Predicting the reactivity of actinide elements in nature is among the most pressing concerns in environmental geochemistry, yet even some basic measures of reactivity are not well known. Included among these are the mechanisms of ligand exchange in simple complexes. These data are important because the reaction dynamics can be compared to computer simulations to gain confidence for cases where experiments are impossible. Among the key parameters used to describe ligand-exchange mechanisms are activation volumes, which derive from the pressure dependence of the reaction rates. These activation volumes are interpreted to indicate the extents to which the incoming ligand can influence the activated state. In this sense, the UO 2 (CO 3 ) 3 4À (aq) ion is a particularly compelling system because rates of carbonate exchange are apparently independent of free carbonate concentrations.[1]Herein we report high-pressure rate data for the mononuclear uranyl carbonate ion, UO 2 (CO 3 ) 3 4À (aq), which is a dominant species in uranyl-rich, near-neutral pH solutions that are open to atmospheric CO 2 .[1b-d, 2] Bµnyai et al. presented rate equations for two pathways for carbonate exchange [1d] in the mononuclear UO 2 (CO 3 ) 3 4À (aq) species, which were combined into the overall rate equation [Eq. (1)]:where k 1 and k 2 are the rate coefficients, [H + ] is the proton concentration, and [UO 2 (CO 3 ) 3 4À ] is the concentration of the target ion. Pathway 1 (k 1 ) is independent of pH and dominates at high pH (~9.50), while the proton-enhanced pathway 2 (k 2 ) dominates at lower pH (~7.00).The 13 C chemical shifts of bound and free carbonate are less than 1 kHz apart, which presents a unique challenge for highpressure saturation-transfer experiments. The long, soft, Gaussian-shaped pulses used in previous studies [3] were not adequately selective. Others have employed the DANTE [4] pulse sequence to better shape excitation bandwidth.[1d] However, the inherently long 908 durations that are characteristic of highpressure probes make optimization of the DANTE sequence excessively long. Instead, we used the pulse sequence, described below and illustrated in Figure 1, which exploits the principles of null points obtained by means of the DANTE sequence, and is similar to the pulse sequence used by Bodor et al. [5] Magnetization for both sites is tipped into the xy-plane using a hard 908 pulse. A calibrated time, t Prec , is allowed to pass where, in the rotating frame, the off-resonance signal is allowed to precess until it is exactly 1808 out of phase with the on-resonance peak. Here, another hard 908 pulse is used to achieve inversion of magnetization for one site and, by varying the phase of the second pulse, one can manipulate which peak achieves the inversion. We then allow a delay so the two spin states are allowed to mix via chemical exchange. As magnetization between the two sites is transferred, intensity decreases for the positive site, and increases for the inverted (negative) site (Figure 2). Eventually T 1 relaxation do...