• We have updated the guidelines regarding posting political content: please see the stickied thread on Website Issues.

Ancient Or Natural Nuclear Reactors (e.g. Oklo In Gabon)

A

Anonymous

Guest
Has anyone heard about this?
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021016.html

Explanation: The remnants of nuclear reactors nearly two billion years old were found in the 1970s in Africa. These reactors are thought to have occurred naturally. No natural reactors exist today, as the relative density of fissile uranium has now decayed below that needed for a sustainable reaction. Pictured above is Fossil Reactor 15, located in Oklo, Gabon. Uranium oxide remains are visible as the yellowish rock. Oklo by-products are being used today to probe the stability of the fundamental constants over cosmological time-scales and to develop more effective means for disposing of human-manufactured nuclear waste

Details:
http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/

Link is dead. An archived version of this entry point for info on the Oklo natural reactors can be accessed at the Wayback Machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20021201165602/http://www.curtin.edu.au:80/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/

Some, if not all, the links on this archived page lead to the archived versions of the other MIA webpages.


sakina
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yeah. In fact, I seem to recall that back in the mid-70s in the Marvel Comics' Black Panther series, T'Challa's paradisical African kingdom was powered by just such a naturally-occurring nuclear reactor, and it was mentioned at the time that the writers had gotten the idea from news articles.
 
This 2009 Scientific American article provides some additional information and history that's not included in the 2011 blog article cited above.

The Workings of an Ancient Nuclear Reactor

Two billion years ago parts of an African uranium deposit spontaneously underwent nuclear fission. The details of this remarkable phenomenon are just now becoming clear

By Alex P. Meshik on January 26, 2009
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Scientific American.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ancient-nuclear-reactor/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top