“Nuclear fission is the process of breaking up atoms; the process will generate an enormous amount of energy in form of heat” (Nuclear Power and the Environment). The first man-made reactor was built in the USA in December 2, 1942 called-
By doing this it was creating huge amounts of Energy. Scientists soon realized that they could use this energy to create very powerful bombs. Scientists started working vastly to create an atomic bomb. In this process they found that a rare form of Uranium was needed to create explosive chain reactions. This uranium was Uranium 235.
INTRODUCTION TO NUCLEAR REACTION: The main features of nuclear reactions include radioactive decay, nuclear fission and nuclear fusion. Radioactive decay: Energy is released in a radioactive decay in the form of the kinetic energy of the particle emitted (α and β), the kinetic energy of the daughter nucleus and the energy of the gamma-ray photon that may accompany the decay. The energy involved may be calculated by finding the mass defect of the reaction. The energy released is the energy equivalent of the mass defect of the reaction. Nuclear fission: Nuclear fission is the process in which a large nucleus breaks into two smaller nuclei that are almost equal in mass.
While used to generate electricity from nuclear fuel, opponents of nuclear plants feel it poses many threats to people and the environment. These threats include health risks and environmental damage from radiation. Radiation could contaminate water supplies, food crops and livestock, and a high exposure to radiation can cause serious illness or death (Nuclear Power Plants). Bank credit cards allow consumers to borrow money to make purchases. The downside to bank credit cards is part of the effect that we see today in our economy.
The reality of the threat is echoed by the researchers at Los Alamos who were taking bets shortly before the bomb’s test on whether the entire state of New Mexico would be incinerated by the bomb’s successful detonation; or the possibility that the atmosphere would be ignited by the blast and “blow up” the world. What is more horrifying—stating these events with the belief that they were genuine possibilities and continuing with the test or making these statements in the context of a kind of gallows humor with no basis in reality? In this case, as well as the case of the Monitor, those involved with developing a new, technologically superior weapon were only interested in achieving their goal. The possibility of negative consequences due to the nuclear blast was given no consideration; as if the headlong charge to achieve the goal of developing the atom bomb any possible negative consequences for those living in the vicinity of the laboratory and those it would be used against were not worth
And with the cold war the likelihood would have been that once one side had launched a nuclear bomb, the other would and the cold war would have turned into a world- wide disaster. However there are some elements to the nuclear arms race that did not act as portraying it to be a stabilising factor. From 1949 both superpowers knowledge and developments of nuclear technology was expanding. Both sides wanted to match the others developments, if not exceed them in order to gain the upper hand and have more power over the other side due to the threat of the disruption a nuclear bomb explosion would cause. One, if not the most prominent way that the nuclear arms race stabilised the cold war was the threat of one being launched, both the USA and the USSR were both already threatened by the ideological capabilities of each other, which is why they feared the nuclear arms race would extend to not just trying to achieve the upper hand over their opponent.
Bush's administration sought and received permission from Congress to design a new class of nuclear weapons: "mini-nukes," relatively low-yield tactical nuclear weapons for use against underground bunkers and other small battlefield targets. Advocates of these new weapons point to the uniquely powerful, compact "punch" that can be delivered by a nuclear weapon; critics argue that even a small nuclear weapon may cause many civilian casualties, and, more important, that actual use of a nuclear weapon of any size would break the taboo on such use that has held since the end of World War II, making the use of larger, more destructive nuclear weapons more likely in future
There is also the element of nuclear "residue" from the nuclear blast. Radioactive contaminants will be found on the ground and in the air. And the airborne ones will circulate causing the radioactive materials to be deposited many miles from ground zero. This ends up creating health damaging effects far from the site of the blast, making the atomic bomb far more deadlier than the napalm
In the old days (the early 1900’s) the word “nuclear” made people think of war. Back than people were very worried about nuclear bombs and the great damage that could become of them. Now a days people are much less worried about “nuclear” weapons and are more concerned about nuclear energy because they feel that nuclear energy could help things such as global warming. Sense the early 1900’s there have been many different theories blogged about by scientists that show that the idea could be a substitute for our current energy source. Even though many people believe that history sometimes repeats itself we as a whole go along doing the same things that we did before thinking that there could be different results, but sense we all know that every energy source out today has its setbacks and positive results: scientists have created and somehow stabilized the much needed power sources of nuclear energy.
This whole process is called a nuclear chain reaction. The reactor core generates heat as the kinetic energy is converted to thermal energy. Gamma rays are produced during fission and absorbed by the reactor, where thermal energy is converted to heat. Heat produced by the radioactive decay of fission production remains in the reactor, sometime even if it shut down.