Vidya Bhavan Public

School

NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY
Submitted by Submitted to:-
ISHAN MURJHANI Ms. Veenu Murjhani
XII A PGT CHEMISTRY
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to express my sincere gratitude towards
my mentor, Ms. Veenu Murjhani who blessed me
with this opportunity of exploring the deep secrets of
“Nuclear Chemistry” which also happens to be the
topic of my investigatory project.

I also thank our Principal Mr. Jaydebkar for

providing me all the necessary assets required for
successful completion of my project.

Date – dd/mm/yy Ishan Murjhani

XII A
 CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that ISHAN MURJHANI, student

of class XII of Vidya Bhavan Public school has
successfully completed the research on the project,
NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY, under the guidance of
Ms. VEENU MURJHANI(subject teacher) during
the year 2018-2019.

__________ _________
Internal’s sign Principal’s Sign

__________ ___________
External’s sign School Seal
 INDEX

Content Page number

Introduction 1
Mass defect and nuclear binding energy 3
Nuclear stability and nuclear equations 5
What are nuclear reactions? 6
Why do nuclear reactions happen? 8
What are the types of nuclear reaction? 10
Radiation exposure 17
Half life 18
Radio carbon dating 19
Nuclear energy 23
Nuclear Food Uranium 26
Nuclear energy and people 27
Chernobyl 30
Future of nuclear energy 32
Bibliography 33
 NUCLEAR CHEMISTRY
UNLOCKING THE
SECRETS OF NUCLEUS
This all started with Einstein’s Big Idea of Energy, Mass and
Speed of light. Albert Einstein through his thought
experiments concluded that the energy and mass are two
sides of a same coin. Energy and Mass are interconvertible
and can be measured through the famous equation :-

Where E represents Energy, M

represents the Mass and C represents
the speed of Light.
Chemists all over the world, thrilled
with this idea, started carrying out
experiments to unlock the energy that
resides in a matter. Atom being a

1
fundamental constituent of any matter obviously holds the
energy. Researchers, by studying the structure of atom in
great detail, found that most of the energy of atom lies
within its nucleus. Hence it was important to unlock the
secret of nucleus.

Lise Meitner, an Austrian-Swedish physicist who worked on

radioactivity and nuclear
physics. Meitner, Otto
Hahn and Otto Robert Frisch led
the small group of scientists
who first discovered nuclear
fission of uranium when it
absorbed an extra neutron; the
results were published in early
1939. Meitner, Hahn and Frisch
understood that the fission
process, which splits the atomic
nucleus of uranium into two smaller nuclei, must be
accompanied by an enormous release of energy. Nuclear
fission is the process exploited by nuclear reactors to

2
generate heat and, subsequently, electricity. This process is
also one of the basics of nuclear weapons that were
developed in the U.S. during World War II and used against
Japan in 1945.

Mass Defect And Nuclear Binding Energy

Nuclear binding energy is the minimum energy that would

be required to disassemble the
nucleus of an atom into its
component parts. These
component parts are neutrons
and protons, which are
collectively called nucleons.
The binding is always a
positive number, as we need
to spend energy in moving
these nucleons, attracted to
each other by the strong
nuclear force, away from each other. The mass of an atomic

3
nucleus is less than the sum of the individual masses of the
free constituent protons and neutrons, according to
2
Einstein's equation E=mc . This 'missing mass' is known as
the mass defect, and represents the energy that was
released when the nucleus was formed.
The term "nuclear binding energy" may also refer to the
energy balance in processes in which the nucleus splits into
fragments composed of more than one nucleon. If new
binding energy is available when light nuclei fuse (nuclear
fusion), or when heavy nuclei split (nuclear fission), either
process can result in release of this binding energy. This
energy may be made available as nuclear energy and can be
used to produce electricity, as in nuclear power, or in a
nuclear weapon. When a large nucleus splits into pieces,
excess energy is emitted as photon (gamma rays) and as the
kinetic energy of a number of different ejected particles
(nuclear fission products).
These nuclear binding energies and forces are on the order
of a million times greater than the electron binding energies
of light atoms like hydrogen.
The mass defect of a nucleus represents the amount of mass
4
 2
equivalent to the binding energy of the nucleus (E=mc ),
which is the difference between the mass of a nucleus and
the sum of the individual masses of the nucleons of which it
is composed.

