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Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by UniverseHacker on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @06:27PM (#42940777)
This is such an interesting and weird phenomenon, in the context of the complexity of human made nuclear reactors.

I once read a horrifying fiction story about a pre-industrial culture that used nuclear reactions in open piles of uranium ore tended by slaves as a heat source, but cannot remember the name or author.

Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by anticnstrctv on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @07:53PM (#42941837)
That anecdote is present in the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by UniverseHacker on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @10:16PM (#42943258)
Thanks! That makes sense, I have read that series, but didn't remember that was where this was from.
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by adamesque on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @11:37PM (#42943863)
Manifold Space specifically (unless it’s also present in his other Manifold books)
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by Cerium on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @07:36PM (#42941632)
I remember it having a time travel aspect as well as moderation of reaction via chared tree trunks thrust into the heap.
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by sandworm101 on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @08:29PM (#42942256)
It seems less odd when one realizes how common uranium actually is. Today, it is about as common as tin. Knowing that, there were probably lots of undiscovered places where the density got high enough to fission. Much of the earth's internal heat comes from fission. We only get interested when it happens near the surface.
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by klodolph on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @11:12PM (#42943682)
> Knowing that, there were probably lots of undiscovered places where the density got high enough to fission.

Density of U235, specifically… you could crystallize pure uranium in the Earth’s crust today, and it would not be enriched enough for a nuclear reactor.

Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by adrian_b on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @04:58AM (#42946342)
Uranium is one of the elements that are greatly enriched in the continental crust of the Earth (like also thorium and the rare-earth metals).

So in the continental crust the abundance of uranium is more than one hundred times greater than the average abundance of uranium in the entire Earth or in the Solar System.

Otherwise uranium would have been almost the least abundant chemical element, as it is on average in the entire Solar System.

Tin is among the metals that are depleted in the crust of the Earth. Elsewhere tin is a few hundred times more abundant than uranium.

A continental crust like on Earth can appear only on planets that have been melted, so that the light and heavy minerals have combined and separated by density, with the continental crust floating over the molten magma and then solidifying. Most of the Earth has been melted by the collision that has formed the Moon, but possibly also by other smaller collisions.

In most other places in the Solar System it will be unlikely to find so easily accessible and abundant uranium as here on Earth.

Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by idoubtit on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @05:03AM (#42946374)
> I once read a horrifying fiction story about a pre-industrial culture that used nuclear reactions in open piles of uranium ore

The real world was worse than this fiction. It's easy to find pictures of old advertisements for radioactive products, in the years following the discovery of radioactivity. Radioactive pills "to boost your energy", radioactive cosmetics, radioactive false teeth... Now imagine what happened to the people that used these.

Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by s1artibartfast on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @07:48AM (#42947772)
I dont think that is worse.
Re:Natural fission reactors in the Franceville basin, Gabon by UniverseHacker on Thursday February 06, 2025 @11:38AM (#42964077)
Those real world early uses of nuclear technology were indeed awful- nuclear testing at Bikini Atoll comes to mind, which did intentional treatment vs. non-treatment experiments on the Marshall Islanders.

Even that is nothing close to the fiction I am talking about, having a class of slaves that operate a fully open nuclear reactor with hand tools.