Thanks for reading Scientific American. In 1972 in Oklo, Africa, a team of scientists found that the Uranium rich area was actually home to an advanced subterranean nuclear reactor. There was very little oxygen in Earths very early atmosphere. Our key insight was the realization that different xenon isotopes in our Oklo sample were created at different times following a schedule that depended on the half-lives of their iodine parents and tellurium grandparents. In particular, why was the xenon generated during a given operational pulse not driven off during the next one? AFP. Uranium is the primary element used to generate energy via nuclear fission. Moreover, scientists found geological evidence that uranium in lens-shaped veins of uranium ore had undergone self-sustaining fission chain reactions . However, these French scientists found something fishy: The uranium sample only contained 0.717% of uranium 235. These ancient "batteries" were found by German archaeologist Wilhelm Konig in 1938 just outside of Baghdad, Iraq. The ancient reactor consisted of five hundred tons of utilized uranium ore in six different areas. These nuclear reactors have survived two billion years of geologic time. Not a reactor, just a coincidence of many factors making a subcritical state possible. The small difference was sufficient to warn French scientists that there was something suspicious with the minerals.These minor facts led to a further inquiry which exhibits that a part of the mine was well below the standard amount of uranium 235. including President Reagan's 'Trust but Verify' nuclear missile disarmament treaty with the Soviets, and he assured me he was happy to be quoted about his strong . Your email address will not be published. 25: 781-782. Did these reactors run steadily or in fits and starts? Some university science faculty and for the use of inclusive language and terminology: administrators are resistant to making . An additional seventeenth natural nuclear reactor was also discovered at Bangomb, located about 30 km to the southeast of Oklo. When the reactor cooled down, the longer-lived xenon precursors (those that would later spawn xenon 132, 131 and 129, which we found in relative abundance) were preferentially incorporated into growing grains of aluminum phosphate. A second prerequisite is that uranium 235 must be present in sufficient abundance. During a routine measurement of uranium ore from a mine in Oklo, in southeastern Gabon, the French noticed that the uranium-235 content in the ore was . Even a few parts per million of any contaminant will poison the reaction, bringing it to a halt. Mother Nature, it seems, knows how to operate a nuclear reactor. Undeniable Proof that we are Not the First Species of this Planet . All Rights Reserved. As is the case with all natural uranium, the material under study contained three isotopes- three forms with different atomic masses: uranium 238, the most abundant variety; uranium 234, the rarest; and uranium 235, the isotope that can sustain a nuclear chain reaction. It housed CIA offices. Scientists performed several other investigation at the uranium mine, and the results were made public at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency. What is surprising is that a nuclear reaction had occurred in a way that the plutonium, the by-product, was created, and the nuclear reaction itself had been moderated. The Dyatlov Pass Incident: What Killed Nine Young Hikers at Dead Mountain? In: Uranium-Series Geochemistry. She is currently compiling a book of all of the nuclear interviews and plans to interview her father again as the Fukushima disaster approaches the four-month mark. What mechanism provided the necessary self-regulation? Wednesday, December 2, 1942, was the date set for the make-or-break experiment. Porcelli and Swarzenski, 2003. These control rods consist of elements (such as silver, iridium, and cadmium) that are capable of absorbing neutrons without undergoing fission. In an area of stable geology, they found a number of deposits, all oddly . After doing research, the mine was a nuclear reactor with a large scale in prehistoric times, with a capacity of approximately 500 tons of uranium ore in six areas, and can generate power of 100 thousand watts. The views expressed are those of the author(s) and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. It is widely believed that the origin of earth was around 4.6 billion years ago, then about a billion years later life started to form. Eventually, enough of the water would have boiled away until there wasn't enough left in the reactor to slow down the neutrons. Mossman et al., 2008. 2005. Scientific American is part of Springer Nature, which owns or has commercial relations with thousands of scientific publications (many of them can be found at, Blood Lust: The Early History of Transfusion, At the #NASAtweetup for the Last Shuttle Launch. Scientists have found an old nuclear reactor in a two-million-year-old mine in Africa that they call "a time capsule from the Olduvai Gorge." The technology might have been used for power generation, but scientists also say it's possible this type of nuclear reactor could be used for medicine, space travel, and more. "Then the Lord rained down fire and tar from heaven upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and utterly destroyed them." Genesis 19:24. Remember that a high isotopic abundance of uranium-235 is just one of four conditions required for a natural nuclear reactor to develop. x. Gradually, the excitement at the end of the 20th century subsided, uranium mining continued, and the reactors were somehow destroyed. ETs or foreign intelligence once inhabited earth and they preserve it for us. Most of the world's existing reactors are power reactors, providing the heat needed to turn turbines that run electric-power generators. It turns out, no significant concentrations of uranium developed on Earth prior to about two billion years ago. Per . Oklo Mine (sometimes Oklo Reactor or Oklo Mines), located in Oklo, Gabon on the west coast of Central Africa, is believed to be the only natural nuclear fission reactor.Oklo consists of 16 sites at which self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions are thought to have taken place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, and ran for hundreds of thousands of years. among other things, noble gases from the solar wind that were collected and returned A Nuclear Reactor found in the Center of the Solar System: Who Built it? The nuclear fission began, moderated by water, and continued until all available water boiled away as a result of nuclear heat. The last reactor (#17) is located at Bangomb, ~30 km southeast of Oklo. Nuclear scientists well know that reactors do not work with natural uranium . In 1972, a worker at a Reactor fuel processing plant observed something strange in a routine analysis of uranium extracted from a mineral source from Africa. 