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History Of Nuclear Power
This is a history of nuclear power as realized through the first artificial nuclear fission, fission of atoms that would lead to the Manhattan Project and, eventually, to using nuclear fission to generate Electricity generation, electricity. Origins In 1932, physicists John Cockcroft, Ernest Walton, and Ernest Rutherford discovered that when lithium atoms were "split" by protons from a proton accelerator, immense amounts of energy were released in accordance with the principle of mass–energy equivalence. However, they and other nuclear physics pioneers Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein believed harnessing the power of the atom for practical purposes anytime in the near future was unlikely. The same year, Rutherford's doctoral student James Chadwick Discovery of the neutron, discovered the neutron. Experiments bombarding materials with neutrons led Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie to discover induced radioactivity in 1934, which allowed the creation o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Power
Nuclear power is the use of nuclear reactions to produce electricity. Nuclear power can be obtained from nuclear fission, nuclear decay and nuclear fusion reactions. Presently, the vast majority of electricity from nuclear power is produced by nuclear ''fission'' of uranium and plutonium in nuclear power plants. Nuclear ''decay'' processes are used in niche applications such as radioisotope thermoelectric generators in some space probes such as ''Voyager 2''. Reactors producing controlled fusion power, ''fusion'' power have been operated since 1958 but have yet to generate net power and are not expected to be commercially available in the near future. The first nuclear power plant was built in the 1950s. The global installed nuclear capacity grew to 100GW in the late 1970s, and then expanded during the 1980s, reaching 300GW by 1990. The 1979 Three Mile Island accident in the United States and the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Soviet Union resulted in increased regulation and p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stanford University
Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth List of governors of California, governor of and then-incumbent List of United States senators from California, United States senator representing California) and his wife, Jane Stanford, Jane, in memory of their only child, Leland Stanford Jr., Leland Jr. The university admitted its first students in 1891, opening as a Mixed-sex education, coeducational and non-denominational institution. It struggled financially after Leland died in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, university Provost (education), provost Frederick Terman inspired an entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial culture to build a self-sufficient local industry (later Silicon Valley). In 1951, Stanfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Chain Reaction
In nuclear physics, a nuclear chain reaction occurs when one single nuclear reaction causes an average of one or more subsequent nuclear reactions, thus leading to the possibility of a self-propagating series or "positive feedback loop" of these reactions. The specific nuclear reaction may be the fission of heavy isotopes (e.g., uranium-235, 235U). A nuclear chain reaction releases several million times more energy per reaction than any chemical reaction. History Chemical chain reactions were first proposed by German chemist Max Bodenstein in 1913, and were reasonably well understood before nuclear chain reactions were proposed. It was understood that chemical chain reactions were responsible for exponentially increasing rates in reactions, such as produced in chemical explosions. The concept of a nuclear chain reaction was reportedly first hypothesized by Hungarian scientist Leó Szilárd on September 12, 1933. Szilárd that morning had been reading in a London paper of an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leó Szilárd
Leo Szilard (; ; born Leó Spitz; February 11, 1898 – May 30, 1964) was a Hungarian-born physicist, biologist and inventor who made numerous important discoveries in nuclear physics and the biological sciences. He conceived the nuclear chain reaction in 1933, and patented the idea in 1936. In late 1939 he wrote the letter for Albert Einstein's signature that resulted in the Manhattan Project that built the atomic bomb, and then in 1945 wrote the Szilard petition asking president Harry S. Truman to demonstrate the bomb without dropping it on civilians. According to György Marx, he was one of the Hungarian scientists known as The Martians. Szilard initially attended Palatine Joseph Technical University in Budapest, but his engineering studies were interrupted by service in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I. He left Hungary for Germany in 1919, enrolling at Technische Hochschule (Institute of Technology) in Berlin-Charlottenburg (now Technische Universität ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Binary Fission
Binary may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics * Binary number, a representation of numbers using only two values (0 and 1) for each digit * Binary function, a function that takes two arguments * Binary operation, a mathematical operation that takes two arguments * Binary relation, a relation involving two elements * Finger binary, a system for counting in binary numbers on the fingers of human hands Computing * Binary code, the representation of text and data using only the digits 1 and 0 * Bit, or binary digit, the basic unit of information in computers * Binary file, composed of something other than human-readable text ** Executable, a type of binary file that contains machine code for the computer to execute * Binary tree, a computer tree data structure in which each node has at most two children * Binary-coded decimal, a method for encoding for decimal digits in binary sequences Astronomy * Binary star, a star system with two stars in it * Binary pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nuclear Decay
