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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Uranium atoms, of certain isotopes, decay naturally, at random. When they do, the throw off particles that, if they hit other uranium atoms, cause them to decay approximately immediately. There are enough of these particles thrown off that, if there are other uranium atoms nearby for them to hit, the particles thrown off when *those* atoms decay can hit more atoms, and so on in a runaway chain reaction. That’s what happens in a bomb.
But there aren’t a lot of susceptible atoms out in the world, especially in naturally-occurring ores. And there’s usually a bunch of other crap mixed in, which can soak up the decay particles. If a hundred atoms decay, but the particles they throw off only trigger ninety others to do likewise, that chain reaction will fade away in a couple dozen steps. That’s why, for both power generation and weapons, you need (more-or-less) pure uranium, *and* for the appropriate isotopes to be extracted and concentrated together.
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