Mr. Speaker, part of the opposition to Bill C-4 stems from the lack of knowledge behind how the process works. That is why I am explaining it.
As I was saying, in splitting the uranium atom, an enormous amount of energy is released. In fact the splitting of one uranium atom releases seven million times the energy produced by burning one atom of carbon. The potential for creating energy from fission was immediately recognized then. The clues all came together, including Einstein's earlier theory of mass and energy equivalence.
The expression “splitting the atom” is a technical misnomer. What is actually being split or fissioned is the nucleus, not the atom. The total number of protons plus neutrons stays the same. That is both sides of the equation have the same number of nucleons. There are many different fission reactions for uranium-235. The material we start with is always the same but a range of elements can be produced.
The neutrons being liberated generally have high energy; that is, they are being released at a very high speed and considerable energy is released. This is accompanied by a small loss of mass in the system. This is in accordance with Einstein's famous equation which states that mass is a very concentrated form of energy.
Early scientists noted the neutron was what caused the fission in the uranium nucleus. They also noted that several neutrons were released during fission. If one of those neutrons could be made to hit another uranium nucleus, it could cause that nucleus to also fission. Then several more neutrons would be admitted that could cause more uranium atoms to fission and so on. This is called a chain reaction.
If fewer neutrons are being generated by fission than are being used to initiate fission reactions, the process is not self-sustaining, and is termed subcritical. This is the case with ore bodies. That is why we do not have nuclear reactions happening in nature. If exactly the same number of neutrons are being generated as are being used to split the nuclei, the nuclear reaction is said to be critical. In this case, a controlled amount of energy is constantly being released in a sustained chain reaction.
This is the process that nuclear reactors use. The energy is released in the form of heat which heats the cooling moderator and then generates steam which in turn turns the turbines which go to the grid which provides us with power to our homes.
One problem is that most nucleis absorb neutrons and this absorption removes them from sustaining a chain reaction. Thus any attempt to create a chain reaction must minimize the presence of neutron absorbers.
Chain reactions do not happen in ore bodies, for example, because the uranium in the ore bodies consists mostly of uranium-238 and that only has a low concentration of uranium-235. The ore body also contains too many neutron absorbing impurities.
It took large teams of scientists many years to discover how to achieve exactly the right conditions.
First, there needs to be a core of fission material, that is material that will fission. Uranium-235 is currently the primary material used. By a quirk of physics, the fission atom splits most readily if the bombarding neutrons are going quite slowly. As neutrons emitted by the fission process are going fast, the core needs to be surrounded by a material called a moderator that slows the neutrons down. Only a few materials are good at moderating neutrons without absorbing them. The more equal the nuclear mass of the moderating material--