Researchers are developing a battery powered by diamonds made from nuclear waste | Hacker News Reader

Researchers are developing a battery powered by diamonds made from nuclear waste

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Our civilizational message in a bottle, the Voyager Records and Pioneer Plaques will outlive their power sources by an incomprehensible amount. The record is estimated to survive for more than a billion years. The power source for less than 40 before it is rendered unusable.

The message will travel onwards forever, cloaked in dark, dashing the hopes of any recovery. Of bringing joy to alien beings. Of giving them certainty that they certainly weren't alone in the universe at some point in their past.

What if we could create something, some undefined means to generate a pulse ever X years for more than a billion years? Is it possible to make a billion year battery? Oxford's Electric Bell at a cosmic time scale? Could human ingenuity create a device that would make our next message in a bottle more discoverable for those beings who do not exist yet?

Is it possible for humanity, with current technology and scientific knowledge, to transcend its cradle and create something that functions for billions of years?

Sending pulses that are detectable for even just a couple light years requires surprisingly high power (unless it's a very tight beam, which would be rather pointless for this purpose). That would be a huge challenge with fitting it on an interstellar probe. Our best bet would probably a geothermal setup powering a radio beacon, located on Mercury or Mars; or maybe on a moon that is heated by high tidal forces.

We could also try engineering something similar to natural nuclear reactors [1], powering up a radio beacon once water rises high enough every couple of years. That might run for a million years or so.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...

Maybe you don't use radio waves at all: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10361792B2/en?oq=US10361...

This certainly seems interesting, but I don't understand what it's saying. Is it a way of encoding a message into the motion of objects? How do you even make that detectable?

Why not use a passive solar heliograph, e.g. a spinning cubic or dodecahedron mirror? That should last for a million years or more.

At that stage you are having different considerations.

And first contact is probably less scary if you can build mega structures in the orbit. Vanity mega structures if its sole purpose is to announce your presence to the universe.

You can easily do periodically transmissions for infinitely long with a finite power source, as long as you transmit less often than 1/t. I imagine the tricky bit would be making a power source with no parasitic losses. Maybe a high-temperature super conducting loop.

> You can easily do periodically transmissions for infinitely long with a finite power source, as long as you transmit less often than 1/t.

What does the 1/t part mean? As far as I can understand it means if your power source lasts 10 years, you need to transmit not more than every 1/10 = 0.1 years. Which doesn't make sense. More generally, periodic transmissions forever will emit infinite power so how could a finite power source power that?

I think GP is trying to construct a geometric series by doubling the wait time after each transmission. Of course that doesn't work: If your battery holds 100kWh and each transmission takes 1kWh then you can make 100 transmissions, no matter how you space them out.

However in the same spirit you could do periodic transmissions, but half your transmission power each time. Assuming no losses anywhere in the system that would allow you to make an infinite number of transmissions with a finite power source (since 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ... = 2). Of course if you half your transmission power each time the transmissions quickly become pointless, so this is of somewhat limited use.

It's not infinitely divisible, quiescent power draw will limit you in any case.

Just a shorthand to indicate that it needs to decay faster than the harmonic series

Simple solution, Create a probe that travels to another star, harvests resources, self replicates, sends our pulse, continue on to next star. Should have the whole galaxy covered in a few billion years.

I think some bit von-Bobby wrote some books on it.

Von Neumann probes (self-replicating): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-replicating_spacecraft#Vo...

Bracewell probes (~strong AI communication probes): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracewell_probe

I making reference to Bobiverse. A book series about a programmer who is uploaded to a Von Neumannn probe. Good series

Ah, I wasn't aware of that series; I'll add it to my potential list. I did catch the "von" part of von-Bobby though. :)

90% great series. The last 10% is the author very clearly being sick of writing it and invoking a deus ex machina to instantly solve the big problem.

So sick of it that there's two new books in the series coming out, one this month?

Welcome to the economics of scifi/fantasy publishing. It's really hard to get people to start reading a book set in an entirely new world, but if you succeed once and they like the book, they are very likely to purchase new books in the same setting.

This is why all genre books are parts of trilogies, most of which get abandoned after the first or second book, (because the market just wasn't there, and the publisher just didn't want any more books after a flop), or which get extended well past any desire from the author or good sense simply because people keep purchasing them, the author needs to pay their mortgage and their new books not set in the established universe keep flopping.

I think Stross went into this at length at a panel in some con I was in.

Did you read them? You really don't think there was a radical change of pace near the end with plot points being instantly resolved all over the place with resolutions that sometimes not only didn't match the buildup but sometimes didn't even seem in keeping with character traits?

