Why is “heavy water” used in nuclear energy, are not potable to drink, even it’s just 1 molecule more than H2O?
In: Chemistry
Its not 1 molecule more.
A water molecule consists of 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen atom. Hydrogen is a atom consisting of normally just one proton.
In heavy water you still have hydrogen atoms with just 1 proton (called protium). However there is one additional particle in the atom nucleus, called a neutrons. Neutrons have the same mass as an proton but no charge and basically glue together the atom nucleus (if the fraction of neutrons to protons is wrong the nucleus is unstable and can undergo radioactive decay) but don’t change the element.
For most elements the atoms with different number of neutrons (these are called isotopes), the chemical properties are pretty similar. However as hydrogen is so light (the standard hydrogen has a mass of 1), adding a neutron makes it twice as heavy (the deuterium in heavy water has a mass of 2).
And this large mass difference of deuterium changes some chemical properties of the molecules made out of deuterium compared to the ones made out of protium (even though both are still hydrogen).
These different chemical properties make heavy water somewhat toxic to many orgasims.
In details its much more difficult to split off hydrogen ions from a heavy water molecule than on a normal water molecule. But that is something many biological processes require. Heavy water slow downs these necessary processes in a living organism, which can kill it.
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