Tiny 'nuclear batteries' unveiled
news.bbc.co.uk
news.bbc.co.uk
They report a maximum of 16.2nW, open-circuit voltage of 899mV, short-circuit of 107.4nA. To give hackers a reference, in its current state, you'd need something like 50,000 of them to power a single 0.85mW Arduino chip.
In the U of Missouri article they say "The radioisotope battery can provide power density that is six orders of magnitude higher than chemical batteries", but as far as I can see from the article they're not talking about their own battery; it's a general statement quoted from an old paper (F.K.Manasse,J.J.Pinajian,and A.N.Tse, IEEETrans.Nucl.Sci. 23,8601976).
The article in question is "Radioisotope microbattery based on liquid semiconductor" (Applied Physics Letters 95).
"[beta batteries can be] Paired with chemical batteries for high current, limited duty cycle applications BetaBatteriesTM increase shelf life and ensure readiness by acting as a trickle charger, thus enhancing capability, reliability and useful life."
In other words this dime sized battery probably doesn't have enough current to power electronics continuously w/o some help.
Does that help?
http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2009/1007-mu-resear...
It references a published paper (likely behind a pay wall), otherwise the content is almost identical to the original link.
Micromechanical Flying Insect: http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/mfi.html/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10...
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/flighttheory/
The biggest unsolved problem for these is the power-to-weight ratio (real bugs are amazing). Nuclear batteries is exactly what they need, if they can be made very small.
Real bugs don't have to record/transmit a/v data or record/transmit controller signals. They also spend most of their time refueling or in search of fuel.
I think that's long enough for me!
Nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers...
It seems sort of strange that the article writer talks about how up until now nuclear batteries have had to be very large to work effectively. Yet then the statement is made that such batteries have been used in pacemakers, which I assume must be much smaller.
Does anyone know anything more about pacemakers and this claim that nuclear batteries have already been used to power them?
The general public has a revulsion for anything 'radioactive', however radio-active material if handled properly is quite safe. For many years people did not realized it, but all Smoke detectors had radioactive americium 241. If you ever renovate an old home just don't put them in your pockets :)
IMHO, the green movement is important and necessary, I just wish a larger fraction of them weren't fanatics and/or idiots.
My biggest concern is disposal. I don't like the idea of millions of these things ending up in landfills, even though I'm sure there would be an aggressive recycling campaign associated with their introduction.
Why not? You can replace 1 million regular batteries with a single one of these.
The radioactivity is not a problem, it's well enclosed in the device, and when the device is spent the radioactivity is probably close to background levels.
A landfill is the perfect place to put them and let them decay into passivity.
It depends on how efficient the device is. That said, the problem if 'nuclear waste' is largely created by ourselves. All of that 'nuclear waste' is still useful, we are just too lazy to utilize it.
A good portion of that waste has completely spent its radioactivity. There is a portion of it that is useful as medical isotopes. There is still more that can be put to other uses. We just need to find applications for the waste rather than spend all of our time trying to find a way to store it.
This is exactly why NMR machines are now called MRIs.
"NMR and MRI are essentially the same technique, except MRI is used to analyze the contents of humans instead of what is in a test tube. The name change is to alleviate patient fears associated with `nuclear'in NMR." -- http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/98/1123/nmr.htm
Pacemakers from the 70s were huge too; they were around the size of an Altoids tin (not quite as long). Now they're about the size of 2 silver dollars stacked together. Maybe a little thinner.
That number rises of course with people who get them much younger (which is the case in my family), but even then you're not talking about a gross amount of units. Maybe 7 or so in a lifetime.
Any differentiation between product lines will have to do with ease of implantation, ease of servicing or other clinician-facing features.
I propose we change the term from 'nuclear' to 'fusion' in all future nuclear (fusion) marketing copy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine#Mr._Fusio...
It's got to be true if it was in the movies.
- Nuclear powered electric cars. Recharge like how one would change oil.