198: 157-167. There are four conditions which must be met in order for a stable natural nuclear reactor to develop: 1. But because a reaction did take place, that means the uranium was far richer than what could have formed naturally. Ancient 200,000-Year-Old Anunnaki City Was Recently Found in Africa . There were no hijackers. The Behavior of U- and Th- series Nuclides in Groundwater. 14. Uranium has three isotopes: uranium-238, uranium-235, and uranium-234. For example, measured with respect to the amount of xenon 132 present, the depletion of xenon 136 (being four atomic mass units heavier) would have been twice that of xenon 134 (two atomic mass units heavier) if physical sorting had operated. BREAKING NEWS ! Billions of years ago, the abundance of uranium-235 in uranium ore was high enough for a self-sustaining fission reaction to develop. This similarity supports the notion not only that groundwater passing through the Oklo deposit was a neutron moderator but also that its boiling away at times accounted for the self-regulation that protected these natural reactors from destruction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9PAxAK6fBk, Scientist concludes death is only an illusion, it is not real, The Nazi Antarctic Fortress: Base 211 and Operation Highjump, Rare, ancient maps show how thousands of years ago, an advanced civilization mapped the Earth, Secret Space Program Whistleblower claims Humans are on Mars since 70s. However, uranium-238 decays at a much slower rate than uranium-235, so uranium-235 has become more and more depleted (relative to uranium-238) over the Earths 4.54 billion year history. Scientists appear to have unraveled the mystery of uranium ore found at a mine in Oklo . Because there was really no other possible explanations for it. Lamoreaux and Torger sons calculations hinge on certain details about how Oklo operated, and in that respect the work my colleagues and I have done might help elucidate this perplexing issue. Another important condition is that uranium be concentrated. The second is that there needs to be a lot of uranium 235. The physicists' first, logical response to such an unusual ratio of U-235 was that this was not natural uranium. When carefully controlled, a self-sustaining critical reaction of nuclear fission can generate power for a long timeuntil the nuclear fuel becomes depleted of fissionable atoms. Which again may have all occurred naturally but to many researchers, this seems more like it was designed. Ex-Apollo Astronaut Claimed Humans Are Ancient Aliens, Visited Earth From Space . If you look around, there are clues found all around the world from the Great Pyramids of Egypt to the Sacsayhuaman ruins in Peru that point to the possibility that advanced prehistoric civilizations may have existed on this planet tens of thousands or even millions of years ago and in this article we will talk about one of the most intriguing finds, an ancient nuclear reactor. ago. But only recently did my colleagues and I finally clarify major details of what exactly went on inside one of those ancient reactors. As of today, however, the Gabon natural nuclear reactors remain unique, and certainly more irreplaceable, than the most valued specimens from the Moon and Mars. Since the Gabon reactors were so stable, operated over such a long time, and have been preserved for two billion years, scientific study of these unique natural reactors provides important insights relevant to anthropogenic nuclear power and nuclear waste storage. This water must be extremely pure. Two billion years ago parts of an African uranium deposit naturally underwent nuclear fission. These zones were all identified decades ago. Thanks for reading Scientific American. The x-axis is in units of millions of years. The reason for this is simple: oxygen. Ansh Srivastava. When these deposits were originated in the past, due to the slowness of the radioactive decay of U-235, the fissionable material would have constituted only 3 percent of the total deposits something too low mathematically speaking for a nuclear reaction to occur. They also found that water had been used to moderate the reaction in the same way that modern nuclear reactors cool down using graphite-cadium shafts preventing the reactor from going into critical state and exploding. 2.2k views. But in this case, the reactor is a region of natural uranium within the Earth's crust, found in Okla, Gabon. Elsewhere in the earths crust, on the moon and even in meteorites, uranium 235 atoms make up 0.720 percent of the total. Spheres with fine grooves around them found in mines in South Africa have been said by some to be naturally formed masses of mineral matter. CIA/MOSSAD/ISI is owned and operated by the Rothschild-Rockefeller Cartel. The next year George A. Cowan, who represented the U.S. at that meeting (and who, incidentally, is one of the founders of the renowned Santa Fe Institute, where he is still affiliated), wrote an article for Scientific American [see A Natural Fission Reactor, by George A. Cowan, July 1976] in which he explained what scientists had surmised about the operation of these ancient reactors. The Bangombe reactor is of special interest because it was more shallowly buried than those unearthed at the Oklo and Okelobondo mines and thus has had more water moving through it in recent times. Scientists estimate the Oklo reactors would have had samples with roughly 3.6% uranium-235 that's close to the enrichment threshold of modern nuclear reactors. 120, no. Building 7 was a controlled demolition. NUCLEAR REACTOR OPERATIONAL AFTER 34 YEARS, START OF NUCLEAR POWERED - PHILIPPINES 2022 Update: Latest development regards to Nuclear Energy in the Philippines, reviving the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant made possible by the Duterte Administration. Danilo Russo/Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0), Greenland's Ice Sheet Hasnt Been This Hot For At Least 1,000 Years, New Anti-Aging Pills For Dogs Hope To Make Them Live Longer. And they certainly can, though not necessarily about reactor design. The results of the research were made public at a conference of the International Atomic Energy Agency and although many labeled the finding "wondrous" but "naturally . However, a reaction took place mysteriously, suggesting that the original uranium was far richer in Uranium 235 than that in a natural formation. The incredible features of the Great Pyramid of Egypt. The isotopic distribution of uranium is remarkably uniform in Earths crust, so all uranium ore mined today contains about 0.720% uranium-235. Scientists have found an old nuclear reactor in a two-million-year-old mine in Africa that they call "a time capsule from the Olduvai Gorge." The technology might have been used for power generation, but scientists also say it's possible this type of nuclear reactor could be used for medicine, space travel, and more. The findings prove that at that time, ancient civilizations were more advanced than we are now. 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