How much energy does one gram of uranium have?

Answer 1

Approx. 200 MeV for one atom fission; and 1 g of uranium has ca. 6,023.1023/238 atoms.

But practically the released energy is much smaller because only the isotope 235U is fissile with thermal neutrons; the concentration of this isotope in natural uranium is ca. 0,72 %.

Answer 2

I don't recall exactly how much in kilowatts or watts, but I can tell you that 1 g of uranium produces as much as 3 tons of coal, meaning 1 kg of uranium = 3000 tons of coal. Nice and compact, huh?

Answer 3

Let's clarify something. You can neither create nor destroy mass, nor can you create nor destroy energy. You can only move them around from one frame of reference to another.

Einstein's mass-equivalence equation e = mc2 states that energy is mass and mass is energy. Many people confuse that and say that mass can be converted to energy and vice versa. That is not true. What is true is that, when you release the binding energy in the mass by nuclear fission or fusion, the excess mass (mass deficit) is carried away with the energy.

That said, if you could translate 1 kg of anything into energy, you would get 9x1016 joules of energy. That is about 21.5 megatons of TNT of energy.

Of course, nuclear fission is never 100% efficient. Not even close. Its a matter of procedural efficiency and of limitations of what we can accomplish. Look at the bomb dropped over Hiroshima. There was about 64.1 kg of U-235 when the core reached critical mass. Of that mass, is is estimated that only about 600 to 800 milligrams of U-235 was released, with a yield of about 5.4x1013 to 7.5x1013 joules, or about 13 to 18 kilotons of TNT of energy.

Answer 4

Theoretically this value is 7,15.10ex.8kJ for the fission of the isotope uranium-235.
An interesting comparison; the energy of a single fission of U-235 is equivalent to the energy released by 33.10ex.6 carbon atoms.

Answer 5

Uranium 238 is only a fertile isotope, not a fissile isotope.

Answer 6

Approx. 202,5 MeV per atom.