Why is “heavy water” used in nuclear energy, are not potable to drink, even it’s just 1 molecule more than H2O?
In: Chemistry
That extra neutron in the deuterium makes it twice as heavy as a normal hydrogen atom. A lot of biological processes depend on hydrogen having a certain mass so that, when the weight is off, they go wrong. Usually, the water we drink only has 0.03% deuterium in it, so the occasional process acting off can be offset by the majority of others that are working correctly. Drinking heavy water, which only has deuterium attached to the oxygen atoms, will add way too much into your body for natural error correction to account for.
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