A Prehistoric Nuclear Reactor!

Finally! The exams are over, but, aside from having fun, there is nothing to do. However, as I was surfing the Net, nuclear physics interested me. Check out what I found out!

Creating a nuclear reaction is not simple. In power plants, it involves splitting uranium(U) atoms, a process that creates energy in the form of heat and neutrons, which go on to split other atoms. This process is called nuclear fission.In power plants, sustaining the immense amounts of energy created by nuclear fission requires the use of many scientists and technicians.

In fact, it wasn't until the late 1930s that physicists Enrico Fermi and Leo Szilard recommended uranium to be capable of sustaining a chain reaction. Szilard and Fermi conducted experiments at Columbia University and found significant neutron production with uranium, proving that the chain reaction was possible and enabling nuclear weapons. Szilard wrote on the night of the discovery, "There was no doubt in my mind that the world was headed for grief."

Due to the complexity of the process, the world was stunned in 1972 when French physicist Francis Perrin discovered that Mother Nature had done the work of inventing the nuclear reactor about 2 billion years before mankind did, beneath Oklo in Gabon, Africa. This natural reactor was formed when a uranium-rich mineral deposit came in contact with groundwater, Which slowed the neutrons ejected by the uranium molecules so that they could interact with and split other atoms. Heat was produced, hence the water turned into steam. Thus the process slowed. The environment cooled, the steam condensed, and the process repeated.

Scientists estimate that the Oklo reactor ran for hundreds of thousands of years, creating various isotopes expected from the reactions that scientists detected at Oklo. The nuclear reactions in the uranium in underground veins consumed about 5 tons of uranium-235. So far, no other natural nuclear reactors have been identified.

                                                           
                                        A diagram of the 1955  neutronic
                                                                                    reactor invented by Fermi and 
                                                                                    Szilard




So, no matter how many advances mankind makes in science, we later come to know that Mother Nature has done it all. It's amazing, isn't it?!