Mod-01 Lec- 34 Nuclear fission of uranium

So, we talked about fission reactions and we discussed how this liquid drop model can explain the main features of fission reaction. All nuclei with mass number greater than 100 or so energetically favour to split into roughly equal parts. But then the barrier, the this potential energy barrier which is there, that stops many of them from fissioning.

That barrier or the potential energy curve, it is something of this sort, this part is that coulomb part 1 by r part, Z 1 Z 2 e square by 4 pi epsilon r part. This side is your deformation parameter witch later on will become just the separation between the two fragments and this side is the potential energy and this is the energy which is released.

When the fission thus take place, then this is the energy because after the fragments are separated the energy is here that we have taken as 0. And, this is that 0 deformation that means initial nucleus energy. So, this is that energy released that we calculate in our using masses and this is the barrier activation energy.

So, for uranium 236 or uranium 239 or plutonium which are some potential elements, potential nuclei which can go through or surmount this kind of barrier, there they become the important fission reactions. Now, this fission can be induced by certain reactions as we discussed and the most important one is neutron induced fission reaction.

That is the how this whole field was started as we discussed last time, that historically the fission was discovered in some kind of experiment in which neutron was bombarded on natural uranium and then barium another chemical elements were found. So, this is neutron induced fission is one of the very important fission reactions which are used