A student wishes to compare the energy released in nuclear fission with that obtained from burning a common chemical fuel.
Answer the following questions related to this comparison:
(i) Define the term Q-value for a nuclear reaction.
(ii) State two reasons why the energy liberated per nucleon in a typical fission reaction is several orders of magnitude larger than that obtained per molecule in a chemical combustion process.
(iii) Uranium-235 releases about 200MeV of energy per fission, whereas the combustion of carbon releases about 4×107J per kilogram. Show, by suitable calculations, that the energy density of uranium-235 is many million times that of carbon.