![]() ![]() Thus the French Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA) began an investigation. Furthermore since fissile material is why people mine uranium, a significant amount "going missing" was also of direct economic concern. This discrepancy required explanation, as all civilian uranium handling facilities must meticulously account for all fissionable isotopes to ensure that none are diverted to the construction of nuclear weapons. ![]() Normally the concentration is 0.72% while these samples had only 0.60%, a significant difference (some 17% less U-235 was contained in the samples than expected). In May 1972 at the Tricastin uranium enrichment site at Pierrelatte in France, routine mass spectrometry comparing UF 6 samples from the Oklo Mine, located in Gabon, showed a discrepancy in the amount of the 235 ![]() There, self-sustaining nuclear fission reactions are thought to have taken place approximately 1.7 billion years ago, during the Statherian period of the Paleoproterozoic, and continued for a few hundred thousand years, probably averaging less than 100 kW of thermal power during that time. Oklo is the only location where this phenomenon is known to have occurred, and consists of 16 sites with patches of centimeter-sized ore layers. An example of this phenomenon was discovered in 1972 in Oklo, Gabon by Francis Perrin under conditions very similar to Kuroda's predictions. The remnants of an extinct or fossil nuclear fission reactor, where self-sustaining nuclear reactions have occurred in the past, can be verified by analysis of isotope ratios of uranium and of the fission products (and the stable daughter nuclides of those fission products). The conditions under which a natural nuclear reactor could exist had been predicted in 1956 by Paul Kuroda. A natural nuclear fission reactor is a uranium deposit where self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions occur. ![]()
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