Nuclear Stability and Nuclear Equations

Nuclear Stability is a concept that helps to identify the

stability of an isotope. To identify the stability of an isotope
it is needed to find the ratio of neutrons to protons. To
determine the stability of an isotope you can use the ratio
neutron/proton (N/Z). Also to help understand this concept
there is a chart of the nuclides, known as a Segre chart. This
chart shows a plot of the known nuclides as a function of
their atomic and neutron numbers. It can be observed from
the chart that there are more neutrons than protons in
nuclides with Z greater than about 20 (Calcium). These extra
neutrons are necessary for stability of the heavier nuclei.
The excess neutrons act somewhat like nuclear glue.
What are nuclear reactions?

5
Sometimes atoms aren’t happy just being themselves; they
suddenly change into completely different atoms, without
any warning. This mysterious transformation of one type of
element into another is the basis of nuclear reactions, which
cause one nucleus to change into a different nucleus. Just
like chemical reactions cause compounds to turn into other
compounds by swapping their electrons, nuclear reactions
happen when the number of protons and neutrons in the
nucleus of an atom change.
Some types of nuclear reactions can actually kick protons
out of the nucleus, or convert them into neutrons. Since we
know what to call an element by looking up its number on a
periodic table and then reading off its name, when the
atomic number (number of protons) changes, so does the
name of the element. This makes nuclear reactions look
somewhat like alchemy: an atom of potassium (atomic
number 19) can suddenly and unexpectedly transform into
an atom calcium (atomic number 20). The only sign that
anything has changed is the release of radiation, which we’ll
talk more about in a little bit.
Even more strangely, nuclear reactions often occur almost
entirely randomly. If you have a single nucleus that you are
6
certain will eventually decay into a different nucleus, you
still have only a rough idea how long it will take for you to
see it happen. You could be sitting watching the nucleus for
anywhere between a few seconds to your entire lifetime,
and at some point it would suddenly decay without any
warning! However, depending on the type of nucleus, you
can predict how long on average it would take to decay if
you watched many nuclei at once. So while the average
time to decay is a measurable number (for potassium it’s
over a billion years), the exact time of the decay is entirely
random.
There are three types of nuclear reaction, each of which
cause the nucleus to shoot out a different, fast-moving
particle (like a photon or electron). These released particles
are a side effect of the element changing its atomic number
or mass, and they are what scientists generally mean when
they warn about nuclear radiation, since fast-moving
particles can act like tiny bullets that poke holes in your
body. However, much nuclear radiation is actually harmless,
and it occasionally can be harnessed to provide new type of
medical or diagnostic tools.

7
 Why do nuclear reactions happen?

Not all elements undergo nuclear decay over timescales

that we can observe. Some elements take millions of years
to decay. In fact, most living things primarily consist of
isotopes of carbon and nitrogen, which have such incredibly
long lifetimes that they will essentially never decay within
the lifespan of the organism. This is necessary because the
biochemical function of each of these atoms is specifically
tied to its atomic number: if a nervous receptor specifically
seeks out and binds a carbon-based signalling molecule,
then it won’t work if that carbon spontaneously changes
into beryllium.
Different atoms of the same element can have different
masses. For example, an atom of carbon (atomic number 6,
so six protons) can have either 6 neutrons or 8 neutrons.
The former case is more familiar from chemistry class, since
a lot of the common light elements used in biology (like
oxygen, carbon, and nitrogen) have the same number of
protons as neutrons. But it turns out that the case of carbon
having 6 protons and 8 neutrons, while not as stable as 6
and 6, is stable enough that it can actually occur in nature in
8
observable amounts. Because the 8 neutron nucleus and
the 6 neutron nucleus are technically both carbon, we call
them different isotopes of carbon.
Since protons and neutrons have roughly the same mass,
the more common version of carbon is called carbon-12 (6
protons + 6 neutrons). The heavier isotope is called carbon
14 (6 protons + 8 neutrons). But when you look up the mass
of carbon on the periodic table, it says that the mass is
12.011 atomic mass units (amu). This is because if you went
out and weighed a huge batch of carbon atoms, most of the
atoms you would find would weigh exactly 12 amu. But
within that huge batch you’d occasionally find a carbon-14
nucleus, which would skew the average of your
measurements to a value slightly higher than 12.
For reasons that are deeply related to the fundamental
forces that act in the nucleus, the tendency of a substance
to undergo nuclear decay is related to both the atomic
number and the atomic mass of an element. This means
that two different isotopes of the same element will have
different tendencies to undergo nuclear decay. In the case
of carbon, the isotope carbon-14 wants to decay into
nitrogen while carbon-12 (which is most of the carbon in
9
your body) would remain stable.
As a result, knowing which isotope is present in a sample of
element not only tells us the sample’s stability, but also the
type of decay it will undergo.

