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Comment by z_ack | Hacker News Reader

"The compact battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes to generate 100 microwatts and a voltage of 3V of electricity through the process of radioactive decay"

So the battery produce 0.1 mW or 0.0001 W: what "phone or drone" works with this microscopic power ? It isn't sufficient to power a sigle LED.

IMHO this article is a sum of: clickbait + incompetence and, if the translation from Chinese is accurate, scam. The phrase "uses 63 nuclear isotopes" also make me ROFL.

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It's more helpful to think of it as a power generator that produces that level of power. Then you use it or store it.

Having an onboard power source coupled with storage is an amazing win. And these power generators (not batteries really) are very small.

So, when phone is "off" it pulls some mW from each of the many such power cells onboard to charge battery, then when phone is "on" it works like normal.

No really, no. It's the same to declare that you have a box of matches and burning them it gives you a substantial help to warm up your house in the middle of winter. "which measure less than a coin at 15 x 15 x 5mm" , if you stack a large amount of that component still the power generated is ridicule, in fact they tell us: "Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025", aka, 3V 0.33A and you are using volume employed by the lithium battery, reducing further the phone operability. This pretended to be innovation will go nowhere, like all "miracle battery" seen before, solar panel covered street, e-cat, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays , the high demand of clean energy makes flourish nonsense startups, scam, pseudoscience, etc. That is very sad.

P.s. More critical thinking is required before reposting this kind of article, those are, anyway, all very similar: computer generated mock, no test, no prototype, no scientific documentation, no peer reviews. Only a before-unknown company that declare a miraculous breaking ground tech. I'm sure that if I declare can produce an anti-matter base battery capable to give power to your phone and also your CAR, the "news" will propagated everywhere, in article identical to technical review.

It's fair to be skeptical of the article, and also fair to simultaneously look at the wattage output by a single cell and to do some math to determine it's possible to generate power.

It is maybe too bulky. It is maybe too lower power. But my comment was not incorrect, just as your skepticism is not incorrect.

It's not matter of skepticism, it can't work and it's matter of science, it doesn't work both as generator to "recharge" the battery (at microwatt scale it needs years ) and as generator to directly power "phones or drones", thing they declare, to do that you should employ very "hot" isotopes and if we don't count other factors that discourage that solution, the shielding, we are talking about centimeters of solid lead, make the same solution impractical. I don't think people want a 2kg phone large as a toaster. Isotope based batteries are only good for space satellites and probes and there is no way to "miniaturize" them at a scale you can use in a phone, principal reason is radiation: to produce significant energy to power "phones or drones" or to recharge the battery you needs high radiations that means thick shielding.

You're equating difficulties with impossibilities. The analogy of a small power generator holds even if it's the power that's small not the generator.

Looking back at your original post, I was simply saying that "you can't even run an LED on this" does not mean it's useless, and you may be able to scale it up. So I think we violently agree about the difficulty. I do see how my comment may have made someone think I meant that this could actually be used in phones as is. I mistakenly used phones as an analogous device.

I think you are trolling, but, in case I'm wrong, I explain the concept in other words: modern phones need a charger able to provide current to the phone battery in order of Amperes (A) the one is on my desk now is 5A and can charge the phone, let say, in 1h, to simplify, let say that we need less 1A for 1h. 1 microAmpere is 1A divided by 1'000'000 so, to fully recharge my phone with a microampere, I need 1'000'000h or 114 years, with 100 mA, only 1,14 years, 10% 1 month. And these are optimistic values. So what should be the use case of that bullshit ? Emergency ? I don't think so, better a solar panel. To prolong the daily life of the battery of 1 millisecond ? But reducing drastically the space for the real battery so you have a phone even with less autonomy. Is it laughable ? Again, applying the science and not magic or sci-fi you simply can not do a nuclear powered cellphone for day-by-day use, at least one with the same volume and weight of a modern smartphone. Maybe something 1m^3 x 200kg. Problem here is that Ark reactor and Unobtanium you see in movies are not possible and there is a magical undiscovered and ultralight material to shield high level of radiation. This kind of nuclear batteries are useful for niche application, to save the state of small memory amounts, etc and are not suitable to power cellphones or drones, this will never happen. What happen is there are lot of people confusing Marvel movies with reality and want to give real money to companies that simple produce scam. This could not be the case because I did not translate the Chinese webpage of the company, I suspect here the problem is the english article, but, if the translation is correct , no doubts , if they declare they can power the phone with nuclear batteries is a scam.

I'm not trolling. I'll summarize in three points and stop replying because I think we're talking past each other and it's a waste of our time.

1. The use in phones is a silly illustration. You can ignore phones. No one in this thread specified a form factor or power output requirement except you to bring up counter examples for an argument I'm not even proposing.

2. The math you did makes sense, but doesn't disqualify this conceptually as a generator. Even if it's of laughably small power that's literally all I said was it's just a small generator.

3. The use of the terminology of battery is misleading, these are small power generators. It's not a scam until someone says it's useful for X, where X is someone it's not useful for. We agree on all the X so far.

That's it. Cheers.

1. absolutely no, the article talk explicitly of "phones and drones";

2. No, it's related to "phones and drones", I've explicitly written that this device make sense in niche application, microvolt application like "preserve the state of small amount of RAM";

3. I don't think the name matter, can be battery, generator, whatever: microamperes remain; Moreover isotope based battery isn't a new technology, you can buy these kind of battery from electronic industrial shops. EEVBlog on Youtube also did tests and debunking.

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