https://doi.org/10.1051/epjn/2025005
Regular Article
Has natural radioactivity contributed to the evolution of living organisms? Validation of a dedicated calculation scheme (for isotopic concentrations and deposited energies) on Oklo's natural nuclear reactors
1
Former Director of Research at CEA France
2
Université Paris-Saclay, CEA, Service d’Études des Réacteurs et de Mathématiques Appliquées 91191 Gif-sur-Yvette France
* e-mail: jean-claude.nimal@orange.fr
** e-mail: tan-dat.huynh@cea.fr
*** e-mail: aime.tsilanizara@cea.fr
Received:
30
May
2024
Received in final form:
27
February
2025
Accepted:
3
March
2025
Published online: 4 June 2025
In October 2018, the French Society of Nuclear Energy (SFEN/PACA) organized a conference-debate entitled “What happened two billion years ago where present-day Gabon is located? Has Nuclear Power contributed to the development of Life on Earth?” Our contribution to this reflection concerns the possible impact of radiation emitted from radioactive media on the early evolution of living organisms and may also be useful for research on the storage of radioactive waste. This article concerns the qualification of a calculation scheme for isotopic concentrations and energy deposits in Oklo's natural nuclear reactors or any other naturally radioactive environment. Our work has been carried out using a calculation scheme involving the Monte Carlo software TRIPOLI-4® [TRIPOLI-4 R, CEA, EDF and AREVA reference Monte Carlo code, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anucene.2014. 07.053; TRIPOLI-4 R, Version 4 Manuel de l’utilisateur. Rapport CEA-R-6170 (2008); in French] for the propagation of neutrons and gamma rays in matter and the MENDEL software [DARWIN: An Evolution Code System for a Large Range of Applications, CEA, https://doi.org/10.1080/00223131.2000.10875009; MENDEL depletion code, https://doi.org/10.1051/snamc/201402409] which deals with the evolution over time of the concentrations of nuclides formed in a material subjected to neutron irradiation. The precision achieved by our methodology will allow to carry out calculations of deposited energy to contribute to the debate on this possible effect of nuclear power on the evolution of Life.
Key words: OKLO / REACTORS / FISSION / URANIUM / MENDEL / TRIPOLI-4(R)
© J.-C. Nimal et al., Published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