What are the types of nuclear reaction?

a. ALPHA DECAY
During alpha decay, a nucleus actually breaks up into two
chunks: a pair of protons bound to a pair of neutrons (a
collection of four particles which is essentially a helium
nucleus, and is called an alpha particle), and another piece
constituting the original nucleus minus this chunk. So we
can actually write down a chemical reaction equation for
alpha decay:
Ra → Rn + He^{2+}
2+
The radium nucleus (Ra, atomic number 88) breaks up into
the helium nucleus (He^{2+}
2+
, the little chunk) and a daughter nucleus that corresponds
10
to the element radon (Rn, atomic number 86). The medical

risks
associated with radiation usually involve the fast
speeds at which the products of nuclear reactions
move.Think of the alpha particle released by this reaction as
a tiny bullet, which can puncture soft tissues like the lining
of the stomach and lungs. Fortunately, alpha decay tends to
release large, slow-moving decay products, and so it’s easy
to shield against this type of radiation.
The reaction shown above illustrates another, indirect
method by which alpha decay can pose a hazard. Radium,
the element on the left hand side of the reaction arrow, can
11
be found deep underground as a solid rock mixed in with
granite. However, when it undergoes alpha decay it turns
into radon, which naturally prefers to be a gas. The radon
then seeps out of the ground and into the basements of
people’s homes, where it can enter their lungs and then
decay again, releasing more alpha particles (or other types
of radiation) directly into the unprotected tissues. This
method of radon exposure represents a major lung cancer
risk factor in many parts of the world.

b. BETA DECAY

In beta decay, one of the neutrons in the nucleus suddenly

changes into a proton, causing an increase in the atomic
number of an element. Recall the name of an element is
determined by its atomic number. Carbon is carbon because
it has an atomic number of 6, while nitrogen is nitrogen
because it has atomic number 7. That means that a reaction
that changes the number of protons in the nucleus changes
what element we actually consider the nucleus to be. This
makes beta decay a great example of how nuclear reactions
can eerily transform one substance into another.
12
The product potassium chloride is commonly sold as a salt
substitute in grocery stores. This product contains trace
amounts of potassium-40 (K), which tends to undergo beta

decay
into calcium-40 (Ca). Symbolically, this reaction looks
like:
K→ Ca + e^- + v
In addition to changing its atomic number, the nucleus
creates and releases an electron (e-) from the atom that
serves to counterbalance the positive charge it gained by
transforming a neutron to a proton. The other released
particle v is a mysterious particle called a neutrino, which
has no charge and barely any mass. The emitted, free

13
electrons are the “radiation” associated with beta decay
This means that if you were to go to the grocery store and
buy a jar of potassium-40 isotopes (which are prone to beta
decay) and then leave it sitting on your countertop for a
couple of years, you would end up having less potassium
than you started out with (calcium would take its place).
This process happens incredibly slowly and in miniscule
numbers for the potassium chloride available in the grocery
store, and so the actual health risk posed by this radiation is
nil.
A related type of beta decay actually decreases the atomic
number of the nucleus when a proton becomes a neutron.
Due to charge conservation, this type of beta decay involves
the release of a charged particle called a “positron” that
looks and acts like an electron but has a positive charge.
Because this particle’s interactions with other tissues are
easily identifiable, some medical imaging techniques involve
purposefully injecting a patient with an element that beta
decays into positrons, and then monitoring where the
positrons are emitted. When beta decay creates a positron
it’s called beta-plus decay, and when it creates an electron
it’s called beta-minus decay.
14
C. GAMMA DECAY

During gamma decay the nucleus emits radiation without

actually changing its composition: We start with a nucleus
with 12 protons and 12 neutrons, and we end up with a
nucleus with 12 protons and 12 neutrons… but somehow
radiation gets released along the way!
The nucleus is made out of a glued-together arrangement of
protons and neutrons, but there are multiple possible ways
that these protons and neutrons can be arranged. Some of
these arrangements have a lower total energy, and so a
nucleus in which the protons are initially close together may
shift to the lower energy configuration after some time.

