Investigation of clay and neutron absorbers’ roles in the genesis and evolution of Oklo natural nuclear reactors

Since their discovery, the Oklo natural nuclear reactors were subject of many detailed field studies, sample analysis and criticality simulations. The present article is dedicated to advanced simulations of Oklo cores using a custom Python code to generalize and automate MCNP criticality calculations. The impacts of both the initial neutron absorbers and the clay fraction, which define the initial and evolving mineralogical environment, were studied by means of parametric simulations.