neutrons during fission is on the WEB along with the voices of the major participants. You can almost feel the excitement in their voices as they described their reactions as experimental results came in. Let us listed to a few. Lecture 22, 2

3 History of Nuclear Fission Here is a summary from the above site. It was only in 1938 tha t many scientists began to focus their attention on uranium, the heaviest of known elements. Leading the pack were two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann. For over thirty years, Hahn had been working with another talented scientist, Lise Meitner. However, Meitner was of Jewish ancestry, and had to flee Nazi Germany. Otto Hahn recalls... Miss Meitner - Professor Meitner - had left our laboratory on July 1938 on account of these Hitler regime things and she had to go to Sweden. And Strassmann and myself, we had to work alone again and in the autumn of '38 we found strange results. Lecture 22, 3

4 Fission History - continued By 1938, Hahn and Strassmann were among a number of scientists who were trying to find out what products are formed if you shoot neutrons into heavy elements. They hoped to find elements even heavier than uranium. Such altogether new elements would surely have scientific interest, and perhaps even practical uses. But the substances Hahn and Strassmann produced looked like radium or barium, two known and almost chemically identical elements... HAHN: We made precipitations, Strassmann and myself, where we could be absolutely sure that there could be nothing else but either radium or barium. Lecture 22, 4

5 Now Meitner and Frisch -her nephew -understood what had happened in Hahn and Strassmann's experiment. The neutrons which they had shot into uranium had indeed been captured by the uranium nucleus. But then the nucleus changed shape, vibrated, and came apart entirely. This was not the usual slight transformation of a nucleus. The picture did however fit neatly with a recent theory of Niels Bohr's. He believed that a nucleus behaves like a liquid drop, and a liquid drop when hit hard enough, might stretch until it broke in two. Now, if that happened to a nucleus, a lot of energy would be released atom for atom, far more energy than any process seen till then. This is what Meitner and Frisch thought happened to the nucleus of uranium after it had captured a neutron Lecture 22, 5

6 A cartoon of U 235 neutron capture The target 92 U 235 nucleus is often unstable with the additional neutron,and in ~ seconds it splits into two fragments of nearly equal mass that are also unstable and in turn eject neutrons and γ rays. Not all captures of a neutron of 92 U 235 results in a fission. Some captures produce 92 U γ ray energy. Lecture 22, 6

7 Let us listen to comments on one who was there when the first reactor went critical. Lecture 22, 7

8 Energy release during fission To make the calculation of the energy released in fission we need to make a mass balance of all of the particles before and after fission - we will fine that the mass after fission is less that that before. The missing mass has been converted to energy. Some of the energy will be in the kinetic energy of the fission fragments, of the neutrons, and the gamma rays. In particle physics energy is generally expressed in electron volts. 1 ev = 1.6x10-19 J 1eV is a very small unit of energy,but a proton has a very small mass. Let us see how to use this unit of energy. Lecture 22, 8

9 Charge on the electron - The_apparatus Lecture 22, 9

10 Energy expressed in Electron Volts Lecture 22, 10

11 Lecture 22, 11

12 Fission Calculation of mass conversion to energy We can use Einstein s mass-energy relation: E = mc 2 For nuclear calculations it is most useful to express the energy in MeV million electron volts. An electron volt is the amount of energy given to an electron accelerating it through a voltage difference of one volt. We need the famous equation of Einstein cast in mass units used in particle physics. Lecture 22, 12

13 Fission Calculation of mass conversion to energy E(MeV) = m(amu) X 931 One atomic mass units (amu) is 1/16th the mass of O 16. Using this scale the mass of the proton and the neutron are nearly 1. Mass of hydrogen atom = amu Mass of the proton = amu Mass of the neutron = amu Lecture 22, 13

14 Fission Calculation of mass conversion to energy We are now prepared to make a calculation of the energy released in fission of 92 U 235. What we need to do is to determine the products of fission when this nucleus captures a neutron and fissions. The fission reaction is: U 235 +neutron 2 fission fragments + ν neutrons +β - and γ-rays + energy To proceed we need to know the fission fragments and then their weight in amu. The fission yield of fission fragments from U 235 are known. Lecture 22, 14

15 Glasstone, Samuel and Edlund,Milton; Nuclear Reactor Theory, van Nostrand, 1952, pg.67 Lecture 22, 15

16 Fission Calculation of mass conversion to energy The isotopic weight of U 235 = amu, and the neutron involved in fission has an amu = Therefore the reacting particles have a total weight of amu and a mass number of = 236 The most probable type of fission, nearly 6.4% of the total, gives products with mass numbers of 95 and 139, adding gives a mass number of two mass numbers less that the input, hence this fission must yield 2 neutrons. The fission products are stable nuclides with masses of and , respectively. Doing the mass balances Before = After Fission = mass converted to energy +( ) + 2x mass converted to energy = = amu Lecture 22, 16

17 Fission Calculation of mass conversion to energy Energy released in this fission would be 931x0.215 = 198 MeV The average values for all fissions of U 235 Glasstone, Samuel, Nuclear Reactor Engineering,van Nostrand, 1955; pg.22 Lecture 22, 17

18 Fission Neutrons per Capture Fission of 92 U 235 leads to the possibility of a chain reaction because an average of 2.5 neutrons are released in each fission of 92 U 235. Not every time a U 235 atom captures a neutron does fission occur, sometimes just this reaction occurs: U neutron U 236 +γ-rays Making an allowance for non-fission capture, there are only 2.1 neutrons released for each time a neutron is captured in U 235 Lecture 22, 18

19 Heat released by 1 pound of Fissionable Material is 3.6 x BTU or fission of 1 gram of material gives roughly 1 Mw day of power Lecture 22, 19

20 Natural Uranium Isotopic Composition of Natural Uranium Mass number 234 % Lecture 22, 20

21 Making a Nuclear Reactor It is impossible to make a nuclear power reactor using natural uranium since the concentration of U 235 is so low. Only 2.1 neutron are available for the chain reaction. Fission neutrons are released with high KE, and fission occurs most easily with thermal neutrons - low neutron absorbing material is needed to slow the neutrons down without capture. Steel tubes and the like easily absorb thermal neutrons and cannot be used in a reactor using natural U. The first reactors built used natural U and were very large - very pure graphite moderators. Now slightly enriched U is used in power reactors. Lecture 22, 21

22 Making a Nuclear Reactor The first reactors built at Oak Ridge and Hanford were not for power but to create Plutonium 239 a two step decay product from neutron capture in U 238. Pu 239 can be used for bomb making and is separated from U and fission products chemically. About 5% of the power of the reactor is in the decay of the fission products (FP). This means that when the reactor is shut down, heat continues to be released by the FP and cooling must be provided. Disposal of the FP and the Pu produced remains a serious problem. Lecture 22, 22

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