Nuclear energy is energy that comes from the nucleus (core) of an atom. Atoms are the particles that make up all objects in the universe. Atoms consist of neutrons, protons, and electrons. Nuclear energy is released from an atom through one of two processes: nuclear fusion or nuclear fission.

Nuclear energy comes from splitting atoms in a reactor to heat water into steam, turn a turbine and generate electricity. Ninety-four nuclear reactors in 28 states generate nearly 20 percent of the nation’s electricity, all without carbon emissions because reactors use uranium, not fossil fuels.

Nuclear energy has been powering the U.S. grid for the past 6 decades and produces around 1 gigawatt of power per plant on average.

The Sun is a main-sequence star, and, as such, generates its energy by nuclear fusion of hydrogen nuclei into helium. In its core, the Sun fuses 620 million metric tons of hydrogen and makes 616 million metric tons of helium each second.

The process of nuclear fusion combines hydrogen atoms to produce helium and the energy that keeps the Sun shining. Thus, the same naturally occurring elements that can be found on Earth, up to and including elements as heavy as uranium, are also present in the Sun.

For the most modern nuclear weapons, with high efficiencies, the fusion plasma plasma temperature can be over 500 million kelvin by the time the reaction is complete. The Sun’s core is 16 million kelvin. So hydrogen bombs can produce temperatures up to 31 times hotter than The Sun’s core.

In the core of the Sun hydrogen is being converted into helium. This is called nuclear fusion. It takes four hydrogen atoms to fuse into each helium atom. During the process some of the mass is converted into energy.

The Sun is fueled by a process known as fusion: four hydrogen atoms undergo a series of collisions and eventually fuse together to form one helium atom. During fusion, this missing mass is converted to energy. Our Sun has enough hydrogen to continue burning for another five billion years.

The Sun shines because it is able to convert energy from gravity into light. This is what happens to the hydrogen gas in the core of the Sun. It gets squeeze together so tightly that four hydrogen nuclei combine to form one helium atom. This is called nuclear fusion.

5 So, even if Earth somehow manages to survive extreme heat and physical collision with the Sun, life on Earth will no longer be possible. Without nuclear fusion in the Sun’s core, the Sun essentially becomes useless to us. We will no longer have a source of energy to power our planet.

After the Sun exhausts the hydrogen in its core, it will balloon into a red giant, consuming Venus and Mercury. Earth will become a scorched, lifeless rock — stripped of its atmosphere, its oceans boiled off. While the Sun won’t become a red giant for another 5 billion years, a lot can happen in that time.

All stars die, and eventually — in about 5 billion years — our sun will, too. Once its supply of hydrogen is exhausted, the final, dramatic stages of its life will unfold, as our host star expands to become a red giant and then tears its body to pieces to condense into a white dwarf.

Without the Sun’s rays, all photosynthesis on Earth would stop. All plants would die and, eventually, all animals that rely on plants for food — including humans — would die, too.

On a larger scale, the removal of the sun would also remove its protective magnetic field from around our solar system. By removing the heliosheath for a second, we’d be allowing all of this radiation into our solar system.

Venus

Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth’s “sister planet” because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition.

Planets in Our Solar System

• Mercury. Mercury—the smallest planet in our solar system and closest to the Sun—is only slightly larger than Earth’s Moon.
• Venus. Venus spins slowly in the opposite direction from most planets.
• Earth.
• Mars.
• Jupiter.
• Saturn.
• Uranus.
• Neptune.

Unless Planet Nine is observed, its existence is purely conjectural. Several alternative hypotheses have been proposed to explain the observed clustering of TNOs….Planet Nine.

The order of the planets in the solar system, starting nearest the sun and working outward is the following: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and then the possible Planet Nine. If you insist on including Pluto, it would come after Neptune on the list.