why splitting uranium releases energy but we haven’t see any stray (random) nuclear explosion in natural ore deposits?

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And if splitting atom releases energy, why haven’t these energy break from their atom themselves? Isn’t that means the force that bind the atoms are bigger than the energy released?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

This is the same misconception that I had for a long time. Splitting a single atom doesn’t release much energy, not enough that you could notice. We do sometimes see this naturally, when concentrations of these elements occur we experience the energy they release as radiation from their natural radioactive decay. This radioactive decay is random, but with enough material you might be able to measure it with instruments or feel it’s energy through heat.

A nuclear explosion happens when there is a self-sustaining chain reaction of trillions of Uranium atoms all at once. Random radioactive decay is too slow, you have to set up the material in such a way that the radioactive particles bump into other atoms and cause them to also release radioactive particles and so on. In order for this to happen you need to have trillions of these atoms all very close to each other.

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