Part C: A comparison of the amount of energy released through a chemical reaction and nuclear fusion and fission.

In general, nuclear fusions and fissions will produce more energy than a chemical reaction. This is because the binding force or strong force holding the nucleus of an atom together takes more energy than the amount of energy keeping electrons and the nucleus.

In a chemical reaction an exchanging of electrons occur which will either result in an exothermic or an endothermic reaction. When the electrons are taken or giving or shared, depending on whether it's an ionic or covalent bond, they will always go into a state that takes less energy to hold. So when this happens, the energy that was previously used to hold the electrons and the nucleus together is then released in the form of light or heat. That's how the energy is produced in a chemical reaction.Nuclear fusions and fissions work differently from that though.

For a nuclear fusion to occur the nuclei of two atoms must be forced together. This takes a lot of energy because both charges of the nuclei are positive and therefore repel each other but this electromagnetic force can be overcome by speeding up the atoms to great speeds (speeding the up is just heating the atoms up to thermonuclear temps). Once the nuclei combine they then form a new heavier nucleus and a free atom which will generally release more energy than it took to create the fusion because some of the energy that had been used to keep the nucleus together was released in the process of fusing the nuclei into one.To produce a nuclear fission a single neutron must be shot at a high speed toward a nucleus. When this happens the added neutron causing the ratio of protons to neutrons to become different and unstable. So the nucleus will then split into two new nuclei that are more stable than the previous nucleus. In this process single neutrons will be released at great speeds which can then start another nuclear fission. The energy produced from the nuclear fission is once again due to the strong force that had been holding the nucleus together and is no longer needed.

So as you can see, in both nuclear fusion and fission the energy produced is the strong force energy that had previously been used to hold the nuclei together and the energy made in an exothermic chemical reaction is from the energy holding the electrons and nuclei together. And since the strong force energy is greater than the energy holding the electron to the nuclei a nuclear fission and fusion will generally be stronger than a chemical reaction. (Wikipedia, 2009)