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Ancient Nuclear Reactor
Created with nature’s own fair hands.
May 1972, Gabon, Africa, a uranium ore package’s sourced from at-first-look regular ore deposit. The package took its road to France when it’s supposed to power up a nuclear power plant. However; before it’d found its way to the reactor, it had to be examined then enriched to contain from 3% to 5% of uranium’s isotope-235 needed to sustain a nuclear chain reaction.
The ordinary procedure, done many times before by French scientists, had an extraordinary outcome. The level of 235 was shorter than expected in comparison to ores in other deposits and found meteorites. The expected 0.72% offed the line to 0.717%. A bolt from the blue took their breaths away. What’s caused the missing part?
To clear the fog, the French sent out an expedition at the scene. They arrived in Gabon, set up, and got ready to work. Visiting the deposit of question, they managed to supplied ores from around the veins, wishing to answer if that’s an anomaly. Determining the size of the area over which the depleted isotope’s been distributed would allow them to do so. Since then, they’d gain a card to discard it as an abnormality. Yet, the reality turned out to be completely different. Overall, calculating the missing parts revealed the deposit was shorter for about 200kg of uranium.
French scientists were amazed, staying at an impasse for whole weeks. It continued until someone resourced to George Wetherill and Mark Inghram’s paper from 1953 stating that natural deposits, meeting certain geological conditions, could’ve worked as natural nuclear reactors in the past. Meaning to say, they’d’ve undergone self-sustained fission.
Certain conditions, allowing for natural-occurring fission, must provide enabling environment. First off, uranium ore must be concentrated so that neutron given-off in fission will chain the reaction. Further, the overall amount of isotope-235 in uranium ore must comprise from 3% to 5%. And last but not least, the environment must provide so-called moderator: a substance slowing down released neutrons, allowing to induce fission into further nuclei.
This hypothesis was confirmed by comparing the products originating in nuclear reactors and noticing their lack in underneath the Oklo. Which ought to mean…