15
Recall that the electrons orbiting the nucleus have energy
levels, and that each time an electron moves from a high
energy level to a low energy level it emits a photon. The
same thing happens in the nucleus: when it rearranges into
a lower energy state, it shoots out a high-energy photon
known as a gamma ray.
Gamma rays are very high energy and are one of the most
dangerous sources of radiation because photons can pass
through most common shielding materials and cause DNA
damage in living tissues. But gamma radiation also has
practical uses; for example, the element technetium emits
relatively low-energy gamma decays that can be detected

16
using a specialized scanner, and so it has found use as a
tracer element for imaging the inside of patients’ bodies.

Consider the following… radiation

exposure during long-term space travel

Radiation sometimes comes up the news in the context of

the risks associated with long-distance space travel. It turns
out that dying stars and all the other strange stuff in space
generates a lot of exotic and strange types of radiation---
even beyond the types described above. These unusual,
high-energy particles are collectively called cosmic
radiation, and in many parts of space they mostly consist of
extremely high energy photons, or gamma radiation. Recall
that gamma radiation is particularly dangerous because
photons can pass through most barriers and thus travel
deep into living tissues, where they can cause internal
damage (and eventually cancer).
In a spaceship, astronauts don’t have the full benefit of
Earth’s thick atmosphere to protect them from cosmic rays.

17
This means that any long-term space travel initiative (such
as a mission to mars) will have to invest considerable
resources in properly shielding the living areas of the
spaceship with materials that are impervious to cosmic
radiation. The development of materials that can shield
astronauts is an active area of research!

Half Life

Half-life (symbol t1⁄2) is the time required for a quantity to

reduce to half its initial value. The term is commonly used in
nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms
undergo, or how long stable atoms survive, radioactive
decay. The term is also used more generally to characterize
any type of exponential or non-exponential decay. For
example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half life
of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The
converse of half-life is doubling time.

The original term, half-life period, dating to Ernest

Rutherford's discovery of the principle in 1907, was

18
shortened to half-life in the early 1950s.[1] Rutherford
applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life to
studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the
decay period of radium to lead-206.

Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially

decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic unit for the
exponential decay equation. The accompanying table shows
the reduction of a quantity as a function of the number of
half-lives elapsed.

Radio Carbon Dating

Radiocarbon dating (also referred to as carbon dating or

carbon-14 dating) is a method for determining the age of an
object containing organic material by using the properties of
radiocarbon, a radioactive isotope of carbon.

The method was developed in the late 1940s by Willard

Libby, who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his
work in 1960. It is based on the fact that radiocarbon (14

19
C) is constantly being created in the atmosphere by the
interaction of cosmic rays with atmospheric nitrogen. The
resulting 14
C combines with atmospheric oxygen to form radioactive
carbon dioxide, which is incorporated into plants by
photosynthesis; animals then acquire 14
C by eating the plants. When the animal or plant dies, it
stops exchanging carbon with its environment, and from
that point onwards the amount of 14
C it contains begins to decrease as the 14
C undergoes radioactive decay. Measuring the amount of 14
C in a sample from a dead plant or animal such as a piece of
wood or a fragment of bone provides information that can
be used to calculate when the animal or plant died. The
older a sample is, the less 14
C there is to be detected, and because the half-life of 14 C
(the period of time after which half of a given sample will
have decayed) is about 5,730 years, the oldest dates that
can be reliably measured by this process date to around
50,000 years ago, although special preparation methods
occasionally permit accurate analysis of older samples.
Research has been ongoing since the 1960s to determine
20
what the proportion of 14
C in the
atmosphere has
been over the
past fifty
thousand years.
The resulting
data, in the
form of a
calibration
curve, is now
used to convert a given measurement of radiocarbon in a
sample into an estimate of the sample's calendar age. Other
corrections must be made to account for the proportion of
14
C in different types of organisms (fractionation), and the
varying levels of 14
C throughout the biosphere (reservoir effects). Additional
complications come from the burning of fossil fuels such as
coal and oil, and from the above-ground nuclear tests done
in the 1950s and 1960s. Because the time it takes to convert
biological materials to fossil fuels is substantially longer than
21
the time it takes for its 14
C to decay below detectable levels, fossil fuels contain
almost no 14
C, and as a result there was a noticeable drop in the
proportion of 14
C in the atmosphere beginning in the late 19th century.
Conversely, nuclear testing increased the amount of 14 C in
the atmosphere, which attained a maximum in about 1965
of almost twice what it had been before the testing began.

