ATOMIC POWER AD INFINATUM

Eric writes...

Jim: Now how big would the explosion be if only 1 unstable atom was split?

Let's keep things simple and look at the reaction from the fission in Uranium-235.

When we take an atom of Uranium-235 and shoot a neutron into it's nucleus, it will become U-236, which is a very unstable atom. That atom will proceed to decay into an atom of barium-141 (Ba-141), an atom of krypton-92 (Kr-92) and three neutrons.





The resulting particles and atoms all have kinetic energy. This energy comes from converting a little of the mass of the original atom into energy and can be measured using E = mc2. When this is done, the amount of energy typically released in the case of U-235 is around 200MeV (0.00,000,000,003,204 joules). That, it seems, is a very tiny amount of energy. However, it is about a million times more energy than is released by the burning of one molecule of gasoline in a car's engine. Put another way, if you currently use a tank of gas each week but could use the energy provided by one tank of uranium-235 fission instead, you wouldn't need to refill your car for over 19,000 years!

To put this into even better perspective, it would be about the same amount of energy that would be created by spontaneous human combustion due to burping, farting and hiccuping all at the same time.