In 1972, Scientists Discovered That An “Ancient”, Nuclear, Breeder Reactor Existed in Africa at Oklo Some Time in the Past. Who Built It, Man Utilizing Ancient High Technology or Random Natural Processes?

by Chris Parker

Ecclesiastes 1: 8-11 “All things are wearisome, more than one can describe; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear content with hearing. What has been will be again, and what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.

(All Photos are at the bottom of the article)

Is there a case where one can say, “Look, this is new”? It has already existed in the ages before us. There is no remembrance of those who came before, and those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow after.”

Prologue: I vividly remember a series of conversations that I had as a child with my mother concerning the above quoted scripture in Ecclesiastes. She took the verse literally and speculated that the ancients may have had jet airplanes and skyscrapers and television prior to the flood. Those conversations fired my imagination and when I had the opportunities over the years, I have researched those very ideas and looked for evidence of ancient technologies that don’t fit the current “scientific” view of history and of man’s development.

But an ancient nuclear reactor?

Digressing for a moment back to the idea of ancient jet planes; Photo  is a picture of a pre-Columbian artifact that looks a bit like a flying machine; having some similarity to a modern jet.
A number of these small South American artifacts, currently housed at the Smithsonian have been found in a number of places including a grave. The small artifacts are made of gold, which means that conventional dating methods won't work on them.

An insignia appears on the left side of the rudder, where ID marks often appear on contemporary airplanes. This is but one ancient artifact that appears to some to possibly be an ancient airplane. There are a number of other candidates.
It is important to remember here that ancient technology and knowledge does not have to look like or be identical to modern forms of technology-witness the great pyramid. (Photo  is another possible example of ancient high technology. It is a relief on an Egyptian temple wall at Abydos)

Some scientists thought these items (the 'airplanes" merely represented insects and some speculated that they might represent aircraft.

In 1997, two Germans, Algund Eenboom and Peter Belting, put the theory to the test. Eenboom centered his research on historical evidence and concluded the "wings" of all insects are attached at the top of the corpus, not at the bottom, and that all Incan artifacts except these few suspected "planes" were made correctly.

“(Peter)Belting scaled up a model of one of the artifacts, first with a propeller, and later with a jet engine. Whereas the first has to be launched by hand, the jet engine version was also equipped with landing gear.
At an Ancient Astronaut Society World Conference in Orlando, Florida, the two researchers showed extensive footage of their model planes. The propeller-powered plane flew perfectly stable. But the crowd almost gave a standing ovation for the jet-engine model plane.

With an impeccable take-off, flight and landing -- and an exact match to the model found in the Inca grave -- the model is truly an airplane.”Michael Lindemann, Editor, CNI News

The fact that the scaled up pre-Columbian artifacts could fly does not prove that such aerial technology existed in the distant past-but it does raise the eyebrow.
Conventional Nuclear Reactor vs a Breeder Nuclear Reactor.

“Breeder reactor; nuclear reactor that produces more fissionable material than it consumes to generate energy. This special type of reactor is designed to extend the nuclear fuel supply for electric power generation.
Whereas a conventional nuclear reactor can use only the readily fissionable but more scarce isotope uranium-235 for fuel, a breeder reactor employs either uranium-238 or thorium, of which sizable quantities are available.
Uranium-238, for example, accounts for more than 99 percent of all naturally occurring uranium. In breeders, approximately 70 percent of this isotope can be utilized for power production. Conventional reactors, in contrast, can extract less than one percent of its energy.

The first experimental breeder reactor, in modern times was designated EBR-1, and was developed in 1951 by U.S. scientists at the National Reactor Testing Station (now called Idaho National Engineering Laboratory), near Idaho Falls, Idaho.
France, Great Britain, Japan, and the Soviet Union subsequently built experimental breeders. Although interest in breeder reactors waned after the 1960s as a result of the discovery of additional uranium reserves, Russia, China, India, and Japan have breeder reactors in operation. .”… Encyclopedia Britannica

Discovery of the Ancient Nuclear, Breeder Reactors at Oklo, Gabon

A modern nuclear reactor has to be able to go critical, then to have its reaction moderated (shut down) in order to avoid all the energy being released at once, as in a nuclear explosion. It needs to store the nuclear waste in some fashion that protects the environment and the ratio of u-235/u-238 –the nuclear fuel which occurs naturally in insufficient ratios must be “enriched” to make it suitable for a reactor.

Some scientists suggested that 1.7 billion years ago, the ratio would have been at 3% so that the uranium might not have needed to be enriched to achieve fission but other scientists didn’t believe that even a 3% ratio would have been high enough.

When science discovered that this material had been fissioned in the past, they searched for a mechanism and an explanation, never considering that the reaction could have been man-made and intentional and over much shorter period than the typical billions-of –years fallback explanations.