Measurement of radiocarbon was originally done by beta

counting devices, which counted the amount of beta
radiation emitted by decaying 14
C atoms in a sample. More recently, accelerator mass
spectrometry has become the method of choice; it counts
all the 14
C atoms in the sample and
not just the few that happen
to decay during the
measurements; it can
therefore be used with much
smaller samples (as small as
22
individual plant seeds), and gives results much more quickly.
The development of radiocarbon dating has had a profound
impact on archaeology. In addition to permitting more
accurate dating within archaeological sites than previous
methods, it allows comparison of dates of events across
great distances. Histories of archaeology often refer to its
impact as the "radiocarbon revolution". Radiocarbon dating
has allowed key transitions in prehistory to be dated, such
as the end of the last ice age, and the beginning of the
Neolithic and Bronze Age in different.
Nuclear Energy – changing the world

23
Nuclear energy is the energy in the nucleus, or core, of an
atom. Atoms are tiny units that make up all matter in the
universe, and energy is what holds the nucleus together.
There is a huge amount of energy in an atom's dense
nucleus. In fact, the power that holds the nucleus together
is officially called the "strong force."

Nuclear energy can be used to create electricity, but it must

first be released from the atom. In the process of nuclear
fission, atoms are split to release that energy.
A nuclear reactor, or power plant, is a series of machines
that can control nuclear fission to produce electricity. The
fuel that nuclear reactors use to produce nuclear fission is
pellets of the element uranium. In a nuclear reactor, atoms
of uranium are forced to break apart. As they split, the
atoms release tiny particles called fission products. Fission
products cause other uranium atoms to split, starting a
chain reaction. The energy released from this chain reaction
creates heat.

The heat created by nuclear fission warms the reactor's

cooling agent. A cooling agent is usually water, but some
24
nuclear reactors use liquid metal or molten salt. The cooling
agent, heated by nuclear fission, produces steam. The
steam turns turbines, or wheels turned by a flowing current.
The turbines drive generators, or engines that create
electricity.
Rods of material called nuclear poison can adjust how much
electricity is
produced.
Nuclear
poisons are
materials,
such as a
type of the
element
xenon, that
absorb some of the fission products created by nuclear
fission. The more rods of nuclear poison that are present
during the chain reaction, the slower and more controlled
the reaction will be. Removing the rods will allow a stronger
chain reaction and create more electricity.

As of 2011, about 15 percent of the world's electricity is

25
generated by nuclear power plants. The United States has
more than 100 reactors, although it creates most of its
electricity from fossil fuels and hydroelectric energy.
Nations such as Lithuania, France, and Slovakia create
almost all of their electricity from nuclear power plants.
Nuclear Food: Uranium

Uranium is the fuel most widely used to produce nuclear

energy. That's because uranium atoms split apart relatively
easily. Uranium is also a very common element, found in
rocks all over the world. However, the specific type of
uranium used to produce nuclear energy, called U-235, is
rare. U-235 makes up less than one percent of the uranium
in the world.

Although some of the uranium the United States uses is

mined in this country, most is imported. The U.S. gets
uranium from Australia, Canada, Kazakhstan, Russia, and
Uzbekistan. Once uranium is mined, it must be extracted
from other minerals. It must also be processed before it can
be used.

26
Because nuclear fuel can be used to create nuclear weapons
as well as nuclear reactors, only nations that are part of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are allowed to
import uranium or plutonium, another nuclear fuel. The
treaty promotes the peaceful use of nuclear fuel, as well as
limiting the spread of nuclear weapons.

A typical nuclear reactor uses about 200 tons of uranium

every year. Complex processes allow some uranium and
plutonium to be re-enriched or recycled. This reduces the
amount of mining, extracting, and processing that needs to
be done.
Nuclear Energy and People

Nuclear energy produces electricity that can be used to

power homes, schools, businesses, and hospitals. The first
nuclear reactor to produce electricity was located near
Arco, Idaho. The Experimental Breeder Reactor began
powering itself in 1951. The first nuclear power plant
designed to provide energy to a community was established
in Obninsk, Russia, in 1954.

