Nuclear battery produces power for 50 years without needing to charge
independent.co.uk
independent.co.uk
Outside of pacemakers and space probes where a battery change is difficult to impossible, there aren’t a lot of use cases where the cost is justified.
There actually are other isotopes such as Hafnium 178m2 which have the potential to make much more energy and power dense nuclear batteries, but due to safety concerns haven’t been developed yet.
Checkout: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafnium_controversy
> 178m2Hf has the highest excitation energy of any comparably long-lived isomer. One gram of pure 178m2Hf contains approximately 1330 megajoules of energy, the equivalent in about 300 kilograms (660 pounds) of the explosive TNT. The half-life of 178m2Hf is 31 years
For the one in the article (And I'm sceptical) they say "After the decay period, the 63 isotopes turn into a stable isotope of copper, which is non-radioactive and does not pose any threat or pollution to the environment." How long does that take and what other things are produced?
What if someone throws one into a campfire?
If you throw it in a fire, you'll disperse nickel-63 into the environment, which isn't good, but the decay process is unaffected.
So like 1000 years for this to flush itself.
You can estimate it yourself:
0.5 ^ 10 = 0.0009765625 (~0.1%)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Half-life#Probabilistic_nature
> When there are many identical atoms decaying, the law of large numbers suggests that it is a very good approximation to say that half of the atoms remain after one half-life
172m2 Hafnium decays into regular 178 Hafnium, but it readily burns in the air, so if you throw a battery with in into a campfire, chances are you'll add some beta radioactivity to the environment nearby, or inhale part of it yourself.
https://ehs.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/Ni-63-RSDS.pdf
It also gives the annual limit on inhalation as 800 µCi and ingestion as 9 mCi. So the battery contains more than 60,000 max annual inhalation doses, if it was all vaporized, and more than 5,000 max ingestion doses, if it found its way into the water/food supply.
Which would be about 370 kWh, at 8% efficiency at best that would be 30kWh, or about a kWh a year. The average phone uses about 2 kWh per year, so 2 grams + a suitably sized battery for spike draws could potentially hack it.
Of course the suggested smartphone use case is probably the single worst possible application for these things. We literally carry them on ourselves constantly, trash them every few years at most and usually keep them within range of a power outlet. Outer solar system cubesats, underwater gliders, arctic weather stations, etc. may be better ideas. Places where solar isn't viable.
That said, ITAR is a huge hassle, and threatening to put something on it would get a manufacturers attention.
Quite right Mr. Bond, a fleet of wake homing betavoltaic glider torpedoes that once launched will disperse into the world's oceans and make them an unsailable for the next 50 years. People will have no choice but to move the world's freight with my heavy lift zeppelins or suffer the consequences. And speaking of consequences Mr. Bond... it seems your luck has run out for the last time.
I mean if we’re legit trashing the phone, is that radioactive material actually worse than all the other toxic materials in a phone including the lithium ion battery?
Saying “nuclear radiation scary” and leaving it at that doesn’t actually tell us as the radioactive material matters a lot (eg plutonium is chemically toxic separate from its radioactivity and while short half life radiation is more dangerous than long in the abstract, the specific decay products matter a lot).
Besides, the battery could easily retain its value well beyond the use of the phone which would encourage harvesting rather than trashing (if you force a standard battery connection there would probably be a large thriving secondary market).
The thing about radioactive material is that you need very little of it to become a serious contaminant. But as the thread is about, you also actually need very little of it, so it really doesn't look that out of place.
Another issue is that radioactive material emits energy, what is harder to handle than inert contaminants. You don't want all of that trash with uncontrolled material to catch on fire.
That said, I do agree that our previous carelessness around things like lead and mercury were much more harmful. It's just that we are best careful with both, and the past actions do not excuse doing a harmful thing now just because it's less harmful.
That “a lot of” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. By mass? By how toxic it is to humans or the environment?
This is pretty old and I know the industry has tried to eliminate a lot of them from the phones so I don’t know what the current state is: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-finds-phones-still-contai...
Here’s an article about research showing that toxic materials in screens are leeching out even during normal use: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/research-sask-chemi...
Finally, the chemical processes involved in the manufacturing of the phones themselves also involves large amounts of toxic materials which is still challenging to manage even if it’s centralized (it’s just an “over there” problem because we outsourced a lot of manufacturing).
As for the rest, it’s unsubstantiated hypothetical fears. Really the only risk you actually call out is fires but ignore that, for example, lithium ion batteries aren’t inert either and can also cause fires when damaged. You need to compare and contrast risks correctly, not just worry about hypothetical scenarios and use radiation as a scary boogeyman when it’s actually a significantly more nuanced topic.
As I said, if the battery remains useful, it improves the purchase price of a phone to be discarded because the battery can be recovered and resold for another device which improves the story vs traditional batteries that we basically trash after a few years.
That's the thing, unless we have a very good reason, we should improve things, not make them worse.
Also, the stuff your second link talks about lasts for a decade or two at the environment, and then it's gone. While the fire risk of batteries lasts for a year or so.
A very good recycling program is a way to use make widespread use of those things. A very good protocol for handling them as trash is also one. But just landfilling them in mass isn't.
Hackaday also have a post about making your own: https://hackaday.com/2016/12/01/make-your-own-nuclear-batter...
Obviously tritium will not give you 50 years of power, but it also won't cost anywhere near as much.
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38943144 [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38966352 [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38980963
- Chinese-developed Nickel-63 nuclear battery has a 50-year lifespan 1pt
- Nuclear battery produces power for 50 years without needing to charge 56pts
- Nuclear battery produces power for 50 years without needing to charge 2pts (same poster as this)
- A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years 43pts
- Nuclear battery produces power for 50 years without needing to charge 2pts
- Betavolt new nuclear battery can last 50 years with the need for charging 2pts
- Nuclear smartphone 3V battery lasting for 50 years 23pts
- Chinese Firm developed Nuclear Battery that can Produce Power for 50 years 2pts
- Tiny nuclear battery be commercialised? 28ptsThis is the first time I see this article and really liked it. I would not have seen it otherwise.
I'm sure it has uses, but it's just 100 microwatts - that's the realm of arduino boards in sleep mode.
2. You can put a few of those for more power. The fact of not needing to replace it like ever justify the extra space, I think (and can maybe be offset a little by not having to have a charger)?
I'm looking forward to a power bank made of these. This would be epic.
If they can get them to be affordable to offset the electricity costs, but I'm skeptical of this happening for a really long time.
1 watt might be enough if they can deliver on that claim.
It contains Americium, a radioactive element.
Source: am firefighter
> Atomic energy batteries are environmentally friendly. After the decay period, the 63 isotopes turn into a stable isotope of copper, which is non-radioactive and does not pose any threat or pollution to the environment.
But if someone throws one away after just one year, and then it gets ground up as scrap, would that cause a problem?
As soon as you take it out of your body, or if you die, then it immediately becomes illegal to possess again.
Arrest that corpse for possession of radioactive material! :P
lol, I'll bet. A little hard to contain too I expect. I think they mean radioisotope thermoelectric batteries.
Assuming either our device's power consumption drops, or this technology improves, or both, I'm curious what changes this could lead to. Also curious about what the equivalent of a punctured cell battery would be in this case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goiânia_accident
"About 94.6% decays by beta emission to a metastable nuclear isomer of barium: barium-137m … Barium-137m decays to the ground state by emission of photons having energy 0.6617 MeV": https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=%280.6617+MeV+%2B+0.512...
Shoudn't it be: "without" the need for charging or maintenance. ??