Notes On Module 8 – Science and Society

Resource Description

Incidents, events and science
• Society has always turned to science for the answers whenever health and safety is at risk
and benefited the way societies function
• But it loses confidence in science when science is the cause of the natural disaster.
Nuclear reactions
• Generate energy through a process called nuclear fission or fusion
• Nuclear fission is the splitting of a large atomic nucleus into smaller nuclei, using neutrons,
releasing a vast amount of energy in the process, mostly in the form of kinetic energy of the
neutrons and daughter nuclides
• Uncontrolled Chain Reaction:
1. One neutron is fired into “fissile” (able to undergo nuclear fission) nucleus, such as U-235,
produces the highly unstable U-236
2. Splits it into 2 smaller “daughter” nuclei: Ba-141 and Kr-92 and 3 neutrons
3. Collide with other U-235 to cause further fission events, causing an uncontrolled chain
reaction to occur releasing a vast amount of energy in a very short (an explosion)