Long before humans began creating nuclear reactors to fulfill our ridiculous energy needs, back when the Earth was dominated by microbes, in fact, nature beat us to it and built the first nuclear reactor on Earth.
In May 1972, a physicist at a nuclear processing plant in Pierrelatte, France, was conducting analysis on uranium samples when he noticed something pretty strange. In usual uranium ore deposits, three different isotopes are found; uranium 238, uranium 234, and uranium 235. Of these, uranium 238 is the most abundant, while uranium 234 is the rarest. Isotope 235 makes up around 0.72 percent of uranium deposits, and is the most coveted, as if you can enrich it past 3 percent it can be used to create a sustained nuclear reaction.
In the samples from the Oklo deposits in Gabon, Africa, isotope 235 was found to make up 0.717 percent of the total. That might not sound like much of a difference, but it’s pretty weird.
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