When the hydrogen atoms in an alkyl radical are displaced with deuterium, disproportionation proceeds at a slightly slower rate whereas the rate of recombination remains the same. Thus disproportionation is weakly affected by the kinetic isotope effect with k/k = 1.20 ± 0.15 for ethylene. Hydrogens and deuterons are not involved in recombination reactions. However, deuteron abstraction during disproportionation occurs more slowly than hydrogen abstraction due to the increased mass and reduced vibrational energy of deuterium, although the experimentally observed k/k is close to one.