Yes, and re-read them in the past couple of weeks since the new ones are coming out.

It didn't feel out of place to me, sure some story arch's got wrapped up, but others opened up.

If this went onto say 9 books like that it would have a pacing similar to The Expanse where every couple of books there's a new "villain" or challenge. I'd much rather have that than something like Expeditionary Force where one storyline seems to be dragging on forever.

where every couple of books there's a new "villain" or challenge. I'd much rather have that

Agreed.

ExForce has a hell of a deux ex machina at the end of the most recent book as well.

Wouldn't the microparticles wear away the record and plaques?

Maybe a solar sail probe which slingshots from star to star?

To draw on some well-founded sci-fi concerns, the dark forest hypothesis would be that it is not a good idea to announce one's presence to the cosmos without preparation.

https://blog.usejournal.com/the-dark-forest-theory-of-the-un...

I’ve never liked this reasoning:

> A civilization that wishes to continue expanding across the universe will need to compete for the limited resources with any other intelligent life

If a civilisation has the ability to travel across to different star systems, then going to war over a single planet’s resources makes little sense when they probably have the ability to manipulate and craft matter, at will, at the atomic level.

The problem with crafting individual atoms at will is that eventually you run out of atoms.

Any society whose primary mindset is competing for resources will off itself long before it gets to affect anyone else. If you don’t transcend that primitive instinct, you’re already doomed.

Thing is, humanity (or whatever comes next) will need a way to survive the death of its sun.

Yes we take the risk of stumbling on something so alien that it wouldn't perceive us as worthy of preserving, or that their means of communication could destroy us, but given the alternative is extinction anyway, it's worth a try.

And let's say we're long gone and no other specie picks up where we left off, at least we give a fighting chance to the other species of our planet to get rescued by something else.

This gives me "The Inner Light" vibes, easily the best episode Star Trek TNG ever created.

Discussion about this topic was posted/flagged yesterday, it was a different website.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324684

Discussion on reddit about this topic from 3 days ago with 350+ comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iiedk4/energy_f...

eevblog had a good video about this product: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM

TL;DR it's a 100 microwatt power source which is essentially nothing for most applications.

It may be comparable to tritium markers that glow continuously for 10 years without recharging. Their glow is really weak, so you cannot use it as a light bulb replacement, but there are useful applications like markers for emergency equipment or watches.

https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp32-sleep-modes-power-cons...

Would it be enough to power an ESP32 every so often? Put in deep sleep mode, power source charges small battery, wake up, do something, sleep again, etc.

"in deep sleep mode, ESP32’s current consumption is almost 150 uA"

Assuming a 3V power supply is needed, at 100uW, you only get ~30uA, so no.

However the "Hibernation" mode would work (however, this looses memory state): "This Power mode of ESP32 consumes a minimum amount of current, which is around 5 uA."

But you'd not be able to wake up very often since the active mode power draw is very high (and even higher yet when connected to wifi). You'd be much better off using a proper low-power microcontroller.

There was talk years ago about scavenged power to run physically embedded sensors intermittently.

For instance, absorbing vibrations in the superstructure of a building to run strain gauge or moisture sensor a couple times a day, per location.

At that rate you could put a small battery in it which would last years before needing servicing.

The Ambiq Apollo3 uses 6µA/MHz at 3.3V (so 20µW/MHz), so that's something.

You can also use it to charge a capacitor that can provide short bursts of energy so you can use it for sensors that sleep most of the time, taken a measurement and send some data, then sleep again.

It's not even that; it's a digital rendering of a 100 microwatt power source.

So the first problem is that power output is very low. But the second problem is worse:

You cannot turn this power source off.

At 7% efficiency, if you had a 1W battery, it would dissipate somewhere around 13W of heat. If your smartphone needs 5W then it would dissipate somewhere around 65W of heat. Constantly.

Radioactive decay doesn't turn off.

Not a problem in this case because those batteries are less than miliwatt in a pretty macroscopic package.

Yeah. I'm just pointing out that if you tried to scale this to useful power amounts, the waste heat would be overwhelming.

They sure have got themselves a lot of press. However, PR skills doth not a product make. In fact, all the noise just increases my scepticism.

Agreed. For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new batteries that are just a couple years away.

Posted from a Li-ion powered device.

This is not like other batteries - it’s nuclear. Nuclear batteries are old school - they have been powering the voyager probes since the 80s.

And the issues are different - less technical - more political.

Is it really only political? Can I buy a working nuclear battery outside the US/EU?

It seems like it:

https://soranews24.com/2013/01/17/atomic-batteries-for-sale-...

