199
TIL There's a 1.7 Billion Year Old Naturally Occuring Fission Reactor in Africa
(en.m.wikipedia.org)
the reaction is no longer active
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2024
199 points (97.6% liked)
Today I Learned
17733 readers
253 users here now
What did you learn today? Share it with us!
We learn something new every day. This is a community dedicated to informing each other and helping to spread knowledge.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must begin with TIL. Linking to a source of info is optional, but highly recommended as it helps to spark discussion.
** Posts must be about an actual fact that you have learned, but it doesn't matter if you learned it today. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.**
Rule 2- Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your post subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Posts and comments which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding non-TIL posts.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-TIL posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
Rule 7- You can't harass or disturb other members.
If you vocally harass or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
For further explanation, clarification and feedback about this rule, you may follow this link.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.
Unless included in our Whitelist for Bots, your bot will not be allowed to participate in this community. To have your bot whitelisted, please contact the moderators for a short review.
Partnered Communities
You can view our partnered communities list by following this link. To partner with our community and be included, you are free to message the moderators or comment on a pinned post.
Community Moderation
For inquiry on becoming a moderator of this community, you may comment on the pinned post of the time, or simply shoot a message to the current moderators.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Which is how we know it's safe to bury nuclear waste.
No. It just means the chain reaction stopped and it's no longer in uncontrolled meltdown. It's still emitting a ton of radioactivity though.
Yes, but it's all contained to the same area still after millions of years
Chernobyl is contained too. It's not safe.
It is safe if you don't enter the container; that's what contained means.
Why don't move next to it then?
Because uprooting their life to prove a random stranger wrong would be a figuratively bigger disaster than the event in reference.
Why would I move to a warzone in a country poorer than mine, of which I don't speak the language, know nobody over there, and don't have any connection to whatsoever?
No no no, it's been moved outside of the environment.
Is it a reaction, then?
It was. It no longer is.
The reason I added this comment at all, was I felt the headline title was a little misleading. We have evidence, of a naturally occurring fission reaction on Earth, a long long time ago.
It is estimated to have averaged under 100 kW of thermal power
I don't know what I expected but its does not seem much, its like the energy of 100 space heater
100kW can raise the temperature of 1L of water from 20C to 100C in 3.34 seconds. It's enough power to brew about 300 shots of espresso in 30 seconds. That seems like a lot to me.
1 kW is a lot if you put it into a small enough space. Or even 1 W, as my background in electronics design has shown me on occasion.
Of course, the title calls it a fission reactor and a 100 kW one would not be much. Would charge an electric car pretty nicely, though. Or make some mean espresso.
The thing to remember with this bad boy is they've got active gamma emitting fission products floating in it and (when it could still go critical) fast neutrons. Not s something you want to brew your coffee in, even without the heavy metal poisoning uranium oxide could give you.
What's cool about this reactor is it was doing something that we generally can't do too well. Unenriched uranium reactors tend to need heavy water or graphite to slow down the neutrons from fast to thermal to keep a reactor critical This guy used ground water.