Political Quotes

“I think it will be of interest for my colleagues to note that a high level radioactive waste experiment occurred some 1.8 million years ago in west Africa, in what is now the nation of Gabon, at a place called Oklo. The French were prospecting in their former colony for uranium for their developing nuclear program. Some 2 billion years ago, all the uranium on Earth contained some 3 to 4 percent uranium 235, and the rest is the normal level of uranium 238. But, because of natural radiation decay, all U-238 today contains only about 0.7 percent of U-235. U-235 is fissionable, and at about 3 percent enrichment can sustain a chain reaction. That means it can undergo fission. That is just what happened to the uranium in Oklo, approximately 1.8 million years ago. Some water seeped into the vein and began a slow chain reaction which continued for some several hundred thousand years, generating some 10 tons of radioactive waste, including almost a ton of plutonium. The reactor became dormant and scientists have now measured all the minerals at that site and they have shown that all the plutonium created at the site has decayed and that all the original radiation decay products of fission were recovered, close to the original natural fission reactor. This, altogether, released only a few feet from the surface. It is interesting to note the plutonium did not migrate away, even though there were no engineered barriers to prevent transport of the waste product.”