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Published online 15 May 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.822
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Are there nuclear reactors at Earth's core?
Fission reactors may have been burning for billions of years.
Nuclear reactors could be burning deep beneath the ground, two scientists have claimed. They say that uranium could become sufficiently concentrated at the base of Earth’s mantle to ignite self-sustained nuclear fission, as in a human-made reactor.
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I am delighted that Nature published the possibility of a nuclear reactor in the core of the Earth. However, Marvin and I differ somewhat on this issue, perhaps because we differ on the likelihood that supernova debris directly formed the solar system, as illustrated in this scenario: http://www.omatumr.com/Origin.htm _1._) Noble gas data for the Earth and the other terrestrial planets are consistent with heterogeneous accretion, as shown in the above link, starting with the formation of the Earth's iron core out of iron meteorites. Since there is very little uranium in iron meteorites, a nuclear reactor in the core of the Earth or the other terrestrial planets seems unlikely. http://www.omatumr.com/archive/NobleGas.pdf and _2._) A nuclear reactor is far more likely in the core of Jupiter or the other giant, gaseous planets. Data from meteorites and from the Galileo Mission to Jupiter show that the r-process (rapid neutron capture that made Xe-136 and all atoms heavier than Bi-209 including U and Th) occurred in a region of the precursor star where lightweight elements like H, He, C and N were abundant. A nuclear reactor is more likely in the core of Jupiter or the other planets that formed primarily out of lightweight elements like H, He, C and N. http://www.omatumr.com/Data/1975Data.htm http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2001/windleranalysis.pdf With kind regards, Oliver K. Manuel http://www.omatumr.com
What is going on here? The idea of a nuclear reactor at the core of the Earth originated with Dr. Marvin Herndon and his work is not even cited in this news story! - Oliver K. Manuel, Emeritus Professor of Nuclear Chemistry, http://www.omatumr.com
NatureNews is misleading the public about a nuclear reactor within the Earth and fails to give credit where credit is due. J. Marvin Herndon demonstrated the feasibility of planetocentric nuclear reactors and has developed the concept extensively in world class publications, including the Proceedings of the Royal Sociery of London. Complete references are contained at http://NuclearPlanet.com . Science is about truth, not deception, not to the scientific community, and not to the general public.
Dr. Marvin Herndon is right. Marvin is the academic grandson of the late Professor Paul Kazuo Kuroda, an intellectual giant who first proposed in 1956 [1, 2] that natural (Pre-Fermi) fission reactors were operating on Earth a few billion years before Enrico Fermi "invented" the nuclear reactor and demonstrated its operation at the University of Chicago on December 2, 1942. The work of Professor Kuroda is frequently overlooked in the West, perhaps because the nuclear research program in Japan during World War II was also overlooked. ADDITIONAL BACKGROUND INFORMATION: Self-sustaining nuclear fission was secretly studied in several countries during World War II and developed into: a.) Nuclear reactors and b.) Atomic bombs. The United States developed the first A-bombs and dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Japan was also developing A-bombs [See: Autobiography of the late Professor Paul Kazuo Kuroda, "My Early Days at the Imperial University of Tokyo"- 5. War-Time Research] http://www.omatumr.com/abstracts2005/PKKAutobiography.pdf The US military relocated Professor Kazuo Kuroda from the University of Tokyo to the United States after WWII. His comprehensive understanding of a.) Self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions, and b.) Spontaneous nuclear fission became apparent when Kuroda a.) Predicted in 1956 that natural self-sustaining nuclear chain reactions (reactors) had occurred in Earth's geologic history, and b.) Predicted in 1960 that Earth contained the spontaneous fission decay proucts of Plutonium-244 (t1/2 = 82 Ma) [3]. All of these predictions have been experimentally confirmed. REFERENCES: [-1-] KURODA, P. K. (1956) "On the nuclear physical stability of the uranium minerals," J. Chem. Phys. 25, 781- 782. [-2-] KURODA, P. K. (1956) On the infinite multiplication constant and the age of the uranium minerals, J. Chem. Phys. 25, 1295- 1296. [-3-] KURODA, P. K. (1960) "Nuclear fission in the early history of the Earth," Nature 187, 36- 38.
Dr Herndon's proposal for a nuclear reactor at the Earth's core was a part of the previous work mentioned at the start of the story. Detailed references to previous work are not generally included in news stories. That proposal was, moreover, based on a very different formation mechanism from the present one, and suggests that the reactor resides within the core, whereas, contrary to what Oliver Manuel implies, the present work examines the possibility of a reactor in the mantle, but at the core-mantle boundary.
Nuclear fusion is the primary reaction only in the ultimate mass centres (which I have termed – Cosmic Cores) in our observable universe; see the short letter in (1). Fission dominates the scene everywhere else down the line, in quasars and down to stars and planets (with fusion as only the consequential secondary, as in the H-bomb). Hence, the Earth’s core is indeed a fission reactor, with the radioactivity peaking at the core-mantle boundary, naturally. The ramifications here are thus truly and literally cosmic, with the unification of physics but a simple step away; see the one-page summary in (2). Refute it to the satisfaction of your own physics department head alone and be the richer for it – a token of my wholehearted gratitude; see the 2½-page preprint in (3) for an easy way to (try to) debunk the model. Thank you. (1) www.sittampalam.net/StarFormation.htm (2) www.sittampalam.net/Summary.pdf (3) www.sittampalam.net/LateralThoughts.pdf
Sorry, but reading this news item again today, I realize I had left out a critical aspect of the evolving empirical picture in my previous comment above. Please click on (they are short items, too!): www.sittampalam.net/TheAntineutrinoDebut.htm and www.sittampalam.net/EarthCentral.htm Thank you.
Thanks, Phillip, for the clarification. Perhaps the title of this news story should be changed from "Nuclear Reactors at Earth's Core" to "Nuclear Reactors in Earth's Mantle." - Oliver K. Manuel
I have added new comments on Herndon's and Meijer et al's nuclear reactors in the Earth's interior, and also suggest a new model. This new model is more reasonable, and could explain the Earth's evolution well. My paper title is: Distribution of U and Th and Their Nuclear Fission in the Outer Core of the Earth and Their effects on the Geodynamics. You can get it from http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.1566. Thanks. Xuezhao Bao