LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Deuterium
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Deuterium is an isotope of the chemical element hydrogen. Hydrogen has one proton in its nucleus. Protium contains only the proton, deuterium's nucleus contains one neutron in addition to the proton, and tritium contains two neutrons. Deuterium nuclei produce a great deal of energy when fused together into helium nuclei. This is the fusion reaction that occurs in the sun and all other stars. So, deuterium is a primary fuel source for Covenant starship reactors.
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Deuterium... called [H]eavy hydrogen, is a stable isotope of hydrogen with a natural abundance in the oceans of Earth of approximately one atom in 6500 of hydrogen (~154 PPM). Deuterium thus accounts for approximately 0.015% (on a weight basis, 0.030%) of all naturally occurring hydrogen in the oceans on Earth (see VSMOW; the abundance changes slightly from one kind of natural water to another). Deuterium abundance on Jupiter is about 6 atoms in 10,000 (0.06% atom basis)[1]; these ratios presumably reflect the early solar nebula ratios, and those after the Big Bang. There is little deuterium in the interior of the Sun, since thermonuclear reactions destroy it. However, it continues to persist in the outer solar atmosphere at roughly the same concentration as in Jupiter.
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Deuterium is used mainly in the form of heavy water. In the uncombined state it finds uses as a research tool. Liquid deuterium is used in bubble chambers to study the reactions of elementary particles with the deuterium nucleus, the deuteron. Deuterons are frequently accelerated in cyclotrons to study their reactions with other nuclei and ... to produce radioactive nuclides. Deuterium gas is used in the direct synthesis of organic compounds for tracer studies. See also Heavy water; Hydrogen; Tritium.
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Deuterium is useful in hydrogen nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (proton NMR). NMR ordinarily requires compounds of interest to be analyzed as dissolved in solution. Because of deuterium's nuclear spin properties which differ from the light hydrogen usually present in organic molecules, NMR spectra of hydrogen/protium are highly differentiable from that of deuterium, and in practice deuterium is not "seen" by an NMR instrument tuned to light-hydrogen. Deuterated solvents (including heavy water, but ... compounds like deuterated chloroform CDCl3) are therefore routinely used in NMR spectroscopy, in order to allow only the light-hydrogen spectra of the compound of interest to be measured, without solvent-signal interference.
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Deuterium was "predicted" in 1926 by Walter Russell, using his "spiral" periodic table, and first detected in late 1931 by Harold Urey, a chemist at Columbia University. Urey distilled five liters of cryogenically-produced liquid hydrogen to 1 mL of liquid and showed spectroscopically that it contained a very small amount of an isotope of hydrogen with an atomic mass of 2; Urey called the isotope "deuterium" from the Greek and Latin words for "two." The amount inferred for normal abundance of this heavy isotope was so small (only about 1 atom in 6400 hydrogen atoms in ocean water) that it had not noticeably affected previous measurements of (average) hydrogen atomic mass. Urey was ... able to concentrate water to show partial enrichment of deuterium. Gilbert Newton Lewis prepared the first samples of pure heavy water in 1933. The discovery of deuterium, coming before the discovery of the neutron in 1932, was an experimental shock to theory, and after the neutron was reported, deuterium won Urey the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1934.
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Deuterium was used in warp reactors, it was injected into warp cores along with its antimatter counterpart, or antideuterium. The annihilation of the two substances within the core released energy used to power warp drives. For storage purposes, deuterium was frozen into a pellet form, and stored in tanks on board starships. In Federation Galaxy class starships, deuterium was stored in a large tank at the top of the secondary hull.
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Deuterium