Abstract

Nuclear Science and Engineering, 161: 255-256 (2009). Nuclear engineers are well aware of the importance of the closed nuclear shell ?magic numbers? to nuclear engineering. Magic numbers are responsible for double-hump fission curves, the existence of delayed neutrons, and for xenon poisoning and xenon-induced power oscillations in reactors. Engineers are also aware of the binding energy per nucleon curve, and the fact that fusion is energetically possible for low-A nuclides while fission and alpha decay are energetically possible for high-A nuclides. All of this information came from experimental data. The magic numbers were inferred by noting discontinuities in nuclear systematic studies.1 The binding energy data were qualitatively fit by the semiempirical mass equation, which was an attempt to combine the liquid drop model and the quantized nuclear shell model. For more than 40 years, no theory was put forward that could quantitatively explain why all of these ideas worked...