Nuclear fission occurring naturally in Oklo region of West Africa

CHARLES OSGOOD reporting:

Physicist Enrico Ferme invented the first manmade nuclear reaction.

Dr. ALEX MESHIK: Everybody believed that Ferme invented the first one in Chicago in 1942, but in fact, nature did it two billion years before him.

OSGOOD: The story after this for Smart Balance.

OSGOOD: In 1972, French scientists looking for new uranium sources stumbled on a two-billion-year-old underground deposit in the Oklo region of West Africa. But what really amazed them was that this uranium, without manmade intervention, had already undergone fission, the way a nuclear reaction would process uranium today.

Professor CHARLES HOHENBERG: They discovered that it had been burned out by a natural reaction that occurred billions of years before they started digging it up.

OSGOOD: Physics professor Charles Hohenberg and his colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis wondered how this nuclear fission could have occurred and not destroyed everything in its path.

Prof. HOHENBERG: We're so careful to make sure that radiation and all is contained and no radioactive products get in the environment. But this is a totally uncontained, natural site.

OSGOOD: So for 15 years, Hohenberg and Dr. Alex Meshik studied Oklo's geological features trying to solve the mystery.

•	Nuclear fission occurring naturally in Oklo region of West Africa CBS News - The Osgood File, Wednesday, June 1, 2005 Byline: Charles Osgood