Nuclear energy

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For the commercial production of electricity from nuclear energy, see Nuclear power. For the military uses of nuclear energy, see Nuclear weapon and Nuclear marine propulsion.

Nuclear energy is energy released from the atomic nucleus. It follows the conversion of its mass to energy consistent with Albert Einstein's formula E=mc² in which E = Energy, m = Mass, and c = The speed of light (a physical constant). However, the mass-energy equivalence does not explain how the reaction occurs, but rather nuclear forces do.

Nuclear energy is released by one of three nuclear reactions:

• Fusion, the fusing together of atomic nuclei.
• Fission, the breaking of the binding forces of an atom's nucleus.
  • Decay, is a term used for the slower natural fission process of a nucleus breaking down into a more stable form.

Nuclear energy was first discovered accidentally by French physicist Henri Becquerel in 1896, when he found that photographic plates stored near uranium compounds behaved as though they had been exposed to light in a manner similar to X-Rays, which had been just recently discovered at the time. ^[1].

[edit] References

1. ^ Marie Curie - X-rays and Uranium Rays. aip.org. Retrieved on 2006-04-10.