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is considered ''radioactive''. Three of the most common types of decay are alpha, beta, and gamma decay. The weak force is the mechanism that is responsible for beta decay, while the other two are governed by the electromagnetic and nuclear forces. Radioactive decay is a random process at the level of single atoms. According to quantum theory, it is impossible to predict when a particular atom will decay, regardless of how long the atom has existed. However, for a significant number of identical atoms, the overall decay rate can be expressed as a decay constant or as a half-life. The half-lives of radioactive atoms have a huge range: from nearly instantaneous to far longer than the age of the universe. The decaying nucleus is called the parent ra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Robert Frisch
Otto Robert Frisch (1 October 1904 – 22 September 1979) was an Austrian-born British physicist who worked on nuclear physics. With Otto Stern and Immanuel Estermann, he first measured the magnetic moment of the proton. With his aunt, Lise Meitner, he advanced the first theoretical explanation of nuclear fission (coining the term) and first experimentally detected the fission by-products. Later, with his collaborator, Rudolf Peierls, he designed the first theoretical mechanism for the detonation of an atomic bomb in 1940. Leading the Los Alamos Critical Assemblies experiments in 1945, he oversaw the world's first prompt criticality in the Dragon device. Early life Otto Robert Frisch was born in Vienna in 1904 to a Jewish family, the son of Justinian Frisch, a painter, and Auguste Meitner Frisch, a concert pianist. He himself was talented at both but also shared his maternal aunt Lise Meitner's love of physics and commenced a period of study at the University of Vienna, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lise Meitner
Elise Lise Meitner ( ; ; 7 November 1878 – 27 October 1968) was an Austrian-Swedish nuclear physicist who was instrumental in the discovery of nuclear fission. After completing her doctoral research in 1906, Meitner became the second woman from the University of Vienna to earn a doctorate in physics. She spent much of her scientific career in Berlin, where she was a physics professor and a department head at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Chemistry. She was the first woman to become a full professor of physics in Germany. She lost her positions in 1935 because of the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany, and the 1938 Anschluss resulted in the loss of her Austrian citizenship. On 13–14 July 1938, she fled to the Netherlands with the help of Dirk Coster. She lived in Stockholm for many years, ultimately becoming a Swedish citizen in 1949, but relocated to Britain in the 1950s to be with family members. In mid-1938, chemists Otto H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Strassmann
Friedrich Wilhelm Strassmann (; 22 February 1902 – 22 April 1980) was a German chemist who, with Otto Hahn in December 1938, identified the element barium as a product of the bombardment of uranium with neutrons. Their observation was the key piece of evidence necessary to identify the previously unknown phenomenon of nuclear fission, as was subsequently recognized and published by Lise Meitner and Robert Frisch. In their second publication on nuclear fission in February 1939, Strassmann and Hahn predicted the existence and liberation of additional neutrons during the fission process, opening up the possibility of a nuclear chain reaction. Early life Friedrich Wilhelm (Fritz) Strassmann was born in Boppard, Germany, to Richard Strassmann and Julie Strassmann (née Bernsmann). He was the youngest of nine children. Growing up in Düsseldorf, he developed an interest in chemistry at a young age and conducted chemistry experiments in his parents' home. His family was of modes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Hahn
Otto Hahn (; 8 March 1879 – 28 July 1968) was a German chemist who was a pioneer in the field of radiochemistry. He is referred to as the father of nuclear chemistry and discoverer of nuclear fission, the science behind nuclear reactors and nuclear weapons. Hahn and Lise Meitner discovered isotopes of the radioactive elements isotopes of radium, radium, Isotopes of thorium, thorium, isotopes of protactinium, protactinium and isotopes of uranium, uranium. He also discovered the phenomena of atomic recoil and nuclear isomerism, and pioneered rubidium–strontium dating. In 1938, Hahn, Meitner and Fritz Strassmann Discovery of nuclear fission, discovered nuclear fission, for which Hahn alone was awarded the 1944 Nobel Prize in Chemistry. A graduate of the University of Marburg, which awarded him a doctorate in 1901, Hahn studied under Sir William Ramsay at University College London and at McGill University in Montreal under Ernest Rutherford, where he discovered several new radi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hesperium
''Ausenium'' (atomic symbol Ao) and ''Hesperium'' (atomic symbol Es) were the names initially assigned to the transuranic elements with atomic numbers 93 and 94, respectively. The discovery of the elements, now discredited, was made by Enrico Fermi and a team of scientists at the University of Rome in 1934. Following the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938, it was realized that "elements" found by Fermi were actually a mixture of barium, krypton, and other elements. The actual elements were discovered several years later, and assigned the names ''neptunium'' and ''plutonium''. Already in 1934, Ida Noddack had presented alternative explanations for the experimental results of Fermi. The element 93, ausenium, was named after a Greek name of Italy, '' Ausonia''. The element 94, Hesperium, was named in Italian ''Esperio'' after ''Hesperia'', a poetic name of Italy. Fascist authorities wanted one of the elements to be named ''littorio'' after the Roman ''lictores'' who carried the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
