This is the beginning of the ‘Basic Nuclear Physics’ workshop. The workshop is not designed to make you a nuclear physicist or help you with your physics GCSE. However, it should give you a basic working model of what matter is and how radioactivity arises as well as what nuclear fission and fusion are.
There are plenty of resources available on the internet. Wikipedia is a good place to start if you want to find and I have put a link to the relevant wikipages at the end of each section. The main aim of this workshop is enable to make sense of these resources by giving you an overview of the subject.
This is not a rant against nuclear power and I concentrate mainly on the physics associated with current nuclear power plants – i.e. not subcritical reactors etc. Neither have I gone into the risks associated with radioactivity since I will need to talk about risk and probability before going into this subject.
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Introduction
Before we start on the subject of nuclear physics there are a few fundamentals that we have to understand: Energy Without energy nothing would happen. […]
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The Structure Of Matter
Before we go any further we have to understand what makes up the matter around us – the computer in front of me, the air […]
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What Is Radiation
Radiation is just the term for something that can travel through empty space. It could be a particle or a wave. There are many different […]
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Proton to Neutron Ratios and the Stability of Nuclei – Beta Radiation
Adding more neutrons to the nucleus does not change the chemical properties of the atom. A hydrogen atom with one or even two neutrons has […]
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Atomic Mass and Stability – Alpha Decay
As atomic mass increases the stability of the nucleus increases but after a while they become too heavy and the stability decreases. The graph above […]
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Very Heavy Atoms – Fission
Spontaneous Fission For heavy elements (greater than mass 232) the nucleus can split into two smaller elements and a few spare neutrons. This is called […]
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Neutron Capture
Before we talk any further about fission it is useful to have a look at what other things can happen to the neutrons. One thing […]
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Moderation
We have discussed fission and neutron capture. Now we are going to talk about how we can increase the likelihood that fission or neutron capture […]
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Decay Chains
When an atom undergoes radioactive decay the isotope produced is not necessarily stable itself. If it is not then that can undergo radioactive decay. This […]
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Gamma Radiation
When an atom undergoes alpha or beta decay it can leave the nucleus in a high energy state. The atom goes to a lower energy […]
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The Rate of Decay
The rate at which these unstable isotopes undergo decay varies greatly between the different isotopes. The process is random for each atom. However there is […]
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About Uranium
It would be useful at this point to talk a bit more about Uranium and its isotopes. Uranium naturally occurs as two isotopes details of […]
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Nuclear Fusion
Let us look at the graph for the energy of various nuclei. Remember tht this graph is upside down and so Iron (Fe) has the […]
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Spent Fuel – Basic Notes
These are just a few basic notes about spent fuel waste from nuclear power stations. It assumes a basic understanding of the nuclear fission process […]
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Implications of High Burnup Fuel – Basic Notes
An important issue around nuclear new build is the amount and what happens to the spent fuel. The proposed EPR reactors at Sizewell and Hinkley […]
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Radioactivity of U-238
This is just an example of how to calculate the radioactivity of an isotope from its halflife. Uranium 238 has a halflife of 4.468×109 years […]
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Nuclear Power – Converting Mass Into Energy?
One of the things that most people know about nuclear power is that it about turning mass into energy – E= mc2. Although this is […]
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