province what's going on everyone, here back with brand new episode of iran te city in adok to check out very significant uh facility for iran's nuclear program uh this is the uh this is the heavy water production facility uh and it's a very important part of iran's 20-year

vision document for its nuclear program and the main source of income for iran's nuclear program uh thanks to the extremely high quality heavy water that is produced in here and is exported to all the countries that require heavy water so join me on this journey as we talk about how heavy water is made its significance and its importance to iran's nuclear program uh as well as a couple of other isotopes that are also made in this facility.

so first of all, what even is heavy water and why do we need such a massive facility to be able to get it? heavy water is put simply water with very high concentration of deuterium. what is deuterium? deuterium is an isotope of hydrogen. an isotope of any element is uh that element with different number of neutrons, hydrogen to... basically has one single neutron, deuterium is hydrogen with two neutrons, so one additional neutron, which makes it heavier, hence the name heavy water. so uh, you pretty much know the chemical formula of water, it's h2oh representing hydrogen, and uh, in a hydrogen molecule, we have this one neutron, and in order to be able to extract the be little amounts of deuterium that is already in uh water, it's naturally occurring. we already

have some deuterium in regular water uh we need to go through very orduous process to be able to extract that amount of uh heavy water from the regular water to be able to get it up to a 99.9% purity uh because in regular water we have very miniscule amount of deuterium more specifically 147 ppm that is parts per million or in other words for every 7 molecules of water h2o, we have one single molecule of d2o, so uh in order to see how we actually get this heavy water and what goes on in these massive towers behind me, let's take a closer look inside with some schemata to be able to understand it better. the extraction process begins with the intake of regular water from nearby sources. this water contains both normal hydrogen and deterium atoms. the gritler sulphide process is a widely used method to extract heavy water. water full. through series of columns filled

with hydrogen sulfide gas. these columns, a chemical exchange occurs deterium atoms and water have a higher affinity for hydrogen sulphide forming deterium sulphide or d2s. duterium sulfide is separated from the mixture using a process of distillation with deterium sulfide being heavier settles and is drawn off from the bottom while the lighter hydrogen sulfide rises and is recycled back into the system. in another series of columns deter. deturium sulphite reacts with fresh water transferring the deturium atoms back to form heavy water (e2o). this process is repeated multiple times to increase the concentration of deturium until the resulting heavy water is then collected and stored. ready for use in nuclear reactors and other applications. from regular water intake to final extraction, the gritler sulphide process efficiently separates detarium to produce heavy water. a vital component in modern nuclear. technology, this intricate

process highlights the advanced technology and precision required to produce heavy water, the heavy water plant. now let's focus on some of the uses of this deutereum, this heavy water. there are a couple of categories uh that it's used in uh for nuclear reactors and for non-nuclear purposes. first let's focus on uh the usage of heavy water in nuclear reactors, particularly research reactors. do a little bit of a refresher on nuclear fusion as a whole process before i explain the usage of hey water in it. nuclear fision is essentially when a neutron... hits the nucleus of metostable uranium 235 and it splits it into two, releasing two or three neutrons and a couple of product nuclei along with a lot of energy, but for that neutron to be able to split this atom in two, it needs to have very specific level of energy and

speed. now in order for that neutron to have that low of energy and low speed uh, once it is released from the nucleus of uranium 235, it needs to be surrounded by heavy water. otherwise it won't have the same level of energy that is necessary to keep the chain reaction going and the reaction will stop and there will be no chain reaction. so that's the usage of uh uh heavy water in nuclear reactors. now let's focus in on second category of its use. getting stable isotope is another use of the hundab heavywater facility which plays a crucial role in various fields from medicine to environmental science. heavy water plant like the one in hondab harness these stable isotope, particularly deterium, the key component and heavy water. deuterium has numerous applications in medicine, deuterium labeled compounds aid and drug development and metabolic studies: tracing drug pathways

