What is the difference between fission and fusion

Please cite your What is nuclear energy? What is the definition of nuclear energy? Do you agree with nuclear energy? Please provide facts and sources.

What fuel is used in nuclear power plants? How is nuclear power dangerous? In fission, energy is gained by splitting apart heavy atoms, for example uranium, into smaller atoms such as iodine, caesium, strontium, xenon and barium, to name just a few. However, fusion is combining light atoms, for example two hydrogen isotopes, deuterium and tritium, to form the heavier helium.

Both reactions release energy which, in a power plant, would be used to boil water to drive a steam generator, thus producing electricity. Fission is the nuclear process that is currently run in nuclear power plants.

It is triggered by uranium absorbing a neutron , which renders the nucleus unstable. The result of the instability is the nucleus breaking up, in any one of many different ways, and producing more neutrons, which in turn hit more uranium atoms and make them unstable and so on.

This chain reaction is the key to fission reactions, but it can lead to a runaway process resulting in nuclear accidents. The word fusion means "a merging of separate elements into a unified whole". Nuclear fusion refers to the "union of atomic nuclei to form heavier nuclei resulting in the release of enormous amounts of energy" Merriam-Webster Online, www.

Fusion takes place when two low-mass isotopes, typically isotopes of hydrogen, unite under conditions of extreme pressure and temperature. Fusion is what powers the sun. Atoms of Tritium and Deuterium isotopes of hydrogen, Hydrogen-3 and Hydrogen-2, respectively unite under extreme pressure and temperature to produce a neutron and a helium isotope.

Along with this, an enormous amount of energy is released, which is several times the amount produced from fission. Scientists continue to work on controlling nuclear fusion in an effort to make a fusion reactor to produce electricity. Some scientists believe there are opportunities with such a power source since fusion creates less radioactive material than fission and has a nearly unlimited fuel supply. However, progress is slow due to challenges with understanding how to control the reaction in a contained space.

Both fission and fusion are nuclear reactions that produce energy, but the applications are not the same.