The potential energy of heavy nuclei has been calculated in the quasimolecular shape path from a generalized liquid drop model including the proximity energy, the charge and mass asymmetries and the microscopic corrections. The potential barriers are multiple-humped. The second maximum is the saddle-point. It corresponds to the transition from compact one-body shapes with a deep neck to two touching ellipsoids. The scission point lies at the end of an energy plateau well below the saddle-point and where the effects of the nuclear attractive forces between two separated fragments vanish. The energy on this plateau is the sum of the kinetic and excitation energies of the fragments. The shell and pairing corrections play an essential role to select the most probable fission path. The potential barrier heights agree with the experimental data and the theoretical half-lives follow the trend of the experimental values. A third peak and a shallow third minimum appear in asymmetric decay paths when one fragment is close to a double magic quasi-spherical nucleus, while the smaller one changes from oblate to prolate shapes.