We can imagine ourselves building a nucleus by adding protons and neutrons. These will always fill the lowest available level. Thus the first two protons fill level zero, the next six protons fill level one, and so on. As with electrons in the periodic table, protons in the outermost shell will be relatively loosely bound to the nucleus if there are only few protons in that shell, because they are farthest from the center of the nucleus. Therefore, nuclei which have a full outer proton shell will have a higher binding energy than other nuclei with a similar total number of protons. All this is true for neutrons as well.