Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Fundamentals: Nuclear energy

If 235 Uranium releases 163 MeV of energy , how much energy is released by 10 kg of uranium?
E released= (163 MeV/235x1.66x10-27kg) x10kg = 4.18 x1027MeV = 6.69 x 1014 J

If the activity of a radioactive source is 8.7x 109 Bq , what is the power of the source ? The decay process releases 1.03 x 10-12 J .
Power = (8.7 x 109)(1.0 x 10-12 J)= 8.7 x 10-3 W