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Ch.20 - Nuclear Chemistry

Chapter 20, Problem 8

Identify the true statement about nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons. (a) Nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons both use uranium enriched to about 90% U-235. (b) Nuclear power plants emit large amounts of CO2 just like coal burning power plants. (c) The United States produces less than 1% of its electrical power from nuclear energy. (d) A nuclear weapon explodes when two pieces of fission-able uranium-235 are pushed together to reach a critical mass.

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Hello everyone in this video trying to identify which is false from the given statements about nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants. So reading option A. This reads, a nuclear explosion occurs when sub critical pieces of nuclear materials collide to reach a critical mass. So this is true because the critical mass must be reached for a vision of reaction to occur. Each sub critical piece of nuclear material itself cannot achieve this. The critical mass can only be reached either by colliding pieces of nuclear material or by making the nuclear feel dense enough in a sub critical sphere or pit to reduce critical mass and then neutrons un injected to trigger a fission chain reaction. So lucky for us this is going to be a true statement. So option Our statement is going to be eliminated from our answer choices. And moving on to option B. Here, this raised the enrichment of U 2 35 in the fuel used for nuclear weapons is much higher than that of the fuel used for nuclear power plants. So this is also true. The uranium fuel used for nuclear weapons is highly enrich and greater than 5% as compared to the uranium fuel rods at about 3% using nuclear power plants. So option B again is true and will be eliminated from our answer choices. Now, reading next one is going to be options seen. This reads that the nuclear power plants also produce a significant amount of carbon dioxide while operating especially generating when generating electricity. So this statement is false. Unlike cold boat burning power plants, nuclear reactors and nuclear power plants do not produce carbon dioxide during operation. So it looks like we found. Our answer is going to be statement C, and this right here is going to be my final answer for this problem.