Carbon-12 Carbon-12 Carbon-12 (C) is the more abundant of the two stable isotopes of carbon (Carbon-13 being the other), amounting to 98.93% of the element carbon; its abundance is due to the triple-alpha process by which it is created in stars. Carbon-12 is of particular importance in its use as the standard from which atomic masses of all nuclides are measured, thus, its atomic mass is exactly 12 daltons by definition. Its nucleus contains 6 protons and 6 neutrons. Before 1959 both the IUPAP and IUPAC used oxygen to define the mole; the chemists defining the mole as the number of
Atomic vapor laser isotope separation Atomic vapor laser isotope separation Atomic vapor laser isotope separation, or AVLIS, is a method by which specially tuned lasers are used to separate isotopes of uranium using selective ionization of hyperfine transitions. As compared to gas centrifuges the AVLIS process provides high energy efficiency, high separation factors, and a low volume of radioactive waste. A similar technology, using molecules instead of atoms, is molecular laser isotope separation (MLIS). The absorption lines of and U differ slightly due to hyperfine structure; for example, the U absorption peak of 502.74 nanometers shifts to 502.73 nm in U. AVLIS uses tunable dye