How Bacteria Created Natural Nuclear Fission
Dr. James Lovelock independent scientist, inventor, and author of the Gaia hypothesis tells a fascinating story how simple bacteria created a fission nuclear reactor in Africa. Operating for millions of years these simple organisms and other thrived in the "nuclear waste" created in the process.
This also illustrates how many of the hysterical claims of anti-nuclear activists are overblown. I'd suggest seeing the documentary Pandora's Promise for more on that issue. L. Loflin
P 122-24 from The Ages of Gaia by Dr. James Lovelock
A bizarre consequence of the appearance of oxygen was the
advent of the world's first nuclear reactors. Nuclear power from
its inception has rarely been described publicly except in hyperbole.
The impression has been given that to design and construct
a nuclear reactor is a feat unique to physical science and engineering creativity.
It is chastening to find that, in the Proterozoic,
an unassertive community of modest bacteria built a set of nuclear
reactors that ran for millions of years.
This extraordinary event occurred 1.8 eons ago at a place
now called 0kb in Gabon, Africa, and was discovered quite
by accident. At 0kb, there is a mine that supplies uranium
mainly for the French nuclear industry.
During the 1970s, a
shipment of uranium from 0kb was found to be depleted in
the fissionable isotope 235U. Natural uranium is always of the
same isotopic composition-99.27 percent 238U, 0.72 percent
of 235U, and traces of 234U.
Only the 235U isotope can take
part in the chain reactions necessary for power production or
for explosions. Naturally, the fissionable isotope is guarded carefully and its proportion in uranium subjected to thorough and
repeated scrutiny.
Imagine the shock that must have passed
through the French atomic energy agency when it was discovered
that the shipment of uranium had a much smaller proportion
of 235U than normal.
Had some clandestine group in Africa or
France found a way to extract the potent fissionable isotope,
and were they now storing this for use in terrorist nuclear
weapons? Had someone stolen the uranium ore from the mine
and substituted spent uranium from a nuclear industry elsewhere?
Whatever had happened, a sinister explanation seemed
likely. The truth, when it came, was not only a fascinating
piece of science but must also have been an immense relief to
minds troubled with images of tons of undiluted 235U in the
hands of fanatics.
The chemistry of the element uranium is such that it is insoluble in water under oxygen-free conditions, but readily soluble in water in the presence of oxygen. When enough oxygen appeared in the Proterozoic to render the ground water oxidizing, uranium in the rocks began to dissolve and, as the uranyl ion, became one of the many elements present in trace quantities in flowing streams.
The strength of the uranium solution would
have been at most no more than a few parts per million, and
uranium would have been but one of many ions in solution.
In the place that is now 0kb such a stream flowed into an
algal mat that included microorganisms with a strange capacity
to collect and concentrate uranium specifically. They performed
their unconscious task so well that eventually enough uranium
oxide was deposited in the pure state for a nuclear reaction to
start.
When more than a "critical mass" of uranium containing the fissionable isotope is gathered together in one place there is a self-sustaining chain reaction. The fission of uranium atoms sets free neutrons that cause the fission of more uranium atoms and more neutrons and so on.
Provided that the number of neutrons produced balances those that escape, or are absorbed by other atoms, the reactor continues. This kind of reactor is not explosive; indeed it is self-regulating. The presence of water, through its ability to slow and reflect neutrons, is an essential feature of the reactor. When the power output increases, water boils away and the nuclear reaction slows down.
A nuclear fission reaction is a perverse kind of fire; it burns better when well watered. The 0kb reactors ran gently at the kilowatt- power level for millions of years and used up a fair amount of the natural 235U in doing so.
The presence of the 0kb reactors confirms an oxidizing environment. In the absence of oxygen, uranium is not water soluble. It is just as well that it is not; when life started 3.6 eons back, uranium was much more enriched in the fissile isotope 235U.
This isotope decays more rapidly than the common isotope 238U,
and at life's beginning the proportion of fissile uranium was
not 0.7 percent as now but 33 percent.
Uranium so enriched
could have been the source of spectacular nuclear fireworks
had any bacteria then been unwise enough to concentrate it.
This also suggests that the atmosphere was not oxidizing in
the early Archean.
Bacteria could not have debated the costs and benefits of nuclear power. The fact that the reactors ran so long and that there was more than one of them suggests that replenishment must have occurred and that the radiation and nuclear waste from the reactor was not a deterrent to that ancient bacterial ecosystem.
