Nuclear Reactors in the Land Before Time: Oklo Fossil Reactors Attack Einstein, Relatively Speaking

Africa

The word conjures images of nature: raw, simple, primitive.

Nuclear reactor on the other hand conjures very different images: scientific, ultramodern, hospital clean, technology on steroids. What do these two terms have in common? Oklo, Gabon.

Gabon isn't just the exotic West Africa location for the 2008 season of Survivor. It is the home of the uranium mines of Oklo and the remains of the world's first nuclear reactors from 1.7 billion years ago! According to NASA by-products from these long extinct reactors “are being used today to probe the stability of the fundamental constants over cosmological time-scales and to develop more effective means of disposing of human-manufactured nuclear waste” (Nemiroff). Even though quite dead for past millennia on millennia, these naturally occurring nuclear fission reactors are actively redefining how scientists understand the universe today by challenging one of Einstein's most important assumptions.

There are four reactor zones with over six ancient, natural nuclear reactors in the environs of Oklo, a region in the eastern part of Gabon, a country along the Atlantic Ocean exactly on the equator. They are also referred to as Fossil Reactors and were discovered in 1972 by French physicist Francis Perrin (“Oklo”). What Perrin found was actually something that was not there. In modern deposits of uranium-even samples brought “back from the moon by Apollo astronauts” (Kean, “Nice”)-uranium 235 (U-235), the radioactive isotope used in nuclear fission, makes up .72% of the ore, but some of the ore from the Oklo mines had only .44% U-235. Part of the radioactive isotope was missing.

According to Time Magazine, “levels that low had been found only in depleted uranium fuel taken from atomic reactors” (“Nature's”). This led Perrin and other scientists to conclude that some sort of nuclear fission had occurred through natural means at the site. Time quoted Nobel Laureate Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the U. S. Atomic Energy Commission admitting, “'I haven't been able to think if any better explanation,'” and Caltech's Donald Burnett as saying, “'There are plenty of explanations I could give you, but none are less exotic'” (“Nature's”). In addition to the missing U-235, scientists found traces of four other elements created in nuclear fission.

Nuclear reactors before there were dinosaurs? How?

No one has come forward with a better explanation since then, but the explanations of the process Perrin hypothesized have gotten better. Sam Kean, in Mental_Floss, has an eloquent description of the possible reaction, saying that the coming together of uranium, water and oxygen made it all happen (Kean, “How” 38). The oxygen helped dissolve the uranium in the water, which also slowed down the neutrons being shot from the U-235 so they could split nuclei instead of bouncing off of them “like skipping a rock across the water” (Oklo). When the heat of the reactions caused the water to boil away, the reactions slowed and stopped until water seeping into the underground deposits of ore could start the whole process over. “Perrin and his colleagues estimate that this nuclear Old Faithful consumed 13,000 lbs. of uranium, running in cycles every 2.5 hours for at least 150,000 years” (Kean, “How” 38).

Though she does identify the four elements of fission found in the samples for us-neodymium, samarium, europium, and cerium-Rene Noorbergen gives an even more exotic explanation for the presence of these nuclear wastes in her book, Secrets of the Lost Races: New Discoveries of Advanced Technology in Ancient Civilizations, saying, that since modern nuclear reactors call for water more pure than any found naturally occurring on this planet, the Oklo deposits must be the wastes from reactors made by ancient peoples (54). She further postulates that energy from such nuclear plants might have powered the inventions of Atlantis and other lost civilizations.

However, the world of two billion years ago was very different from today's, so using modernity's water purity standards may not be necessary. Using the known decay rate of uranium, scientists calculate that 1.7 billion years ago U-235 made up almost 3.0% of uranium ore. That concentration is high enough to start a nuclear reaction. Dissolve the uranium in water and further concentrate it in a subterranean bed of algae-“pond scum”-and one has a mixture that will sustain a reaction until the water boils away (Kean, “How” 38).

The Universe on its ear.

What was also found to be different in the ancient-beyond-ancient uranium deposits of Oklo were the atomic weights of some of the other elements at the mine. The atomic weights of samarium and samarium-149, its isotope, from Oklo didn't match up with that of samarium and samarium-149 from the rest of the world. The differences in weights such as these call into question the value of the “fine structure constant”-known by the Greek letter alpha-which “basically determines how tightly the different parts of an atom bind together” (Kean, “Nice” 37). Tommaso Dorigo, research physicist at Padova University in Venice, Italy, writes, “This is possible because the cross section of neutron capture by [samarium] changes with the fine structure constant, and the concentration of SM-149 becomes a yardstick for the latter” (Dorigo). If the amounts of SM and SM-149 are known and the ratio between the two is different than in other samples from around the world, then the fine structure constant must have changed. Kean says the only problem of alpha changing “is that it is considered a "fundamental constant." To physicists, this means the number should never, ever, change. If it did, physics itself would experience meltdown (“Nice” 38).

A shift in the value of alpha would also tip the universe on its ear. According to Dorigo the fine structure constant “is the square of the electric charge of electrons divided by the product of Planck's constant by the speed of light, finding a smaller alpha would imply that the speed of light was larger…” (Dorigo). Since Einstein's theory of special relativity relies on the speed of light being the essential constant, any change in the speed of light would undermine everything built upon that theory. And that includes almost everything, especially anything using e=mc2 (in which c = the speed of light), that has to do with nuclear power, the size of the universe, and the age of the universe. That impacts the evolutionary model since it requires a changeless uniformity.

So, what's the big deal?

If the findings from the Oklo uranium continue to stand and the math used to quantify them continue to show minute discrepancies, it could result in changes in the scientific understanding of the universe as large as when “Einstein himself once used tiny discrepancies in Isaac Newton's calculations to overthrow Newton's laws of motion” (Kean, “Nice” 38). That would make it easier for Big Bang theorists to explain an apparent difference in the speed and amount of light present in Planck time after the bang of the Big Bang. For the rest of us, the most important part of the discovery could be positive by making the disposal of nuclear waste safe. “Once the natural reactors burned themselves out, the highly radioactive waste they generated was held in place… Plutonium has moved less than 10 feet from where it was formed almost two billion years ago” points out the U. S. Department of Energy's radioactive waste disposal division in Yucca Mountain where America is planning on storing thousands of tons of present and future wastes (“Oklo”). As Kean describes it, “No glowing toxic sludge broke upward into the air. And as far as we know, cavemen wandered over it for thousands of years without any ill effects” (Kean, “How”).

It would be ironic indeed if nature itself taught mankind how to protect it and ourselves from the most technologically advanced and dangerous threat man has ever created.