[Physics] In nuclear fission, how does the strong force get dominated by the electrostatic repulsive force

nuclear-physics

In nuclear fission, by bombarding the heavy nucleus with smaller nuclei will result in the production of energy, nuclei. That means the number of neutrons in the heavy nucleus increases. But addition of neutrons increases the strong force. Then how does the nucleus get torn apart by repulsion of the positive charge, when the strong force will be stronger?

Best Answer

The U-235 nucleus is unstable with respect to fission into Barium-141 and Krypton-92. You can see this by looking at the graph of binding energy per nucleon:

Binding energy

(this graph is all over the Internet - I got it from the question Why only light nuclei are able to undergo nuclear fusion not heavy nuclei?)

I've marked the U-235 nucleus and it's two fission products by red circles, and it's obvious from the graph that fission increases the binding energy per nucleus so it should happen spontaneously. The reasin it doesn't happen is because there is a large energy barrier to the fission process. Splitting a U-235 nucleus in two requires a wholesale rearrangement of the nucleons and that costs energy. The final state will have a lower energy but the intermediate states have a higher energy and present a barrier.

It's important to note that the neutron doesn't produce a more fissile nucleus. In fact absorption of a nucleus produces U-236 and U-236 is not fissile. What the neutron does is provide a pathway for the U-235 nucleus to get round the energy barrier and allow the fission to occur. This isn't simply a matter of adding some energy since even low energy thermal neutrons will cause fission. Luc refers to an energy of 10MeV but neutrons with just a few eV of energy will cause fission and these can't possibly be providing enough energy to get over the barrier.

Exactly what goes on I don't know, but I would guess that the nucleus rearranges when an extra neutron is added, and in that process the nucleus passes through a configuration where the energy barrier is much reduced.

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