Nuclear Reactors in the Giant Outer Planets
Concept of Planetocentric Nuclear Fission Reactors
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Nuclear Reactors in the Giant Outer Planets Concept of Planetocentric Nuclear Fission Reactors |
  It was once thought that planets do not
produce significant internal energy; they only absorb energy from sunlight and
then re-radiating it into space. Then, in the late 1960s, astronomers discovered
that Jupiter radiates about twice as much energy as it absorbs from sunlight.
Later, Saturn and Neptune were also observed to radiate prodigious amounts of
internally generated energy. The explanation proffered for two decades by NASA
scientists, that the radiated energy was left over from planetary formation, did
not make sense to J. Marvin Herndon because Jupiter is 98% a mixture of hydrogen
and helium, excellent heat transport media, and Neptune is only 5% the mass of
Jupiter. In a flash of inspiration, the pieces all fell into place, the lessons
of Oklo began to make sense on a grander, planetary scale. Herndon worked out
the physics, using Fermi's nuclear reactor theory, like Kuroda had done, and
published the following scientific paper: J. M. (1992)
Feasibility of nuclear fission reactors as energy sources for the giant outer
planets. Naturwissenschaften 79, 7-14. |
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Herndon realized that inside the giant planets density of an element is a function almost entirely of atomic number and atomic mass, meaning that uranium would be most dense and would tend to concentrate at the planet's center by gravity. Billions of years ago, nuclear fission chain reactions could begin in the concentrated uranium and could continue into the present, as implied by Oklo observations, through fuel breeding reactions. Herndon also realized that, with planetocentric reactors, there is a natural mechanism for removing fission products, which if left in place could shut down neutron chain reactions; the fission products would be roughly have the atomic number and atomic mass as uranium and thus would tend to migrate outward as the uranium tended to migrate inward. There is much, much more to this story. It was only a small advance in thinking that led Herndon to realize that a nuclear reactor could exist at the center of Earth: |
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