• gnutrino@programming.dev
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      2 months ago

      Yes if they have enough energy (see for example https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-74045-5). What you won’t get with proton-induced fission is an explosion as the fission doesn’t emit protons which can go on to cause further fissions so there’s no chain reaction (unless you already have a critical mass for normal neutron-induced fission in which case it’s going to explode even without the protons).

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
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      2 months ago

      yeah, i think it’s possible to split U-238 with fast protons. but the reproduction factor (how many new particles are emitted for every particle that you used to start the reaction) is smaller than 1, so it can’t explode that way.