Nuclear energy release from fragmentation

TL;DR

This study investigates the nuclear energy released during the fragmentation of Uranium and Thorium isotopes into multiple fragments, identifying optimal conditions for maximum energy release using a statistical model.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of energy release from multi-fragment nuclear fission of Uranium and Thorium isotopes, highlighting the most efficient fragmentation channels and excitation energies.

Findings

Maximum energy release occurs when splitting into three fragments.

Optimal excitation energy range is 1.2 to 2 MeV/u.

Energy release of about 0.7-0.75 MeV/u at optimal conditions.

Abstract

Nuclear energy released by splitting Uranium and Thorium isotopes into two, three, four, up to eight fragments with nearly equal size are studied. We found that the energy released come from equally splitting the $^{235,238}$U and $^{230,232}$Th nuclei into to three fragments is largest. The statistical multifragmentation model is employed to calculate the probability of different breakup channels for the excited nuclei. Weighing the the probability distributions of fragments multiplicity at different excitation energies for the $^{238}$U nucleus, we found that an excitation energy between 1.2 and 2 MeV/u is optimal for the $^{235}$U, $^{238}$U, $^{230}$Th and $^{232}$Th nuclei to release nuclear energy of about 0.7-0.75 MeV/u.