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Atomic Structure

Nuclear fission and nuclear fusion

  • 3 things to know
  • Paper 1

Overview

Nuclear fission and the elements commonly used, spontaneous fission and absorbing a neutron to trigger it, the products and energy released and how that energy is used in a power station, chain reactions controlled in a reactor and uncontrolled in a nuclear weapon, nuclear fusion and its mass converted to energy, and how fusion and fission differ.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started
Key term

Describe in words how a chain reaction builds up from a single fission.

Key term

Name two elements whose nuclei are commonly used to produce fission.

Key term

What is produced when a nucleus undergoes fission?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

  1. 1

    What is nuclear fission?

    Model answer

    It is the splitting of a large and unstable nucleus into smaller nuclei.

  2. 2

    Name two elements whose nuclei are commonly used to produce fission.

    Model answer

    Uranium and plutonium.

  3. 3

    How common is spontaneous fission?

    Model answer

    It is rare.

  4. 4

    What must usually happen to an unstable nucleus before it will undergo fission?

    Model answer

    It must first absorb a neutron.

  5. 5

    What is produced when a nucleus undergoes fission?

    Model answer

    Two smaller nuclei that are roughly equal in size, two or three neutrons, and gamma rays.

  6. 6

    How many neutrons are typically released by a single fission?

    Model answer

    Two or three neutrons.

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