70s :)

These aren't RTGs though, they are betavoltaic. Instead of using thermocouples to capture part of the decay heat (of plutonium, in Voyager's case), they generate current from beta particles hitting a semiconductor.

What’s the significance in that? I mean, why are beta particles less political than decay heat?

RTGs are only really useful with particular elements; plutonium is used because it emits a lot of heat for a very long time. People freak out about plutonium.

I think these betavoltaic cells can use elements which are less likely to get people upset about proliferation or environmental effects. It's not the same thing at all, but I think you could compare these favorably with e.g. Americium in common smoke detectors (alpha decay).

Edit: also your comment just said nuclear batteries and voyager, but these batteries are not anything like those batteries and should not be thought of as the same, regardless of politics.

Pacemakers have had these for years, they exist just fine.

They're not going to run your Li-ion-powered device because that device needs millions of times more power than a nuclear battery produces.

The nuclear battery just produces it for millions of times longer.

These are not a replacement for smartphone batteries. But they might do well for things like solar-powered remote weather stations (another place you'll also see radioactive power sources, though those tend to be thermal rather than betavoltaic).

A wristwatch might be interesting. These already run 7-10 years on a coin cell, or a few days per solar charge. A betavoltaic cell could likely produce enough power to drive the LCD if not the beeper, and do so almost indefinitely. I wonder what would wear out first.

> A betavoltaic cell could likely produce enough power to drive the LCD if not the beeper

Another product, perhaps - but not this one. While they're cagey about giving actual numbers - the rendering that Dave of EEVBlog found was of a 100 microwatt device, about the same size/volume as an AA battery.

At 100 microwatts, that's apparently just enough to drive one segment of a watch LCD display[1].

[1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is-consumed-by-one-segm...

> The nuclear battery just produces it for millions of times longer.

IIRC Last time I checked most betavoltaic cells of this scale only last around 20 years.

Sure, and a cellphone drains its battery in about 20 hours.

20 year / 20 hour = Year / Hour = 365 * 24 = 8760 hours per year, so about two orders of magnitude off from lasting "millions of times longer".

Why am I being downvoted? Currently available betavoltaic cells are rated for about ~20 years[0][1].

[0] https://newatlas.com/city-labs-nanotritium-betavoltaic-batte...

[1] https://citylabs.net/products/

I’m old enough to remember when Li-ion was itself an almost-magical-sounding new battery technology that seemed to take forever to get here.

Who knows if this will pan out, but new technologies often get big press long before they make it to consumers.

> For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new batteries that are just a couple years away.

My dad showed me a copy of some of his popular science magazines from back when the world was in black and white (the 70s) and even in those pages, there were amazing new batteries just around the corner.

Graphene batteries, nuclear batteries, carbon batteries, etc.

They never make it out of the hype train factory.

Silicon–graphene is used in high voltage LiPo batteries, while Graphene was theorized in the late 1800’s and modeled in the 1950’s it hasn’t been isolated until 2004 where the first single layer Graphene was created using a sticky tape of all things.

So while in the 70’s people were thinking about Graphene application because the physics were modeled and studied we didn’t had the ability to produce it and we still have limited ability to produce it at scale.

This isn’t just about hype but rather what is possible with our current level of technology and manufacturing capabilities.

It took over 30 years until lithium ion batteries became prevalent and we are still improving their chemistry and structure, heck the first commercial NMC batteries came out around 2012.

Radioactive batteries are certainly possible (and some exist). Achieving power levels and safety requirements for everyday use is the difficulty.

I realized some years ago it would be possible to make rechargable hafnium batteries. They would be awesome -- but you have to figure out a highly effcient means of converting gamma rays into electricity.

In a better version of the article[0], it’s mentioned how they’ve significantly increased the efficiency - by adding Carbon 14 to lab-grown diamonds. Carbon 14 is both radioactive and a semiconductor, meaning more of the beta particles are changed into electricity.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333019

Does not says anything about power levels?

There is debunking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDFlV0OEK5E it saying that power level are impractical for anything large, therefore it is pipe dream in regards to removing all the nuclear waste.

Fun to think of a future civilization 1000 years from now getting an alert to change a battery, and then all the effort it would take them to look through ancient documents to figure out the process :)

Absolutely plausible scenario provided we somehow get the world's total energy consumption down to 100 microwatts.

Well, just a single key system needs to be running on 100 microwatts for this scenario to occur.

This talk of permanent batteries reminds me of the little power spheres in the final Foundation series by Asimov et al.

Stargate, zero point module.

