a) A nuclear power station delivers 1 GW of electricity for a year from uranium fission. Given that a single fission event delivers about 200 MeV of heat, estimate the number of atoms that underwent fission, their mass, and the loss of mass of the fuel elements.
B1
a) A nuclear power station delivers 1 GW of electricity for a year from uranium fission. Given that a single fission event delivers about 200 MeV of heat, estimate the number of atoms that underwent fission, their mass, and the loss of mass of the fuel elements.
b) Uranium 238 has a half-life of about 4.5 billion years. All the 238U now on Earth was created in stars and has been here since the formation of Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Consider a kilogram of pure 238 U present at the formation of the Earth.
i) Calculate the activity of the kilogram at that time. Sketch a graph of the activity of the uranium since then to the present day. Label the axes with appropriate numbers and units. Mark on your graph the half-life and the characteristic decay time.
ii) 238 U decays through a chain of thirteen very short-lived radionuclides (longest half- live only 1600 years) before reaching a stable isotope of lead. If what remains of this uranium has for the last few million years been in a stable rock formation from which nothing escapes, approximately what activity will the rock have now?
c) In the circuit in the diagram, six 1 kN resistors are connected with three 2 V cells.
i) Find the current in the resistor between point A and point O.
ii) Find the value of the p.d. across the resistor between point B and point C
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