The unlikely revival of nuclear batteries | Hacker News Reader

The unlikely revival of nuclear batteries

spectrum.ieee.org

113 pointspurpleko51 comments

One thing to note about the modern 'betavoltaic' batteries is that they don't actually have more energy density than a standard 18650 lithium ion battery, but instead give off a much smaller amount of power for a decade or two, while an 18650 would probably have lost all it's chemical abilities.

I know this is an anecdote, but I have quite a few 18650's from early 2010's still in service, of course with significant increase to internal resistance and drop to capacity, but fully functional otherwise.

He's talking decades without recharging.

I think he's replying to the bit:

> an 18650 would probably have lost all it's chemical abilities.

I also have many functional 18650s of that age. lithium ion cells often self discharge at a few % per month, so after a few years of no power use a cell is likely to be dead without recharging anyways. The betavoltaics will still have usable power output. The real question is what the cost/performance comparison looks like between a betavoltaic system and a 18650 + tiny solar panel system that can on average recharge the battery on an annual basis.

Wonder how early EVs with 18650s like the tesla roadster (2008) or model s (2013) are faring?

They do have higher energy density, it’s just a low power density

It is my understanding that small nuclear batteries output very little energy, so little in fact that they are virtually useless for most applications where a classical battery would be used. The upside is that they can produce power for decades without ever ‘charging’ or in this case, replacing the isotopes. In other words, the use cases aren’t as exciting as one would expect.

Sounds perfectly suited for watch batteries.

Until they reach the dump...

My wristwatch's "face" is a solar panel - Citizen Eco-Drive. Had it for around 20 years and it has never stopped.

I prefer changing the battery once every three years over having a radioactive emitter strapped to my wrist. There is a decent case for nuclear pacemakers since changing the battery of those requires surgery, and even there it didn't get traction. Watch batteries are quick to change, I don't see the risk/benefit tradeoff working.

And with smart watches we are back in "useless for most applications" territory.

Nah, too bulky and there are already better solutions. If you have just a classic watch, then a kinetic charging mechanism is something that's been around for ~100 years. Your watch auto-charges from simply wearing it and walking around.

But if you need more juice, then solar watches are also a thing that work pretty well.

For a smartwatch, these batteries won't produce enough power to keep them going. It's better to just slap a bigger battery into the watch rather than a nuclear battery + regular battery.

Watches tend to be exposed to light a fair bit, so putting a solar panel in the watchface easily outperforms a betavoltaic cell. This has been available for decades, and even some of the high-end Garmins have it.

They aren't a replacement for chemical batteries, more a complement. They're good for battery topping. Basically even when a device is completely off, its battery is still slowly losing power. This loss can be quite small, but if you leave a phone or something in a box for weeks, it'll be dead. This is not really an issue for consumer electronics, just charge it again. However there are applications where you want battery powered electronic devices that are ready to go when you need them and stored away from the electrical grid, like an emergency phone in a box on a remote hiking trail, or equipment in an emergency kit stored in a lifeboat, or a medical device in a first aid kit. By adding a nuclear battery, it can pump power in at roughly the same rate the battery would deplete itself when off, so even after years of sitting unused, your device still has a full battery the moment you turn it on.

Besides emergencies, there are also situations where the device has a low duty cycle, and thus its average power requirements are very low. For example a remote sensor that only activates for a few seconds per day may consume thousands of times more power for those few seconds than a nuclear battery could put out, but the rest of the time it could be recharging such that it has as much energy available the next time it turns on.

For most of the global, A solar cell can do the same thing. It's really only in the most northern and southern regions that a solar panel becomes ineffective.

What about sensors in a basement or pipe?

Depends on how accessible the pipe is. Consider that such a sensor needs to report data. If it's isolated enough then you need to run a transmission line anyways just to get at that data.

If we are talking about a basement with pipes, then power isn't likely too far away.

