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Comment by z_ack | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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