Nuclear weapons

NUCLEAR WEAPONS

• Paul Sneller

History

• 1905 – Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity.
• 1932 – The Neutron is Discovered by James Chadwick.
• 1938 – Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman are able to split a uranium atom by bombarding it with neutrons.
• 1942 – First self sustaining nuclear reaction is produced by scientists at the University of Chicago.
• 1945 – First Nuclear Weapon detonated at Trinity, New Mexico.
• 1945 – Nuclear Weapons are dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
• 1952 – First Teller-Ulam hydrogen bomb detonated.

Nuclear Fission

• A nuclear reaction in which an atomic nucleus splits into fragments.
• Fission occurs readily in U-235 and Pu-239 when bombarded with neutrons.
• The sum of the product masses is less than the mass of the original atom.
• The lost mass is converted directly into energy.
• The fission of a single Uranium-235 nucleus generates about 3.36E-11J