Heavy water (deuterium oxide (2H
2O )) is a form of water that contains a larger than normal amount of the hydrogen isotope deuterium (2H or D, also known as heavy hydrogen), rather than the common hydrogen-1 isotope (1H or H, also called protium) that makes up most of the hydrogen in normal water.[3]
A molecule of heavy water has two deuterium atoms in place of the two protium atoms of ordinary "light" water. The weight of a heavy water molecule, however, is not substantially different from that of a normal water molecule, because about 89% of the molecular weight of water comes from the single oxygen atom rather than the two hydrogen atoms. The colloquial term heavy water refers to a highly enriched water mixture that contains mostly deuterium oxide (D2O), but also some hydrogen-deuterium oxide (HDO) and a smaller number of ordinary hydrogen oxide (H2O) molecules. For instance, the heavy water used in CANDU reactors is 99.75% enriched by hydrogen atom-fraction—meaning that 99.75% of the hydrogen atoms are of the heavy type. For comparison, ordinary water (the "ordinary water" used for a deuterium standard) contains only about 156 deuterium atoms per million hydrogen atoms.
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