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Nuclear fusion–fission hybrid (hybrid nuclear power) is a proposed means of generating power by use of a combination of nuclear fusion and fission processes. The concept dates to the 1950s, and was briefly advocated by Hans Bethe during the 1970s, but largely remained unexplored until a revival of interest in 2009, due to the delays in the ...
Fission vs. fusion. Nuclear fission is the opposite of nuclear fusion in that the former unleashes energy by splitting heavy atoms apart. While fission and fusion both produce clean energy in ...
Like nuclear fusion, for fission to produce energy, the total binding energy of the resulting elements must be greater than that of the starting element. Fission is a form of nuclear transmutation because the resulting fragments (or daughter atoms) are not the same element as the original parent atom.
The fusion layer wrapped around the fission core could only moderately multiply the fission energy (modern Teller–Ulam designs can multiply it 30-fold). Additionally, the whole fusion stage had to be imploded by conventional explosives, along with the fission core, substantially increasing the amount of chemical explosives needed.
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Conventional fission power reactors also cause artificial transmutation, not from the power of the machine, but by exposing elements to neutrons produced by fission from an artificially produced nuclear chain reaction. For instance, when a uranium atom is bombarded with slow neutrons, fission takes place.
This fission occurs when atomic nuclei grab free neutrons and form heavy, but unstable, elements. When it comes to nuclear energy , human engineering and the rest of the universe are a bit at odds.
The best-known classes of exothermic nuclear transmutations are nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Nuclear energy may be released by fission, when heavy atomic nuclei (like uranium and plutonium) are broken apart into lighter nuclei. The energy from fission is used to generate electric power in hundreds of locations worldwide.