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The lone proton has not to be worked on against any electrostatic force. So where does the energy come from? What is mass defect for a hydrogen nucleus?

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If you are talking about the "average" naturally occurring hydrogen atom then you have a weighted average that includes the occasional deuteron with it's 2.2 MeV binding energy (i.e. 1.1 MeV per nucleon). – dmckee♦ Nov 7 '12 at 13:51
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I think this question would be much better if there was a clearly identified reference. Doing a Google image search, it looks like most graphs define a proton to be the baseline. I don't doubt you could find one that shows what the question asks, it might be relative to the average binding energy or something else. – AlanSE Nov 7 '12 at 14:05
@dmckee : yes, perhaps you are right. perhaps i am talking about the average.it is right if i think that the binding energy per nucleon of hydrogen atom, 1H1 only, is zero, right? – Swapnanil Saha Nov 11 '12 at 14:55
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but it is zero,per nucleon, at least in the binding energy tables :upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/53/… – anna v Nov 12 '12 at 10:06

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