What Do We Know About Nuclear Fission?

Abstract

Nuclear fission, although a physical phenomenon, is also of interest to the chemist. It was discovered by chemists, and chemists have made a material contribution to our present knowledge in this field. A comprehensive theory of nuclear fission has not, as yet, been developed, despite the volume of experimental data that has amassed in the 35 years since its discovery. In the past few years discoveries have been made which cannot be explained with conventional theoretical models of nuclear fission. The most important discovery was that of shape isomerism, a novel type of nuclear isomerism. It would appear that an accurate calculation of fission barriers is a prerequisite for precise explanation of many experimental findings. Recent results in this connection and an outline of the present state of our knowledge of nuclear fission constitute the main theme of this paper.