A nuclear chain reaction very much like the one that Enrico Fermi and his colleagues famously demonstrated in 1942 had certainly taken place, all on its own and some two billion years before. The abundance of these fission products proved so high that no other conclusion could be drawn. Indisputable proof came from an examination of the new, lighter elements created when a heavy nucleus is broken in two. Physicists confirmed the basic idea that natural fission reactions were responsible for the depletion in uranium 235 at Oklo quite soon after the anomalous uranium was discovered. But only recently did my colleagues and I finally clarify major details of what exactly went on inside one of those ancient reactors. These zones were all identified decades ago. Finally, there should be no significant amounts of boron, lithium or other so-called poisons, which absorb neutrons and would thus bring any nuclear reaction to a swift halt.Īmazingly, the actual conditions that prevailed two billion years ago in what researchers eventually determined to be 16 separate areas within the Oklo and adjacent Okelobondo uranium mines were very close to what Kuroda outlined. The third important ingredient is a neutron “moderator,” a substance that can slow the neutrons given off when a uranium nucleus splits so that they are more apt to induce other uranium nuclei to break apart. For example, two billion years ago (about when the Oklo deposit formed) uranium 235 must have constituted approximately 3 percent, which is roughly the level provided artificially in the enriched uranium used to fuel most nuclear power stations. But this isotope is radioactive and decays about six times faster than does uranium 238, which indicates that the fissile fraction was much higher in the distant past. Today even the most massive and concentrated uranium deposit cannot become a nuclear reactor, because the uranium 235 concentration, at less than 1 percent, is just too low. This requirement helps to ensure that the neutrons given off by one fissioning nucleus are absorbed by another before escaping from the uranium vein.Ī second prerequisite is that uranium 235 must be present in sufficient abundance. Kuroda’s first condition was that the size of the uranium deposit should exceed the average length that fission-inducing neutrons travel, about two thirds of a meter. In this process, a stray neutron causes a uranium 235 nucleus to split, which gives off more neutrons, causing others of these atoms to break apart in a nuclear chain reaction. Kuroda, a chemist from the University of Arkansas, calculated what it would take for a uraniumore body spontaneously to undergo selfsustained fission. Inghram of the University of Chicago pointed out that some uranium deposits might have once operated as natural versions of the nuclear fission reactors that were then becoming popular. Wetherill of the University of California at Los Angeles and Mark G. The answer came only when someone recalled a prediction published 19 years earlier. Further analyses showed that ore from at least one part of the mine was far short on uranium 235: some 200 kilograms appeared to be missing- enough to make half a dozen or so nuclear bombs.įor weeks, specialists at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) remained perplexed. That tiny discrepancy was enough to alert French scientists that something strange had happened. But in these samples, which came from the Oklo deposit in Gabon (a former French colony in west equatorial Africa), uranium 235 constituted just 0.717 percent. Elsewhere in the earth’s crust, on the moon and even in meteorites, uranium 235 atoms make up 0.720 percent of the total. As is the case with all natural uranium, the material under study contained three isotopes- that is to say, three forms with differing atomic masses: uranium 238, the most abundant variety uranium 234, the rarest and uranium 235, the isotope that is coveted because it can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. He had been conducting a routine analysis of uranium derived from a seemingly ordinary source of ore. In May 1972 a worker at a nuclear fuel–processing plant in France noticed something suspicious. Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2005 issue of Scientific American.
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