http://www.metafilter.com/tags/EnricoFermi Posts tagged with 'EnricoFermi' at MetaFilter. Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:45:27 -0800 Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:45:27 -0800 en-us http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 60 http://www.metafilter.com/39671/Beating%2DFermi%2Dby%2D17%2Dbillion%2Dyears <a href="http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/centre/waisrc/OKLO/Where/Where.html">The site of the world's first nuclear reactor? Gabon.</a> About 1.7 billion years ago several deposits of uranium in <a href="http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021016.html">Oklo, Gabon</a> spontaneously began to undergo nuclear chain reactions fed by small drips of water. These natural breeder reactors ran for almost a million years, producing both intense heat and plutonium byproducts. Aside from the <a href="http://www.virtualtravelog.net/entries/2004/05/unprecedented_phenomena_the_implications_of_the_oklo_fossil_reactors.html">strangeness of naturally occurring reactors</a>, Oklo provides the only existing case of <a href="http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionE.htm#v2">how highly radioactive waste behaves</a> over a period of tens of millions of years -- exactly the problem faced by the<a href="http://www.ocrwm.doe.gov/factsheets/doeymp0205.shtml"> DOE's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste site</a>. tag:metafilter.com,2005:site.39671 Wed, 16 Feb 2005 14:45:27 -0800 Africa chainreactions EnricoFermi Fermi fission Gabon nuclearreactors Oklo OkloGabon plutonium pollution radioactivewaste uranium Yucca YuccaMountain blahblahblah