Oak Ridge isotope experiments

[Jacques.Read@eh.doe.gov]

About 30 or 40 years ago, ORNL had a "deuterium farm,"  which was an

isolated building in which progressively more complicated organisms were

raised on deuterium oxide (heavy water), millions of dollars worth of it.

The plan was to have a source for deuterium-labelled biochemicals for use

in tracing metabolic processes.  It didn't work, since the bond angles of

the deuterated proteins, etc. were different, and when a substantial

fraction of the hydrogen in an organism was replaced by deuterium the

organisms died.  They did present a paper that demonstrated that vegetables

could tolerate greater deuterization than animals.  Since potassium is

present in organisms as ions, there would be no such problem with raising

things with only K40.  Also, the isotopic effect of a difference between

mass 40 and mass 41 would be trivial.





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