This is a fascinating topic if anyone is interested from a historical perspective.

The soviets had Beta-M powering more than two dozen lighthouses across the union at some point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M

It's mentioned in the article as well

"Another good use for nuclear batteries is to supply power in remote locations on Earth. Beginning in the 1970s, for example, the Soviet Union deployed over 1,000 RTGs in northwestern Russia to power its uncrewed lighthouses, radio beacons, and weather stations. Most of these batteries ran on strontium-90, and each weighed about 2,000 kg. The United States has deployed hundreds of similar systems for remote power both on land and on the ocean floor, particularly for remote monitoring sites in the Arctic."

And some very bad consequences for scavengers who came across them and tried to take them apart for scrap metal to sell

That's the 'Lia incident'

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45014583

It didn’t ruin his life. Having an unstable childhood due to a mentally ill mother and later developing paranoid schizophrenia and a drug addiction (common with schizophrenia) is what ruined his life.

I'm missing the part where they solve for the collection problem. The article mentions the boy who gathered dangerous amounts of Americium from smoke detectors but doesn't provide any kind of mechanism to counteract that risk. It seems like any mass production of nuclear battery material risks an interested human or organizational collector amassing significant quantities of that material and that risk doesn't seem to have gone down.

Also missing is any indication of whether or not this is a rational and valid concern, or whether it's simply generalized fear of "nuclear" without basis. I genuinely wonder and would be interested in some facts about it.

Actually, the story of the Radioactive Boy-scout is often steeped in urban legends. The TLDR is he cobbled together a breeder reactor, and found a large sample of Radium from an antique clock that mistakenly contained an old dial-paint vile. His little hobby cost a lot to clean up, and ruined his life.

Nuclear energy should be conserved for space, as in the past 80 years people still haven't figured out how to safely dispose of hotter waste products. You can disagree on what this means, but every project attempt is provably wrong when projecting containment past 75 years.

These days renewables are profitable, and are not a 1950's hubris driven loss-leader fission tech for our grand kids to pay the actual cost. =3

" as in the past 80 years people still haven't figured out how to safely dispose of hotter waste products."

Buried underground in salt rock formations.

Conceived, located, designed.

"Underground" usually also means degraded containment (micro-tears in 15cm thick steel), seeping water soluble heavy-metal salts, off-gassing Radon, and sometimes literally on fire when using the wrong brand of kitty-litter to clean up toxic waste.

When (not if) the salt caverns collapse from rotten concrete, they hope it will remain stable and dry. Even vitrified ceramic containment isn't perfect, but seems better than a caveman bucket technology. We will have to disagree about it justifying fission tech sustainability. =3

The salt caverns we're talking about are pretty geologicially predictable, so we won't have to hope.

All holes eventually fill with water, especially in places with soluble structures and negligent engineering assumptions.

Or, people could put up a 20kW solar roof for $1k year in most places. =3

I know a guy who was a nuclear engineer and geologist who did planning for yucca mountain and he seemed to know his stuff.

I don't know if you would be getting that much water in the desert that is the nevada test site, or who would even be drinking from that water.

Also the cat litter thing you mentioned earlier is already regulated by 10 CFR, and all uranium offgasses radon (even natural uranium that never gets dug up and used in a reactor in the first place).

The threat from used fuel is that the short lived nuclides seep into groundwater, or that someone might use the fissile material create a weapon. So as long as you keep it in a deep cave in the middle of nowhere and guard the entrance, it's fine.

Solar will probably remain cheap as long as it can take advantage of the existing grid capacity and push that storage externality on the rest of the electrical grid.

Nuclear's long-term problem in the USA is the massive reserves of cheap shale gas discovered in the last 10 years.

>yucca mountain and he seemed to know his stuff.

If I recall it was found to be perforated with deep defects that already leak water. And deserts do have ground water, but may only see periodic annual precipitation. Paleowater is also quite common in some areas.

