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

There was a natural nuclear reactor in Africa a couple billion years ago. Ground water collected in a naturally occurring uranium deposit and acted as a moderator allowing a nuclear reaction to occur. The heat from the reaction would boil the water away causing the reaction to stop until more water seeped into the deposit. This continued for (probably) a few hundred thousand years.

It wouldn’t happen today because the uranium isotope that’s capable of sustaining a nuclear reaction (U-235) decays more quickly than the isotope that’s not, so the naturally occurring uranium that’s around today has to be enriched before it can be used to sustain a nuclear reaction.

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