27
Building nuclear reactors requires a high level of technology,
and only the countries that have signed the Nuclear Non
Proliferation Treaty can get the uranium or plutonium that
is required. For these reasons, most nuclear power plants
are located in the developed world.

Nuclear power plants produce renewable, clean energy.

They do not pollute the air or release greenhouse gases.
They can be built in urban or rural areas, and do not
radically alter the environment around them.

The steam powering the turbines and generators is

ultimately recycled. It is cooled down in a separate structure
called a cooling tower. The steam turns back into water and
can be used again to produce more electricity. Excess steam
is simply recycled into the atmosphere, where it does little
harm as clean water vapor.

However, the byproduct of nuclear energy is radioactive

material. Radioactive material is a collection of unstable
atomic nuclei. These nuclei lose their energy and can affect
many materials around them, including organisms and the
28
environment. Radioactive material can be extremely toxic,
causing burns and increasing the risk for cancers, blood
diseases, and bone decay.
Radioactive waste is what is left over from the operation of
a nuclear reactor. Radioactive waste is mostly protective
clothing worn by workers, tools, and any other material that
have been in contact with radioactive dust. Radioactive
waste is long-lasting. Materials like clothes and tools can
stay radioactive for thousands of years. The government
regulates how these materials are disposed of so they don't
contaminate anything else.

Used fuel and rods of nuclear poison are extremely

radioactive. The used uranium pellets must be stored in
special containers that look like large swimming pools.
Water cools the fuel and insulates the outside from contact
with the radioactivity. Some nuclear plants store their used
fuel in dry storage tanks above ground.

The storage sites for radioactive waste have become very

controversial in the United States. For years, the
government planned to construct an enormous nuclear
29
waste facility near Yucca Mountain, Nevada, for instance.
Environmental groups and local citizens protested the plan.
They worried about radioactive waste leaking into the water
supply and the Yucca Mountain environment, about 130
kilometers (80 miles) from the large urban area of Las
Vegas, Nevada. Although the government began
investigating the site in 1978, it stopped planning for a
nuclear waste facility in Yucca Mountain in 2009.

Chernobyl

Critics of nuclear energy worry that the storage facilities for

radioactive waste will leak, crack, or erode. Radioactive
material could then contaminate the soil and groundwater
near the facility. This could lead to serious health problems
for the people and organisms in the area. All communities
would have to be evacuated.

This is what happened in Chernobyl, Ukraine, in 1986. A

steam explosion at one of the power plants four nuclear
reactors caused a fire, called a plume. This plume was highly
radioactive, creating a cloud of radioactive particles that fell
30
to the ground, called fallout. The fallout spread over the
Chernobyl facility, as well as the surrounding area. The
fallout drifted with the wind, and the particles entered the
water cycle as rain. Radioactivity traced to Chernobyl fell as
rain over Scotland and Ireland. Most of the radioactive
fallout fell in Belarus.

The environmental impact of the Chernobyl disaster was

immediate. For kilometers around the facility, the pine
forest dried up and died. The red color of the dead pines
earned this area the nickname the Red Forest. Fish from the
nearby Pripyat River had so much radioactivity that people
could no longer eat them. Cattle and horses in the area
died.

More than 100,000 people were relocated after the

disaster, but the number of human victims of Chernobyl is
difficult to determine. The effects of radiation poisoning
only appear after many years. Cancers and other diseases
can be very difficult to trace to a single source.
Future of Nuclear Energy

31
Nuclear reactors use fission, or the splitting of atoms, to
produce energy. Nuclear energy can also be produced
through fusion, or joining (fusing) atoms together. The sun,
for instance, is constantly undergoing nuclear fusion as
hydrogen atoms fuse to form helium. Because all life on our
planet depends on the sun, you could say that nuclear
fusion makes life on Earth possible.

Nuclear power plants do not have the capability to safely

and reliably produce energy from nuclear fusion. It's not
clear whether the process will ever be an option for
producing electricity. Nuclear engineers are researching
nuclear fusion, however, because the process will likely be
safe and cost-effective.

32
 BIBLIOGRAPHY
The following sources have proven to be of
utmost importance in contribution to this
project:-
 Google.co.in
 Wikipedia.com
 Physics hypertextbook
 The fabric of cosmos by Brian Greene
 Fourior by 3B1B Grant Sanderson
 Khan Academy
 Cengage Chemistry
 GRB Chemistry