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Nuclear fission splits a heavy nucleus such as uranium or plutonium into two lighter nuclei, which are called fission products. Yield refers to the fraction of a fission product produced per fission.
Yield can be broken down by:
Isotope and element yields will change as the fission products undergo beta decay, while chain yields do not change after completion of neutron emission by a few neutron-rich initial fission products , with half-life measured in seconds.
A few isotopes can be produced directly by fission, but not by beta decay because the would-be precursor with atomic number one greater is stable and does not decay. Chain yields do not account for these "shadowed" isotopes; however, they have very low yields because they are far less neutron-rich than the original heavy nuclei.