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Understanding the 2 Billion-Year-Old Natural Nuclear Reactor In W Africa
KentuckyFC (1144503) writes "In June 1972, nuclear scientists at the Pierrelatte uranium enrichment plant in south-east France noticed a strange deficit in the amount of uranium-235 they were processing. That's a serious problem in a uranium enrichment plant where every gram of fissionable material has to be carefully accounted for. The ensuing investigation found that the anomaly originated in the ore from the Oklo uranium mine in Gabon, which contained only 0.600% uranium-235 compared to 0.7202% for all other ore on the planet. It turned out that this ore was depleted because it had gone critical some 2 billion years earlier, creating a self-sustaining nuclear reaction that lasted for 300,000 years and using up the missing uranium-235 in the process. Since then, scientists have studied this natural reactor to better understand how buried nuclear waste spreads through the environment and also to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years since the reactor switched off. Now a review of the science that has come out of Oklo shows how important this work has become but also reveals that there is limited potential to gather more data. After an initial flurry of interest in Oklo, mining continued and the natural reactors--surely among the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet-- have all been mined out."
Come on... who here doesn't think that this isn't the remains of a eons own star cruiser out there?
Well okay, it probably isn't... but it would be cool if it was!
Except for the shallow one mentioned at the end of the article that still remains, just mostly washed out...
It seems like the other aspects they wanted to study (like the spread of byproducts) is still feasible, since those would have spread beyond the mining site if they spread at all.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Is there a non-tablet-friendly version of the article? One that's non-blinding on a normal screen?
Sorry for trying to read it...
Seeing things fly made us dream of the skies and eventually led to flight.
Spider webs led to modern ballistic fibers.
But this time, there was no such natural inspiration. We dreamed and created something we could not have conceived of have been standing on without ever noticing (well, not for long before an 'invisible curse' killed everyone anyways) not even two centuries ago. Only with functional, if crude, reactors operational did we come across their ancient burnt out forms.
We made the atom ours, friend.
What's the deal with these ads that pop up from the bottom on slashdot?
Wasn't the "beta" experiment enough to piss people off with?
They need to find new ways?
Wow, these guys really didn't waste any time, did they?
They found out in '72 and now they publish that the mine is practically gone. So someone actually beat them to it?
I mean they could dump it on the moon or anywhere as they come from space. However, maybe they needed to make plutonium for so they built some natural reactors. Manufactured and extracted the plutonium, dump the rest back in the pits and fueled up left this god forsaken rock. Possible after one of the made it with one the locals for fun....
No wounder dinosaurs died out, they all worked at nuclear power plant
What bollocks. I think the actual question to ask is how it's possible to create the conditions for an very large (the size of the mine)and extremely low density (the concentration of natural ore) nuclear reactor.
In the days the preference for civilian reactors was to develop further along the design of the compact high density submarine reactors. The nuclear industry never got over that. There are prototypes of large reactors with much lower power density. It's a natural question to ask how low enrichment and low density one can go.
We're just some alien's toilet.
rewriting history since 2109
It would have to have been about 3.5 billion years ago for that, not 2 billion years ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolutionary_history_of_life
But it could have added a higher mutation rate to the bacteria/algae that did exist and lead to the rest of us eventually.
3 x 10^9 years - 300 x 10^3 years is still roughly 3 x 10^9 years. Where did they get the 1.5 x 10^9 years? What am I missing here?
captcha: ancients
I, too, would like to know how this works!
Start the reactor....
And why would an advanced civilization descend into a gravity well to dump their spent fuel? Compressing it into a sphere and chucking it into a gas giant, throwing it into a sun or stuffing it into a large asteroid would be far less costly in terms of energy and wouldn't threaten a biosphere.
A post offers reprocessing as a solution to the reactor waste problem, and a proper counter to that argument is that reprocessing has a waste problem all its own. The total amount of long-lived waste may be reduced, but the "hot" shorter lived waste get spread around into corrosive liquid effluents?
Could a a person remind Slashdot readers of this tradeoff without suggesting that the original post was made by an untutored fool? Or is it important to label someone suggesting reprocessing as a foolish person, to offer a (mild) public scolding of their idea because reprocessing is a bad enough policy that shaming is merited?
They can't! Didn't you ever watch the 70's sci-fi show "Space 1999"? ;)
"...to discover whether the laws of physics that govern nuclear reactions may have changed in the 1.5 billion years..."
Laws of physics changed?
What?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
"to discover whether the laws of physics...may have changed"
No.
"After an initial flurry of interest in Oklo, mining continued and the natural reactors--surely among the most extraordinary natural phenomena on the planet-- have all been mined out."
That this story is 42 years late?
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
It says the reactor powered on two billion years ago, that is 2,000 million years ago, then it says that it ran for 300,000 years, that is 0.3 million years. Then it says that it has been powered off for 1,5 billion years ago (1,500 million years ago). If it was powered for less than a million years, why do the numbers disagree by 500 million years?
How much heat could such a natural reactor generate? Would it be enough to affect local climate? Ocean currents and/or temperatures?
Don't let the hippies hear you suggest that fission is a naturally occurring process. They might...
...go nuclear.
*sunglasses*
"You will pay for your lack of vision..." - Emperor Palpatine to Ray Charles
> mining continued and the natural ... have all been mined out.
> reactors
Ya know where you could have found an astonishingly detailed fossil record of life on Earth over deep time?
Coal beds.
If we hadn't burned them.
I found what he said to be the same old comment and argument about nuclear waste. And the industry rushed to make reactors that did a piss poor job of using all of the energy in the fuel. And during the time the 'perfected' one reactor, there were others that could have done a hell of a lot better. Their was a molten core reactor which should be able to use up the life, so it would create little waste so it would be safe in the decades.
For some reason and it is a combination, of public fear, government buy offs, and the industry {nuclear} dictating everything, as to why non of these ideas have come to pass. And it appears to be at a global scale with the industry, since no other country seems interested in developing or continuing research on previous reactors.
I understood the Chas's point, and his passion to see us stop wasting and using up resources.
Another idiot too lazy to put up some facts. But that goes against the crazy right? Uranium hexafluoride - after reading about it for 5 minutes, it seems this would not be an ingredient in ice cream. Well, maybe that Safeway crap - but if you purchase that, you deserve it.
I realize now this is actually a joke.
And a not so nice way to do it. It may not matter which way. The person that is going to cry about a rude explanation - focusing on the insult instead of the advice is probably doing that most of the time. I would say it is probably a waste of time either way to those types of people. I cant think of any cry babies that are noteworthy.
Given TFS later tells of "1.5 billion years since switching off", and the impossibility of measuring 300.000 years accurately in this context, I suppose the reactor was active for 300 million years, not 300 thousand years. Is ee the "300000" number is in TFA, but it looks suspect.
-><- no