Nuclear Reactions and Applications

In Chapter 13 we learned about one kind of nuclear reaction—radioactivity. In this chapter we will learn about several other kinds of nuclear reactions and their importance in our society. 

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The most important use of barium is as a scavenger in electronic tubes. The metal, often in powder form or as an alloy with aluminum, is employed to remove the last traces of gases from vacuum and television picture tubes. Alloys of barium have numerous applications. It is incorporated to lead alloy grids of acid batteries for better performance and added to molten steel and metals in deoxidizing alloys to lower the oxygen content. Thin films of barium are used as lubricant suitable at high temperatures on the rotors of anodes in vacuum X-ray tubes and on alloys used for spark plugs. A few radioactive isotopes of this element find applications in nuclear reactions and spectrometry. 

Wojnarovits, L.In Handbook of Nuclear Chemistry. Chemical Applications of Nuclear Reactions and Radiations-, Vertes, A. Nagy, S. Klencsar, Z., Eds. Kluwer Academic Publishers Dordrecht, 2003 Vol. 3, pp 1-55. 

Other reactions with charged particles may be discussed in a similar way. In reactions with y-ray photons the compound nuclei are excited states of the target nuclei and may give off their excitation energy by emission of particles. It is evident from Fig. 8.11 that the same nuclides can be produced by application of various nuclear reactions, and by the method of cross bombardment radionuclides can be identified. 

You will learn about applications of nuclear reactions and the effects of radiation exposure. 

We simply define radiochemistry and nuclear chemistry by the content of this book, which is primarily written for chemists. The content contains fimdamental chapters followed by those devoted to applications. Each chapter ends with a section of exercises (with answers) and literature references. An historic introduction (Ch. 1) leads to chapters on stable isotopes and isotope separation, on unstable isotopes and radioactivity, and on radionuclides in nature (Ch. 2-5). Nuclear radiation - emission, absorbance, chemical effects radiation chemistry), detection and uses - is covered in four chapters (Ch. 6-9). This is followed by several chapters on elementary particles, nuclear structure, nuclear reactions and the production of new atoms (radio-nuclides of known elements as well as the transuranium ones) in the laboratory and in cosmos (Ch. 10-17). Before the four final chapters on nuclear energy and its environmental effects (Ch. 19-22), we have inserted a chapter on radiation biology and radiation protection (Ch. 18). Chapter 18 thus ends the fimdam tal part of radiochemistry it is essential to all students who want to use radionuclides in scientific research. By this arrangement, the book is subdivided into 3 parts fundamental ladiochemistry, nuclear reactions, and applied nuclear energy. We hope that this shall satisfy teachers with differrat educational goals. 

The interaction of nuclear radiation with matter is one of the most important aspects in nuclear chemistry, since most phenomena and applications of the discipline are, in one way or another, related to it. As a result of the interactions, changes may occur in the physical parameters and in the state (energy, direction, absorption) of the radiation particles as well as in the atoms and molecules of the substance (via ionization, excitation, nuclear reaction and, as a secondary effect, chemical reaction). The possible changes are summarized inO Table 8.1. 

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