In fact, as we shall see, this reactor was “well designed” ‘ its reaction was moderated by water, it somehow utilized enriched uranium and its nuclear waste was captured in so fine a fashion that modern operators often pointed back to Oklo as they presented ideas for long time storage of nuclear waste underground.

Creationists, when dealing with the implications of Oklo have focused on how such a natural reaction could have taken place in a much shorter timespan but largely have not considered the idea that the reactor was potentially a product of pre-flood technology-of nothing new under the sun.

At that time, (in 1972) people were speculating about aliens and advanced ancient civilizations. Some months after the discovery rocked the scientific world, someone came up with a somewhat dubious explanation which over time has taken on the patina of absolute certainty. It was a natural reactor which occurred billions of years ago.
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There are at least six zones of depleted uranium (usually means mined)with plutonium as a byproduct! One has got to really be trying to manufacture plutonium--it’s a complicated process.

Perrin and the other French scientists concluded that the only other uranium samples with similar levels of the isotopes found at Oklo could be found in the used nuclear fuel produced by modern reactors. They found that the percentages of many isotopes at Oklo strongly resembled those in the spent fuel generated by nuclear power plants, and, therefore, reasoned that a similar natural process had occurred.

Again, scientists from other countries were skeptical when first hearing of these natural nuclear reactors. Some argued that the missing amounts of U-235 had been displaced over time, not split in nuclear fission reactions. "How," they asked, "could fission reactions happen in nature, when such a high degree of engineering, physics, and acute, detailed attention went into building a nuclear reactor?"

Item)The textbook of Basic Radioactive Chemistry (C. Claire ed.) used by Tsinghua university has the following paragraph:

'The natural uranium in the Oklo mine in Gabon, West Africa, contains an abnormal amount of U235. It is as low as 0.29%, rather than the normal 0.72%. This means that many self-sustained nuclear fission chain reactions took place at this mine about two billion years ago. Thirteen nuclear reactors existed in prehistoric periods along the 200-metre mine bed, and they were comparable to the modern nuclear reactor in power and heat combustion.
This mine had the capability of enabling self-sustained nuclear chain reactions....' This discovery, that shocked the entire scientific community in 1972, has already been forgotten by people today. On Scientific Attitude May 7, 2001 http://www.pureinsight.org/node/360

Item) The Boston Globe (Boston, Massachusetts) 28 Apr 1975, Mon Page 33
Nature Built First Nuclear Reactor
By Robert Cooke, Globe Staff Science

Confident scientists who think they’re doing new and daring things often wake up to find that Mother Nature, in her own funny little ways, has beat them to it by millions of years. Take, for instance the whole field of nuclear reactors. Workers in that field, long proud of the fact they were accomplishing things that don’t occur in nature, have now found that a natural nuclear reactor-buried in the soil in Africa-was active as long as 1.7 billion years ago.

Recent studies by French specialists indicate that a natural, moderated fission process-or chain reaction—occurred in underground layers of rock at Oklo Gabon. They believe this natural reactor “went critical” about the time its uranium was included in the sedimentary rocks that surround it.

Study of the uranium remains indicate that considerable changes have occurred since the chain reaction has stopped. If the leftover materials had been unchanged, researchers would expect to find a fixed ratio of two kinds of uranium, u-235 and u-238.

To begin a chain reaction-in man-made reactors, in atomic bombs and in this natural reactor—the amount of u-235 must be increased in relation to the amount of u-238. This process, known as enrichment, is done by men in huge factories. IT’S NOT KNOWN HOW ENRICHMENT OCCURRED WITH THE OKLO REACTOR. ( Emphasis mine)

Item) A-Blast Inside Mine is Credited to Nature
Arizona Republic (Phoenix, Arizona)13 Oct 1972, Fri Page 44
New York Times New Service

New York-A leading French scientist has reported that nature spontaneously ignited a nuclear reaction in an African mine a million years ago. The reaction, he said, apparently ran for a prolonged period. The evidence was presented to the French Academy of Sciences by Dr. Francis Perrin, former chairman of the French High Commission for Atomic Energy. It was the first reported instance of a spontaneous chain reaction in the earth.

When Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, former head of the U.S. Energy Commission and a Nobel Laureate for his work on heavy elements, was told of the discovery, he said; “that is fantastic”. However, he added that, if any atomic explosions occurred they probably were little more than “fizzles”.

The first clue was the observation at the French Uranium Enrichment Center at Pierrelatte that uranium from the Oklo mine, 40 miles northwest of Franceville in Gabon, had a peculiar composition. It was depleted markedly in the uranium 234 extracted for bombs or, in weaker mixtures, for power plants.

