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Dr Emily Nurse
2017
2 Fission
2.1 Basics
For a nucleon number larger than 100 it can be energetically favourable for massive nuclei to split into lighter
daughter nuclei, with the extra energy carried o↵ as kinetic energy of the fission products. An example is:
235
92
U ! 92
37
Rb + 140
55
Cs + 3n + X MeV, (1)
although it should be noted that this is not the only fission process that 235 92
U undergoes. The decay
products of fission will themselves decay, for example via -decay and the resulting nuclei will often give o↵
additional neutrons. These neutrons are known as delayed neutrons as they will be released much later than
the prompt neutrons of Equation 1. We will see in Section 2.4 that these delayed neutrons are vital for the
safe running of nuclear fission reactors.
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PHAS3224: Nuclear and Particle Physics 2017
Let us breakdown the energy released using the Semi-Empirical Mass Formula (SEMF). The di↵erence in
binding energies between the initial and final states is given by the di↵erence in energies for each correction
term of the SEMF.1 We will now go through each correction term in turn (although we ignore the very small
pairing term):
1. Volume term: av (AU ARb ACs ) = 46.7 MeV
⇣ ⌘
2/3 2/3 2/3
2. Surface term: +as AU ARb ACs = 160 MeV
✓ ◆
2 2 2
ZU ZRb ZCs
3. Coulomb term: +ac 1/3 1/3 1/3 = +339 MeV
AU ARb ACs
⇣ ⌘
(ZU AU /2)2 (ZRb ARb /2)2 (ZCs ACs /2)2
4. Asymmetry term: +aa AU ARb ACs = +26.1 MeV
where we have used av = 15.56, as = 17.23, ac = 0.697 and aa = 93.14. So the total di↵erence in energy
released at this stage is 158 MeV. In fact the daughter nuclei also release some energy, due to the subsequent
decays discussed above, so the total energy released is actually ⇡ 200 MeV per fission.
1 The total number of nucleons is the same before and after the decay, so it is only the correction terms we need to consider.
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It can be seen that the energy increases as the nucleus deforms then falls o↵ again as it splits (note also the
dashed line, which shows the energy decreasing through the process in the case of the very heavy unstable
2
2as
nuclei with ZA ac ). The di↵erence in the energies for the spherical nucleus and the maximum of the
curve is known as the activation energy (or fission barrier), which is required in order to induce fission.
Spontaneous fission can occur in this case via a quantum mechanical tunnelling through the barrier, however
the probability is extremely small. For example for 238 92
U the transition rate for spontaneous fission is
3 ⇥ 10 24 s 1 compared to about 5 ⇥ 10 18 s 1 for ↵ decay.
Another possibility is to supply the energy needed to overcome the barrier. This is known as induced
fission and is achieved by supplying a flow of neutrons. Since neutrons are electrically neutral they can
approach the nuclei and be attracted by the strong nuclear force. For heavy nuclei, such as uranium, the
activation energy is only about 6 MeV. This energy can be supplied with a flow of low energy neutrons that
induce neutron capture reactions. They push the nucleus into an excited state above the fission barrier and
it then splits up. When a nucleus absorbs a neutron some energy is released due to the binding energy of
that neutron, if this energy is as large as the activation energy then fission can be induced. The binding
energy of the last added neutron is not the same as the average binding energy per nucleon (this is explained
by the shell model). For uranium it is a little less, and it depends on how adding another neutron a↵ects the
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(a) (b)
Figure 3: Nucleus–neutron cross sections versus the neutron kinetic energy for (a) uranium-235 and (b)
uranium-238.
(nq 1)t
giving ln [N (t)] ln [N (0)] = tp leading to:
This leads to three possible scenarios, depending on the exact value of nq:
1. For nq < 1, N (t) decreases exponentially, the process is said to be subcritical and the reactions will
soon die out.
2. For nq = 1, N (t) remains constant, the process is said to be critical and the conditions are right for a
sustained, controlled reaction as is required in a nuclear power plant.
3. For nq > 1, N (t) increases exponentially and the process is said to be supercritical. The energy will
grow very rapidly, leading to an explosion, exactly what is needed in a nuclear fission bomb.
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the distance travelled is 20 cm. However, the neutron will not travel in a stright line because an average of
6 collisions is expected before inducing fission, and if we assume that the direction of the neutron changes
randomly after each collision, the average distance travelled is actaully 7 cm. However, not all these neutrons
will induce fission, as some will escape the material and some will be captured in nuclei without inducing
fission. This means that a larger sphere is required and it turns out that a radius of 9 cm, corresponding to
a critical mass of 50 kg, is required to ensure a supercritical reaction. A bomb is usually made by starting
with a subcritical mass of material then using a mechanism to increase its size when the bomb is to go o↵.
