New insights into the Oklo natural fission reactors elucidated from isotopic studies using state-of-the-art analytical techniques

Hidaka, Hiroshi*; Kagami, Saya   ; Saito, Takaharu  ; Yokoyama, Tatsunori   ; Pravdivtseva, O.*; Meshik, A.*; Bentridi, S.*; Durastanti Rabnga Mombo, E. D.*; Gall, B.*

Isotopic studies of the Oklo natural fission reactors have provided very important information to characterize the operating conditions of the individual reactor zones (RZs). Most of the isotopic data of the Oklo RZ materials were given more than a quarter of a century ago. Significant progress has recently been made in the instrumental developments of mass spectrometry for isotopic analyses. If more precise isotopic data from the RZ materials were obtained, we may gain new insights into understanding the Oklo phenomenon. There is still much to learn from the Oklo RZs. In this paper, we introduce our new approaches to elucidate the Oklo phenomenon from isotopic studies using state-of-the-art analytical techniques.