New points of view on the various aspects of nuclear fission

It can be shown that the symmetric,or bimodal, fission of 258Fm results from a kind of leak through the barrier created by the Coulomb energy of the fission products. Indeed, the total fission energy of the fragment pairs 128Sn-130Sn and 126Sn-132Sn is greater than the Coulomb barrier of these pairs; this explains the considerable fission yield at A about 129.This observation suggests a new description of binary fission and to define new types of fission barrier. In heavy nuclei, symmetric fission can be in competition with cluster-fission, also called quasi-fission. In superheavy nuclei, cluster-fission takes the place of symmetric fission. It can be shown that there exist two different modes of ternary fission