Abstract
We estimated the polarization contribution of Coulomb energy to the spacing between the ground and first excited state of the 229Th nucleus as a function of the deformation parameter δ. We show that despite the fact that the odd particle is a neutron, the change in Coulomb energy ΔUC between these two states can reach several hundreds keV from this contribution. This means that the effect of the variation of the fine-structure constant 
may be enhanced ΔUC/E∼104 times in the E=7.6 eV "nuclear clock" transition between the ground and first excited states in the 229Th nucleus. To extract the full value of ΔUC, we propose to measure isomeric shift of atomic levels and nuclear electric quadrupole moments in 229Th.