Recent comments in /f/askscience

biggyofmt t1_j4qn9ek wrote

Reply to comment by TerjiD in If nuclear fission in U-235 causes the atom to be split into 2 smaller atoms (such as Kr-92 and Ba-141) then how is it that U-236 is produced as waste since the U-235 was just split into smaller peices? by Ian98766

This type of decay is known as Beta minus decay. A beta minus particle (aka an electron) and a photon are emitted from the nucleus. This has the effect of raising the atomic number by one, as a neutron was converted to a proton. It is still decay because particles were emitted from the nucleus

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mfb- t1_j4qiu6w wrote

Reply to comment by tdgros in If nuclear fission in U-235 causes the atom to be split into 2 smaller atoms (such as Kr-92 and Ba-141) then how is it that U-236 is produced as waste since the U-235 was just split into smaller peices? by Ian98766

The mess in the middle is the resonance region. If you look at zoomed in plots then you see the cross section spiking for individual resonances. Here are examples, see e.g. figure 2, that's for uranium-238 but the idea is the same for U-235.

The leftmost spikes look nicer because it's a log plot so the same energy difference gets more space in the plot.

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