Herndon's Nuclear Fission Georeactor
Powering the Geomagnetic Field
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Herndon's Nuclear Fission Georeactor Powering the Geomagnetic Field |
for additional information go to http://NuclearPlanet.com
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  In
1956, Paul K. Kuroda published a short paper in the Journal of Chemical
Physics demonstrating the feasibility that thick seams of uranium ore might,
2,000 million years ago, have been able to support chain reactions and function
as natural nuclear reactors. In 1972, scientists at the French Atomic Energy
Establishment discovered the intact remains of a natural nuclear reactor in a
seam of uranium ore at a mine at Oklo in the Republic of Gabon in western
Africa, which is pictured at right. |
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  In 1990,
J. Marvin Herndon's attention was directed to the
planet Jupiter. Astronomers had discovered in the late 1960s that Jupiter
radiates about twice as much energy as it receives from the sun. Planetary
scientists, erroneously believing they had considered and eliminated all
possible energy sources, declared that by "default" or "by elimination" the
excess energy must be gravitational energy released when the planet formed some
4,500 million years ago. Herndon foresaw a different possibility and, in a
paper published in Naturwissenschaften in 1992, demonstrated the
feasibility of planetocentric nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for
Jupiter, Saturn, and Neptune, the three giant planets found to have active
internal energy production and corresponding turbulent atmospheres. |
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  It
was only a small step for J. Marvin Herndon to realize that hydrogen to slow neutrons
was not necessary for a planetary reactor, opening the door to
the possibility of a nuclear fission reactor at the center of the Earth. In
1993, Herndon published a paper in the Journal of Geomagnetism and Geoelectricity
on
the
feasibility of a nuclear fission reactor as the energy source for the
geomagnetic field (pdf). Subsequently, Herndon extended the concept with publications in the
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London (pdf) and in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences USA (pdf),
(pdf), (pdf).
The distinguished Swiss nuclear
engineer, Walter Seifritz, pictured at right, verified Herndon's calculations
(pdf). |
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| For more than thirty years, scientists and engineers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory have developed and tested computer programs to simulate numerically different types of nuclear reactors. The research took a major step forward when Daniel Hollenbach collaborated to apply those programs to the georeactor (pdf). Numerical simulations not only confirmed that the georeactor could operate over the lifetime of the Earth as a fast neutron breeder reactor, but additionally yielded the amounts of the various products of nuclear fission, including helium. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The helium results, which agree with what is found in
deep-source lavas, such as Hawaii and Iceland, provide the first strong,
direct evidence for a nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth. This
can be seen by comparing the tabulated oceanic basalt data at right with
the calculated fission yield results at left. From
Herndon, J. M. (2003) Nuclear georeactor
origin of oceanic basalt 3He/4He, evidence, and implications. Proc. Nat.
Acad. Sci. USA 100, 3047-3050.
(pdf).
That paper presents strong evidence of the nuclear georeactor origin of oceanic basalt helium and strong evidence that the end of the lifetime of the Earth's georeactor is approaching. For background information, see Rao, P. K. (2002) Nuclear reactor at the core of the Earth! - A solution to the riddles of relative abundances of helium isotopes and geomagnetic field variability. Current Science, 85, 126-127. (pdf) |
© 2005, 2006, 2008 by Transdyne Corporation
Early
in 1939, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann published in Naturwissenschaften
their discovery of nuclear fission, the splitting of the nucleus of uranium
atoms. Later in the same year and in the same journal, Siegfried Flügge
speculated on the possibility of nuclear fission chain reactions occurring in
nature. As the clouds of World War II darkened over Europe and the rest of the
world, interest in nuclear fission focused upon the design and production of
nuclear fission devices (atom bombs). After the war, attention focused upon
commercial nuclear electric power production and nuclear submarine propulsion.
Little attention was directed to nuclear fission in nature.
The
helium results, which agree with what is found in deep-source lavas,
such as Hawaii and Iceland, provide the first strong, direct evidence
for a nuclear reactor at the center of the Earth. This can be seen by
comparing the tabulated oceanic basalt data at right with the calculated
fission yield results at left. From