It was difficult to explain this unless some of it had been “burned” in a chain reaction. Furthermore, investigators at the French Atomic Center at Cadarache found four other rare elements-neodymium, samarium, europium and eerium—in forms that typically are the residue of uranium breakdown.

The unusual composition of the Oklo uranium which had only been mined since 1969 struck the analysts because all uranium, as it comes from the ground anywhere on earth-or even as it is found by astronauts- on the moon—has the same proportion of Uranium 235. This amount is 0.72 per cent.

The reason, presumably, is that all uranium in the solar system was formed at the same time. ….Whereas natural uranium today contains on 0.72 per cent of Uranium 235 some 1.7 billion years ago it constituted 3 per cent.
Had there been a nuclear power industry at that time, it would have been unnecessary to enrich the raw uranium. It could have been used directly as fuel in water moderated reactors.

…However, specialists in reactor engineering said they were puzzled by how this could happen in a deposit with only 3% of the fissionable material. As Seaborg pointed out, in a reactor burning such fuel you have to have things exactly right.
..Furthermore, the moderator and the fuel have to be extremely pure. Even a few parts per million of a contaminate, such as boron, will poison the reaction, bringing it to a halt.”

HOW THE NECESSARY CONDITIONS COULD ARISE UNDERGROUND UNDER NATURAL CIRCUMSTANCES SAID SEABORG, IS REALLY PUZZLING……
How Much Power Was Produced?

The amount of material that was fissioned is known or well estimated. The question is; over what period of time was the power produced? That accounts for the range of estimates which speculate that only a small amount of power was produced and those which compare the output to a modern nuclear reactor.

Here is an excerpt from a research paper that assumes the power was produced over a 150,000 year period- a time period certainly not accepted by young earth creationists. “In all, the Oklo reactor is thought to have operated for a period in excess of 150,000 years, based on the quantity of fission products present. The total neutron fluence is thought to have been about 1021 neutrons per square cm over the life of the reactor, producing a total of about 15 GW
yr of thermal energy.

During this time it consumed an estimated 5-6 metric tons of 235U, and producing an equal mass of fission products (de Laeter, et al, 1980). Meshick estimates an average operating power of about 100 kW, similar to that of modern research reactors. ttp://www.andrewkaram.com/pdf/Oklo%20reactor.pdf THE NATURAL NUCLEAR REACTOR AT OKLO: A
COMPARISON WITH MODERN NUCLEAR REACTORS By Dr. Andrew Karam paksbi@rit.edu 4/16/2005
Natural Water (As Opposed to Heavy Water) Is a Common Nuclear Energy Moderator but Isn’t Great

“Water is by far the most commonly used moderator, especially in the United States. The reactors that use water as a moderator, Pressurized Water Reactors (PWRs) and Boiling Water Reactors (BWRs), generally have relatively large enrichment requirements of U-235 (3.2% in the case of PWRs), and substantially increased safety relative to other types of reactors.

Nuclear fuel in light water reactors also becomes compromised with large amounts of fission product waste such as Krypton and Xenon, which absorb the rods' neutron population. As a result, the systems can be inefficient with their use of fuel: some forms of light water reactors use only 5% of available fuel before discarding it.

Using water as a moderator contributes to the need for ENRICHED NUCLEAR FUEL because of two additional factors: water's requirement to be "under-moderated," and its relatively high absorption cross-section. Water-moderated reactors must maintain a low moderator-to-fuel ratio, meaning that for the amount of uranium in the chamber, a smaller amount of water than is maximally efficient can be safely used. This is because having too much water would result in a higher level of absorption of neutrons, causing the water to heat and expand.

This reduction in density would cause an increase in kinetic activity and radioactivity in the reactor, causing a dangerous cycle that could lead to a meltdown. That being said, if the reactor is already under-moderated, an increase in heat would result in the addition of negative reactivity, as water has a negative "moderator temperature coefficient" when it is at an under-moderated temperature. The second disadvantage comes from its high absorption cross-section, especially compared to heavy water, which features deuterium and has a very low cross-section. These factors together decrease water reactors' ability to "go critical" and sustain a nuclear reaction with unenriched uranium.”  A Comparative Analysis of Fission Moderators, Christopher Barry November 30, 2017 http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2017/ph241/barry2/

Questions for Young Earth Creationists and Materialists
-Can creationists show how such a reactor could have become critical in a less than 10,000 year time-frame-unless it was designed by man?
-Can materialists explain how such high technology as a breeder nuclear reactor could have been a natural phenomenon that somehow used; enriched uranium (even 3% u235 1.7 billion years ago would not have insured fission, that utilized “extremely purified” water (does not exist in nature) as a moderator AND preserved the resulting nuclear waste material at the site?..s8intcom

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