A piece of uranium the size of a peanut can create the same amount of enery as how many pounds of coal and how many gallons of oil?

Godwit

I don't know about peanuts. But in Heat Value where a Joule is a unit of energy, then Black Coal = 24-30 MJ/kg Crude Oil = 45-46 MJ/kb Uranium = 5000,000 MJ/kg http://www.world-nuclear.org/education/whyu.htm Where MJ is a Megajoule. Sep 21 09, 11:24 PM

looney_tunes

short answer: around 600 pounds of coal, or around 64 US gallons of oil. Estimate the peanut as having approximate length of 2cm, and cross-sectional diameter of 1cm - it's a large peanut, but simplifies some of the calculations.) Considering it as an ellipsoid, its volume if found as 4*pi*1*0.5*0.5/3, which is close to 1cm^3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellipsoid The density of Uranium is very close to 19g per cm^3. One ton of natural uranium can produce more than 40 million kilowatt-hours of electricity. This is equivalent to burning 16,000 tons of coal or 80,000 barrels of oil. http://web.ead.anl.gov/uranium/guide/facts/ So, if 1 ton (1,000 kg or 1,000,000g) produces the energy equivalent of 16,000 tons of coal, (dicey conversion - is it metric or imperial ton? since I'm aiming for pounds of coal, I'll call a ton 2000 pounds) 19g would be the equivalent of 0.000019 x 32,000,000 = 608 pounds of coal. It is also the energy equivalent of 0.00019 X 80,000 = 1.52 barrels of oil. A barrel of oil is 42 US gallons, so this is about 64 US gallons of oil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrel Sep 22 09, 2:34 AM