Foundation tech was all nuclear, which is sort of quaint now. Everything nuclear was magic back then.

Or Heinlein’s “Shipstones.”

I wonder if this is non-radioactive enough to be sealed inside the human body for things like a brain/computer interface. Implant the electrodes + transmitter inside the skull and seal it up, then have a receiver device outside the skull receive and interpret the signals to control things.

Hard part would be making it safe enough and just how many people would need something bad enough to do literal brain surgery for such a thing.

It's safe enough already - betavoltaics are only held back by their super low power density and insanely high price.

What about the size?

You can make them very small, a couple millimeters. The power density will cripple you long before you hit a size limit.

TLDR (kind of)

* Using alpha/beta decay in a diamond structure to generate electricity in the battery

* Utilizing nuclear waste in the process

* They say the battery is safe for civil use (e.g. not limited to military/industrial use)

* About the same price as a LiIon battery for a Tesla (~$9K)

* However, it recharges itself and shall last for decades !

* They want to do a pay as you go sales, but also extract revenue for the utilization of nuclear waste.

* Done with the PoC. Doing a commercial prototype. Outlook is ~2y time to market.

* Targeting the UPS market at big cloud datacenters as a first customer

* They say technology works from nano scale (bots) to cars and industrial applications. However military/industrial could be first large deployments (no need to comply with same regulations)

Perhaps useful to power sensors in remote areas that only need a bit of power but solar isn't a good option (maybe in mines or underwater). The power density is too low to handle anything than needs a lot of power.

I posted this a day ago and a great comment worth checking: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320915

I wonder if this was the same company EEVblog debunked. It was mostly marketing claims, as these things make so little energy its pretty much useless on earth.

Wasn’t this debunked? As I recall, after some digging, it came to light that the amount of power offered by a typical-sized battery from this company even at 100% efficiency would be on the order microwatts. There was even an article paid for by the company with an illustration displaying 100 uW on the unit.

I’m not at my computer and can’t easily dig up sources at the moment, but I doubt they’re hard to find.

Unlike usual, this fake product at least is getting some comments about how it's fake.

But still there seems no emerging consensus it's fake, and this has been posted multiple time.

If nothing can be done about this egregious example, think about what happens to the other 99% of times where it's fake but it takes a little more thinking.

I don't understand. It is nearly useless but it does not seem fake to me.

This is similar to what the Russians for example do... but, what if, technically, we are not sure, in the future, you can't be sure.

People have posted half hour long videos explaining this and the circles continue.

If it's 'useless' it should be flagged and not posted again.

I'm not a lawyer so technicalities on the English language don't interest me.

To barely begin, the title is "Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries a Cure for Nuclear Waste?"

Because it has a question mark might work in a court room, but I'm not interested. We are not children. It's just deceitful and fake.

> Radiation levels from a cell, says the company, will be less than the radiation levels produced by the human body itself, making it totally safe for use in a variety of applications.

That makes sense until you put say 10 of these devices into and on your body...

Not at all if it actually puts out less radiation than the same volume of tissue.

A way better write up than this fluff piece: https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive-diamond-batterie...

The Wired article is about Arkenlight, who actually have some sort of prototype; NDB Inc. is just a pile of marketing.

Ok, we've changed to that from https://www.electronics-lab.com/self-charging-thousand-year-.... Thanks!

Whenever I see a headline like this, it makes me think of this paper: https://www.socmot.uni-konstanz.de/sites/default/files/09_Go.... TL;DR: sharing one's intentions and receiving attention/praise for them seems to make follow-through less likely.

It cost me $10k to mod the battery on my phone, but now I won't have to charge it again for over 5,000 years.

What a headline...

One big problem -- I expect existing battery companies would make sure tech like this would never see the light of day, even if it were possible. Too much money to be made with disposable batteries.

Just like how "big oil" bought up the patent for running cars on water! /s

That conspiratorial trope misses the prisoners dilemia aspect of it. Assuming no other sensible objections to the technology (like assuming radiation would scare people from buying it and get it banned from many contexts regardless of actual danger) they know that if they discovered it competitors could do so as well. Furthermore if they went with it they could practically monopolize the market with short term gains and even if they destroyed their steady income stream (unlikely given there would still be some demand) the short term gains could be reinvested elsewhere. Relying on publically traded corporations to think long term when there are short term profits to be made? That is the opposite of the norm.

The Light Bulb Conspiracy would like to have a word with you. Planned obsolescence is how technological advances are funded.

The conspiracy that was continually undermined by its own members and collapsed after just 6 years? I think that reinforces their point rather than yours.

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