Comment on “Li and Be isotopic variations in an Allende CAI: Evidence for the in situ decay of short-lived Be and for the possible presence of the short-lived nuclide Be in the early solar system,” by M. Chaussidon, F. Robert, and K.D. McKeegan

Recently Chaussidon et al. reported isotopic measurements of the Allende meteorite Ca, Al-rich inclusion (CAI) 3529-41 that they claim as evidence that live ⁷Be was incorporated into this CAI at the time of its formation [Chaussidon, M., Robert, F., McKeegan, K.D., 2006. Li and Be isotopic variations in an Allende CAI: evidence for the in situ decay of short-lived ¹⁰Be and for the possible presence of the short-lived nuclide ⁷Be in the early solar system. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta70, 224-245]. They claim their data show excesses of ⁷Li/⁶Li above the chondritic value, and that the ⁷Li/⁶Li excesses correlate linearly with ⁹Be/⁶Li, implying that the excess ⁷Li arose from the decay of ⁷Be (t_1/2 = 53 days). In this Comment we dispute this claim. We show that the authors did not statistically analyze their data correctly, and that a linear correlation between ⁷Li/⁶Li and ⁹Be/⁶Li can in fact be ruled out. We show that the authors over-corrected for the effects of spallogenic Li, and in fact no statistically significant excesses of ⁷Li above chondritic ratios exist. Finally, we show that many of the spots in Allende 3529-41 that the authors counted as isotopically undisturbed show evidence of isotopic disturbance. We demonstrate that while their data support the late addition of isotopically light Li in spots with low Be/Li, their data are otherwise consistent with constant ⁷Li/⁶Li at near-chondritic levels. The data do not provide support for live ⁷Be in the early Solar System.