>Solar will probably remain cheap

It gets cheaper every year, but $/kWh is not as cheap as the upfront naive costs of fission yet. Hence the loss-leader pejorative is accurate.

>regulated by 10 CFR

It was a real accident not hyperbole. The carbon matter based kitty litter actually did start a real radioactive fire in the disposal facility.

The proximity to hot waste causes material degradation and contamination. Stable isotopes in child eye lenses have already shown it rarely stays localized (baby boomers didn't show this phenomena).

The gas company shenanigans are well known, and they often do end-runs with 10 year below market cost contracts to maintain monopolies with large firms. They often wait to pull this stunt just before a project breaks ground to maximize losses.

Centralized infrastructure may simply be too expensive to reliably maintain under unstable conditions. =3

> or that someone might use the fissile material create a weapon.

On a world-wide scale, its far more likely that someone uses some their thousands of existing nuclear weapons.

If you knew how bad it really is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7TwBUxxIC0

Anyway here's where you can order bulk capsule of americium: https://de.aliexpress.com/w/wholesale-nap-07-module.html?spm...

Thorium oxide powder https://whgoldenwing.en.made-in-china.com/product/PZtfXWbMbA...

That should get you started repeating the atomic boyscouts experiments straigt from china. If the thorium oxide isn't to your liking in bulk, it's been sold as a "negative ion" product to gullible esoteric idiots and widely available.

Edit: you might also need some beryllium for the neutron gun, you can get that on ebay https://www.ebay.de/itm/266979263956?_skw=beryllium&itmmeta=...

Anyway, i'm on a whole lot of fbi lists now

> Anyway, i'm on a whole lot of fbi lists now

The Radioactive Boy-scouts real problems started with a unlucky find of an antique Radium paint vile inside one of the clocks he salvaged.

Everyone is already on a list now regardless of conduct, as privacy became redundant in 2017. The funnier phenomena is people still acting like they are Batman. It is absurd naive behavior... =3

I did extensive research into his experiments and i can guaran fucking tee you that the stuff i posted here is enough to repeat his experiments without the radium paint vile.

Thorium requires a great deal of effort to turn into viable fuel, and China only recently managed to catch up on the tech.

It is a byproduct of Lithium mining in many places, and you can see the mountains of powdered low-grade waste from space. It is good they can at least turn it into something useful, as the US shuttered their research facility shortly after it showed viable output.

I was more concerned about our friends radioactive kitty after chemo treatments. =3

Americium is fissile. The isotopes used in chip-scale nuclear batteries typicially are not.

Nuclear pacemaker is astonishingly bad ass

Looking at the picture in TFA, it's also quite un-miniaturized. I was surprised at how big it looked, with huge electronic components visible.

Who else remembers "Shipstones" from Robert Heinlein's writings? This kind of has that "feel".

https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+heinlein+shipstone

I read 'Nuclear Batteries' and the first thing I think about is the "Lia Radological accident", where three men were exposed and one died.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident

This incident happened in the country of Georgia, which was part of the Sovjet Union. Which probably already hints towards the root-cause of this incident (they lost track of the devices).

Also: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

oh man i read that medical report [1] a while ago. nightmare fuel, with nightmare pictures included.

https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...

There’s something especially bad about radiological burns. Not necessarily knowing severe damage is being done, we don’t have a feedback loop to even know we should get away. And beyond the metaphysical and psychological aspects for me, they just look wrong.

Oh wow. What a read. Thank you.

The Wikipedia article links to the IAEA recovery video where you can more or less see everything : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5T0GkoKG8

And here I was hoping they finally got that hafnium isomer to work.

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter!

It feels like LLM blogspam. The only "revival" I could find in the text was the mention of Beijing Betavolt.

Article lists 9 companies in a big table, technology used, and what they are targeting. Your comment "is" spam because you didn't even do a simple check of the article before bashing it.

I was much too impatient, sorry.

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