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

Radioactivity causes explosions only when it reaches a runaway chain reaction. One atom breaks apart and spits out two neutrons, which in turn break apart two other atoms, which split four atoms, which split eight, and so on until you have a runaway explosion.

Those neutrons have to actually hit other sufficiently volatile atoms. In an ore deposit, the “dangerous” isotopes are covered in less reactive ones and just plain rock, so most of the neutrons just get absorbed and the reaction never picks up speed.

We get bombs only when we carefully concentrate only these specific isotopes and in sufficient amounts. Just look at the [demon core](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core): the two halves of it are safe to handle separately, and the reaction goes supercritical only when the halves are put together, at which point it becomes immediately lethal.

(As a side note: There is evidence of natural “nuclear reactors” where a limited amount of reactivity can occur naturally in radioactive ore veins, but that’s at a very low level and definitely not something that’s comparable to an explosion.)

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