(The distribution of stable fission products around the reactor site is also valuable evidence to suggest that the problems of nuclear waste disposal now are nowhere near so difficult or dangerous as the feverish pronouncements of the anti-nuclear movement would suggest.) The 0kb reactors are a splendid example of geophysiological homeostasis.
Short biography of James Lovelock
James Lovelock :author and researcher, Doctor Honoris Causa of several
universities throughout the world, he is considered since several decades as a
one of the main ideological leaders, if not the main one, in the history of the
development of environmental awareness.
James Lovelock is still today one of the
main authors in the environmental field. He is the author of " The Gaia Theory ",
and " The Ages of Gaia ", which consider the planet Earth as a self-regulated
living being, as well as, more recently his "Homage to GAIA", an autobiography
published in September 2000.
James Ephraim Lovelock (born in Letchworth Garden City July 26, 1919) is an independent scientist, author, researcher and environmentalist who lives in Cornwall, in the west of England. He is most famous for proposing and popularizing the Gaia hypothesis, in which he postulates that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism.
He studied chemistry at Manchester University before taking up a Medical Research Council post at the Institute for Medical Research in London. In 1948 he received a Ph.D. in medicine at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Within the United States he has taught at Yale, Baylor University College of Medicine, and Harvard University.
A lifelong inventor, some of his inventions were adopted by NASA in their program of planetary exploration. It was while working for NASA that Lovelock developed the Gaia Hypothesis. Lovelock is currently president of the Marine Biological Association, was elected a FRS in 1974, and in 1990 was awarded the first Amsterdam Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Lovelock was among the first researchers to sound the alarm about the threat from the greenhouse effect. His opinion is that "Only nuclear power can now halt global warming."
In his The Ages of Gaia (1988, revised ed. 1995) Oxford University Press ISBN 0393312399. As a self-described independent scientist, inventor, and author, Lovelock works out of a barn-turned-laboratory in Cornwall and attacks other scientists and their work as worthless. In many ways I admire Dr. Lovelock, but disagree with some of his religious views which I think have tainted his scientific outlook.
Books
Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979, 3rd ed. 2000) Oxford University Press. ISBN 0192862189
Gaia: The Practical Science of Planetary Medicine Gaia Books (1991 ed.) Oxford University Press (2001 ed.) ISBN 0195216741
Homage to Gaia: The Life of an Independent Scientist Oxford University Press (2000) ISBN 0198604297 (Lovelock's autobiography).
Religious Articles Index
Origins Christianity
- Environmentalism 50 Years of Observation
- Government Study on Climate Change Raises Questions
- Paradise California Fire Ignore Natural Causes
- Ecology as Environmental Socialism
- Peripheral Virginia Versus Climate Change Activism
- Nature's End? Crackpots Get It Wrong Again
- Our Obsession with Armageddon, Some Welcome It
- Science Ignorance Doomed Biosphere 2
- Common Sense Environmentalism
- Spiritual Ecology Versus Science
- Green Religion Won't Save Appalachia
- How Ecological Homeostasis and Hysteresis Regulate Climate
- Ages of Gaia Writer James Lovelock Sounds an Alarm
- Writer James Lovelock Backtracks on Revenge of Gaia
- How Bacteria Created Natural Nuclear Fission
- 20th Century Not Warmest, Researchers Find
- Great Dying Mystery and the End of the Dinosaurs
- Bikini Atoll Recovery From Nuclear Blasts
- Earth Going Green Environmentalists in Denial
- Origins of the Moon and Life on Earth
- Virginia Congressman Confronts Climate Scientists
- Michael Crichton Speech - Environmentalism as Religion
- Environmentalism as Religion by Michael Fumento
- Environmentalism's Fear-Loathing of Technology
- Shockingly Rapid Climatic Shifts are Real
- Hypsithermal Warming Spreads Civilization 6000-9000 BC
- Dr. James Hansen Paid Environmentalist
- NASA Scientist Demands Prosecution Climate Change Critics
- Dissecting Al Gore's Book Earth in the Balance
- Dr. Easterbrook on Climate Change
- Science Rejected by Global Warming Alarmists
- Separation of Environmentalism and State
- 2009-10 Record Cold Stumps Environmentalists
- Taking a Sober View on Climate Change
- Second Great Awakening An Overview
- Critical Review Regressive Liberalism
- Address Corporate Culture Before Handing Out Money
- Postmodernism Attacks Reason, Science, and Culture
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