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that small variations in q cannot lead to an unstable system. However (nprompt + ndelayed ) q is kept very close
to 1, and it is the time scale of the delayed neutrons (⇡ 13 seconds) that dictate the growth of the neutron
flux in the event of a deviation from criticality. These timescales are manageable for mechanical control of
the reactor via the insertion of neutron absorbing control rods.
3 Fusion
3.1 Basics
Fusion is the opposite process to fission, where two very light nuclei fuse to form a heavier nucleus, releasing
energy due to the fact that the (negative) binding energy per nucleon is larger for the fused nucleus. The
energy released in fusion is less than that in fission, but the light nuclei are much more abundant in nature,
making it an attractive potential for power generation.
2
where we have used ↵ = 4⇡✏e0 h̄c = 137
1
and h̄c = 0.197 GeV fm (see the “Basic Ideas in Particle Physics”
0 0
notes). For simplicity we set A ⇡ A ⇡ 2Z ⇡ 2Z , then VC ⇡ 0.15A5/3 MeV and for A ⇡ 8, VC ⇡ 4.8 MeV.
This would be the amount of energy required to overcome the Coulomb barrier, and would be smaller for
lighter nuclei.
In order to overcome this barrier a confined mixture of nuclei can be heated enough that the kinetic
energy supplies the required energy. Using the relationship between particle energy and temperature in a
medium, E = kB T , with Boltzmann’s constant kB = 8.6 ⇥ 10 5 eV K 1 , we obtain T ⇡ 5.610 K for a particle
energy of 4.8 MeV. This is a very high temperature! Actually, fusion will occur at lower temperatures than
this for two reasons:
1. Quantum tunnelling: similar to ↵-decay, discussed in the “Nuclear Phenomenology” module, the prob-
G
ability to penetrate an
penergy barrier via quantum tunnelling is e , where G is the energy dependent
Gamow factor: G = EG /E, where EG increases as the barrier increases and E is the energy of the
particles.
2. A collection of nuclei with a given mean energy will have a Maxwellian distribution of energies about
the mean and the distribution of the energies will have the form e E/kB T .
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So the e↵ect from quantum mechanical tunnelling increases with energy and that from the energy distribution
of the particles decreases with energies. When these two e↵ects are combined we end up with a reaction rate
that peaks at a certain energy and there is a small range of energies within which fusion takes place at a
non-negligible rate (see the lecture slides for a distribution of the reaction rate versus energy).
4 1
1
H ! 42 He + 2e+ + 2⌫e + 2 + 24.68 MeV.
The produced positrons will annhilate with electrons in the plasma providing an extra 1.02 MeV of energy
per positron so the total energy is 26.72 MeV. However, each neutrino will carry o↵ an average of 0.26 MeV of
energy, which will be lost in space. The rest of the energy is transported to the surface of the sun and emitted
as photons or ejected high-energy particles. The total energy radidated from the sun from the proton–proton
chain is therefore 6.55 MeV per proton. The proton–proton chain is the dominate fusion process powering
the sun, but other processes involving the fusion of heavier nuclei also occur producing additional energy and
changing the composition of elements in the sun to include the heavier elements.
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has the advantage of having a larger cross section than deuterium–deuterium fusion. In all these reactions the
energy produced comes from the di↵erence in binding energies before and after the reaction. The problem
with tritium–deuterium fusion is the low abundance of natural tritium, which has a half-life of only 17.7
years. By contrast deuterium is found in huge quantities in sea water.
Nonetheless, due to its advantages, tritium–deuterium fusion is considered as a candidate for fusion reac-
tors. The cross section for this process is reasonable when the nuclei have an energy of 20 keV, corresponding
2⇥104
to a temperature of T = kEB = 8.6⇥10 5 = 2 ⇥ 10
8
K. The main problem with practical fusion is how to
contain plasmas at such high temperatures. Any material container would vaporize at these temperatures.
The solution is to contain the plasma using either:
1. magnetic confinement where the charged particles in the plasma follow a helix path as they curve
round a magnetic field with a direction that points in a circle around a donut shape or
2. intertial confinement where pulsed lasers bombard small pellets of a tritium–deuterium mixture in
many directions at the same time at very high energies.
Fusion research aims to try and make the ratio of energy output to energy input (required to reach such high
temperatures) greater than one so that fusion is feasible for a source of power. This is known as the Lawson
criteria. This ratio is larger for longer confinement times and higher particle densities. A value greater than
one has not yet been reached but research is still ongoing.