A photo from open sources
A lot of so-called nuclear burial grounds – places where spent nuclear fuel is stored. They were all built in recent decades to securely hide formidable by-products of activity nuclear power plants.
But to one of the cemeteries, humanity has no relations: it is not known who built it and even when – scientists carefully determine his age at 1.8 billion years.
Oklo phenomenon
In 1972, at a developed uranium deposit in Oklo (Africa, Gabon) an inquisitive laboratory assistant noticed that the percentage of U-235 in ore is below the standard by 0.003%. Despite the apparent insignificance of the deviation, for scientists it is it was an emergency. In all terrestrial uranium ores and even in samples, delivered from the moon, the index of uranium in ore is always 0.7202%, for what reason ore was raised from the mines in Oklo, containing 0.7171%, or even less?
Most of all, scientists are afraid of the incomprehensible, therefore, in 1975 in the capital of Gabon Libreville held a scientific conference at which nuclear scientists were looking for an explanation of the phenomenon.
After much debate, they decided to consider the Oklo field the only natural nuclear reactor on earth. Emerging 1.8 billion years ago and burning for 500 thousand years natural the reactor burned out, ore is a decay product. All sighed in relief – one mystery on Earth has become less.
A photo from open sources
Alternative point of view
But not all conference participants made this decision. Row scientists called it far-fetched, not enduring any criticism. They relied on the opinion of the great Enrico Fermi, creator of the first the world of a nuclear reactor, always claiming a chain reaction can only be artificial – too many factors must coincide by chance. Any mathematician will say that probability so small that it can be unequivocally equated to to zero.
But if this suddenly happened and the stars are said to have converged, then a self-controlled nuclear reaction for 500 thousand years … On A few people are monitoring the operation of the reactor around the clock, constantly changing its operating modes, preventing the reactor from stopping or explode. The slightest mistake – and get Chernobyl or Fukushima. And in Oklo, half a million years, everything worked?
Most stable version
Disagree with the version of the natural nuclear reactor in Gabon the mine put forward their theory that the Oklo reactor creation of the mind. However, the Gabon mine is less like a nuclear reactor built by high-tech civilization. However, alternative specialists do not insist on this. In their opinion, the mine in Gabone was a SNF disposal site.
For this purpose, the place was chosen and prepared perfectly: for half a million years from a basalt “sarcophagus” not a gram radioactive substance did not enter the environment.
The theory that the Oklo mine is a nuclear repository with technical point of view is much more suitable than the version of “natural reactor. “But closing some questions, she asks new ones. Indeed, if there was a repository with SNF, so there was a reactor, where did these waste. Where did he go? And where did civilization itself go, built a burial ground?
Posted by Klim Podkova
