Making sense of two findings

Two wows this past week:

First, Scott Parazynski and Daniel Tani found that there are metal shavings in one of the joint of the rotating solar arrays of the International Space Station (ISS). Since you can't change them, this is major news as it may critically impact the ISS in the future.

Second, the news that Uranium isotope ratios have been shown to not be invariant. This is the first time since the Oklo natural reactor that we show that natural reactors have occurred in many other places (though not at the rate of the Oklo). This is significant because it shows that deep burying of current nuclear waste is not unlike what is currently done in nature. Furthermore, it maybe another element showing us that Earth is a giant nuclear reactor. In this latest theory, I have always been amazed at the Origen-S and SAS2 jobs performed to compare to results found in nature. These codes are generally used in nuclear engineering to determine parameters of interest in nuclear reactor cores.

Credit: NASA, Earth-Moon system as viewed from a Mars probe on its way to Mars. 2003.