In 1972, a worker at a nuclear fuel reprocessing plant noticed something suspicious about a routine analysis of uranium from a natural mineral source in Africa. Together with natural uranium, the material under study contained three isotopes - three forms with different atomic masses: uranium 238, which is most often found on Earth; uranium 234, the rarest; and uranium 235, an isotope that is desirable because it can withstand a nuclear chain reaction. For weeks, experts at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) remained perplexed, according to Secrets of the FED.
In other parts of the earth's crust, on the moon and in meteorites, uranium 235 atoms make up 0.72 percent. Samples from the Oklo source in Gabon, a former French colony in West Africa, had uranium 235 at 0.717 percent. This small difference was enough to inspire French scientists to continue studying what was found. Studies have shown that the total mass of uranium 235 was approximately 200 kilograms. This uranium appeared to have been extracted in the distant past. Today, this amount is enough to make half a dozen nuclear bombs. Researchers and scientists from all over the world have gathered in Gabon to further study uranium from Oklo.
The discovery in Oklo surprised everyone in the audience that this place is actually a modern underground nuclear reactor, which does not fit into our existing scientific knowledge. Researchers believe this ancient nuclear reactor is approximately 1.8 billion years old and has been in use for at least 500,000 years. Scientists conducted several other tests in a uranium mine, and the results were announced at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Researchers have found traces of fission products and fuel waste at various locations on the site, according to African news agencies.
Incredibly, our modern nuclear reactors are not comparable to this huge ancient one, either in appearance or in functioning. The length of the latter reached several kilometers. And the thermal impact from it on the environment was limited to only 40 meters. But what surprised researchers even more was that the radioactive waste did not move outside of this location, as it is still stored in the geological reservoirs of the area.
It is also surprising that a nuclear reaction took place in such a way that a by-product, plutonium, was obtained, and that it itself was so soft that scientists called it the "Holy Grail" of atomic science. That is, as soon as a nuclear reaction began, the ancients had the ability to increase the power output and at the same time prevent an explosion or an uncontrolled release of energy.
Researchers have called the Oklo nuclear reactor "natural," but the very fact of its existence is far beyond our understanding. Some researchers who participated in the testing concluded that the minerals were enriched in the distant past, about 1.8 billion years ago, in order to spontaneously produce a chain reaction. The scientists also determined that water was used to soften the reaction in the same way that modern nuclear reactors cool the graphite-cadmium rolls, preventing the reactor from going critical and exploding.
However, Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the United States Atomic Energy Commission and Nobel laureate for his work on the synthesis of heavy elements, pointed out that the conditions must be perfectly correct for uranium to "burn" in a reaction. For example, the water involved in a nuclear reaction like this ancient reactor must have been extremely pure. Even one millionth of a pollutant will “poison” the reaction and shut down the equipment. The problem is that there is no such pure water in the world.
Some experts talked about the improbability of the Oklo nuclear reactor, because never in geologically assumed history was the Oklo deposit rich enough in uranium 235. When these deposits were formed in the distant past, due to the slow radioactive decay of uranium 235, fissionable material would be only three percent of the total deposits is mathematically small for a nuclear reaction. However, there was definitely a reaction, it is proven. The mystery lies precisely in the fact that, presumably, the original uranium was much richer than the uranium 235 that exists in nature.
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NIKOLAY KOZIOROV