within the body. in environmental science, stable isotopes trace water sources and study water movement within ecosystems, helping assess water quality, study climate change and plant resources. in chemistry and geology, stable isotopes are used in isotope ratio mass, spectrometry to analyze substances and date rocks. in archaeology, the uncovered the origins and diets of ancient civilizations, agriculture benefits from studying nutrient cycles, leading to more sustainable farming practices. heavy water plants support stable isotope research and applications across science, medicine and industry, driving innovation and understanding and multiple disciplines. now let's talk about another isotope that is produced in this same facility with the similar processes. i'm talking about distillation that was also used in producing heavy water. and that isotope is uh the

isotope of oxygen 18. the naturally occurring isotope of oxygen is oxygen 16. so what is oxygen 18 used for? well, in case you don't remember uh, in a previous episode. we did a we did an episode a particular radio pharmaceutical called uh fdg (fluorodisoxyglucose) which was used to diagnose different types of cancer uh and the main ingredient for that particular radiopharmaceutical was floron specifically the radio isotope of fluorine fluorine 18 and how do we get fluorine 18 well by by the neutron bombardment of oxygen 18 and here's how we get that oxygen 18 heavy water. facilities like hondab are essential for producing stabili isobes like oxygen 18. the process starts with regular water containing various oxygen isotopes. using fractional distillation, water is heated and cooled repeatedly. since oxygen 18 has higher boiling point, it concentrates in the

remaining liquid phase. another method is electrolysis, where water is split into hydrogen in oxygen gases. lighter oxygen 16 favors electrolysis, leaving behind. enriched in oxygen 18, enriched oxygen 18 is then extracted and purified, it's used in pet scans for medical diagnostics and an environmental science to study water sources and climate change. heavy water facilities thus play a crucial role in providing this valuable isotope for diverse applications. so now you know how heavy water is produced, now there's an infinite. of things that we can do with this heavy water and more specifically with the deuterium within this heavy water. i'm going to tell you about one of the use cases here uh, but we're definitely going to have to cover all of these use cases or at least parts of these use cases in a future episode. when you think about a drug, a common drug, we're talking about the

different bonds between carbon and hydrogen, that's pretty much what all drugs are made out of, and the the different structure of these carbon and hydrogen bonds will... carry out different tasks in different drugs, but if we were to replace some of the strands that are some of the strands of carbon and hydrogen bonds in drug with a carbon and deuterium bond with... make it 10 times stronger, not the drug, but the bond between carbon and deuterium is 10 times stronger than uh the bond between carbon and hydrogen, so for the active part of the drug where it needs to be absorbed by the body, we will not replace the hydrogen with deuterium so that it can be absorbed, the bond can be broken, but in the non-active parts, the the parts that actually create side effects from the drug in the patient's body, we replace the hydrogen with duterium so that it cannot be dissolve in body and be absorbed by by the cells, that means that only the active part will be absorbed and the parts that we don't

like that we can't get rid of in a typical drug will just pass through and silly we will have a drug with no side effect. that's just one of the things that we can do the duterium that now we have in this heavy water. there's an infinite amount of things that we can do with. let me give you a bit of a perspective on how eran has managed. to steal the competition, it comes to its heavy water production, so imagine this, it took india nearly 12 years to develop the technology necessary to produce its own heavy water, and that is while uh india has enjoyed all the benefits that come with being a member of the international atomic energy agency, which mainly come in the form of the sharing of technology among nuclear countries. it only took iran four years to develop that same technology while enjoying none of the benefits that come with being a member of the iaea, so that should tell you about the sign. significance of this achievement, not to mention all of the other achievements that came with it in the form of and producing

deuterium solvents and duterian products which we're definitely going to cover in future episode. and with that said we've come to the end of this episode of iran tech, many thanks for watching, i'll see you all next time.

really impressive how still today mountain give to people the sense, the idea of freedom, imam hussein's message of defiance against oppression and dictatorship is relevant for all times. and applicable for a broad audience for generations to come.