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In nuclear physics and nuclear chemistry, a nuclear reaction is a process in which two nuclei, or a nucleus and an external subatomic particle, collide to produce one or more new nuclides. Thus, a nuclear reaction must cause a transformation of at least one nuclide to another.
Stars fuse light elements to heavier ones in their cores, giving off energy in the process known as stellar nucleosynthesis. Nuclear fusion reactions create many of the lighter elements, up to and including iron and nickel in the most massive stars. Products of stellar nucleosynthesis remain trapped in stellar cores and remnants except if ...
In physical cosmology, Big Bang nucleosynthesis (also known as primordial nucleosynthesis, and abbreviated as BBN) [1] is the production of nuclei other than those of the lightest isotope of hydrogen (hydrogen-1, 1 H, having a single proton as a nucleus) during the early phases of the universe.
Transmutation of transuranium elements (i.e. actinides minus actinium to uranium) such as the isotopes of plutonium (about 1wt% in the light water reactors' used nuclear fuel or the minor actinides (MAs, i.e. neptunium, americium, and curium), about 0.1wt% each in light water reactors' used nuclear fuel) has the potential to help solve some ...
Nuclear fission allows for decay of radioactive elements and isotopes, although it is often mediated by the weak interaction. Artificially, the energy associated with the nuclear force is partially released in nuclear power and nuclear weapons, both in uranium or plutonium-based fission weapons and in fusion weapons like the hydrogen bomb. [3] [4]
Chain reactions were known in chemistry before physics, and in fact many familiar processes like fires and chemical explosions are chemical chain reactions. The fission or "nuclear" chain-reaction, using fission-produced neutrons, is the source of energy for nuclear power plants and fission-type nuclear bombs, such as those detonated in ...
Neutron radiation is a form of ionizing radiation that presents as free neutrons.Typical phenomena are nuclear fission or nuclear fusion causing the release of free neutrons, which then react with nuclei of other atoms to form new nuclides—which, in turn, may trigger further neutron radiation.
A combination of radiochemistry and radiation chemistry is used to study nuclear reactions such as fission and fusion. Some early evidence for nuclear fission was the formation of a short-lived radioisotope of barium which was isolated from neutron irradiated uranium ( 139 Ba, with a half-life of 83 minutes and 140 Ba, with a half-life of 12.8 ...