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Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy
Reader zymano points to this news.com artcle on innovations in portable power sources. Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
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Missle command on a nuclear powered laptop? That would turn my mind into a buttery crazy straw!
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
Sure, as long as it's not that yellow radiation.
It hurts when I pee.
An atomic pile the size of a walnut? Nonsense! Even the greatest technicians of the Empire could not do such a thing. Your upstart Foundation must be populated by wizards!
Geeky guys and gals with radioactive laptops on their laps... Our descendents might not be too bright, but I hope they end up better looking because of it!
Look out radioactive man
Imagine one of these things getting dropped. It'll nuke half the state!
i feel comfortable with a nuclear detector in my fire alarm
"Why worry. Each one of us is carrying an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on our back. Switch me on"
I's like one of them's in my fone
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
Inside a cell phone or laptop near my balls! Have to get some lead boxers...
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." -Homer Simpson
If these came into wide use, the US govenment would probably impose harsh export restrictions, since there is a small amout of radiation.
In the infamous words of Fry from Futurama
(On being scanned by some radiation emiting device)
"Ouch, my sperm"
heheh
.... ... }
int main (void) {
Why, you'd save a fortune in glo-in-the-dark condoms
"The Department of Transportation last month removed one hurdle to the commercial acceptance of fuel cells powered by methanol by ruling that they could be taken on airplanes. The issue was that these fuel cells contain methanol, which is a flammable liquid."
I don't see them being so quick to remove a similar hurdle for nuclear fuel.
But, hey, if they make nuclear powered cell phones, the radiation would treat the supposed cancer risk. Right?
-R
...a whole new definition of blue screen of death. "Error #10012 - Meltdown eminent. "
"What kind of chip you got in there, a Dorito?" - Weird Al Yankovic
First we had that whole fuss about how prolonged use of a mobile phone could cause cancer..And now, you make your head glow as well! Great..can't they invent one that uses solar power instead?
A lot of people think were killing ourselves with cell phones now. Guess we might as well go all the way and use the hard stuff :)
...and next thing you know North Korea will turn it into a weapon!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source on your lap?
Think of the money my girlfriend will save on birth control pills!
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
With a nuclear powered notebook on my lap I could save a load of money on future child support payments.
Trolling is a art,
No need for neon inside your case kiddies, the nuclear power source glows in the dark. And if you want to kick it up a notch, try our brand new nuclear powered monitors... true glowing beauty that you have to see to... hey... my face hurts... my whole body... feels like it's on fire... what's going on... ahh.. the burning.....ahhh!!!!
How is it that one careless match can start a forest fire, but it takes a whole box to start a campfire?
Why were they even questioning methanol on a plane for?
Doesn't the airline already hand out little bottles of ethanol in flight?
New trend of impotence traced to new laptops carrying radioactive power plants as batteries...
Bah, then the US would be like Japan, radiation everywhere. IT would be impossible to locate any smuggled explosive devices.
...they had a nuclear-like reactor on their back, and they felt SO cool.
So would I with a nuclear-powered laptop (how much battery life do you have? Oh, a couple thousand years).
As long as I won't drop it (you'll notice if I will).
cheers
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
The "Cellphones cause cancer" groups would defenatly have fits over that. But the Government might find it useful. I can just see Bush on TV, "If we don't stop the evil terrorists(tm), they could turn your cellphone into a nuclear holocost. Think of the children!"
In all seriousness if the manufacturers can guarentee that its safe I'm all for portable power that lasts 200 years.
The Anti-Blog
I would guess that there is simply too much irrational behavior relative to nuclear power to make these batteries all that popular. The irony is how quickly we ignore the supposed dangers from cell phone radio waves. The difference seems to be the emotional baggage that follows anything "nukyoolar". Too bad, too.
Boom Shanka
I dunno about you, but I've read the instructions that came with my cell phone. There's a part that says to hold the cell phone 2 to 3 centimeters from my ear while using the phone. Radio waves that close to your head aren't good I suppose... what's a little bit of radiation to go along with it? =P
Julie Moult is an idiot.
So long as it wasn't running Windows.
Do you really think I'm go to put something novel here?
Remember all the mutant freak babies that were born in some Nevada towns after the Army was performing nuclear tests back in the 40's?
Sure this thing sounds safe but are you going to risk giving birth to a retard or a one armed baby when they really don't have any conclusive studies yet? I'm not.
--Rosie
I'd like to see a beowulf cluster of those...
Sorry, but I refuse to put a source of radiation powerful enough to run my laptop or cell phone that close to my brain or testicles. I can't think clearly without all of the above, and don't want to mess them up for myself. (Note that cell phone antennas help place the radiation away from the head, when you get a cell phone with a decent external antenna, so they're of lesser risk, and only affect my brain, not my reproductive organs.)
I could of sworn my cell phone was supposed to be baking my brain already...
Or is that because I'm driving my SUV while I drive? I can't remember...
ok, lemme think of this...radiation.....
"why do they call it a LAPtop?"
no thanks, I don't like nuclear balls.
Looking for Book Reviews? Check out Literary Escapism.
Sounds like something taken from the book Snow Crash. If only the book or Stephenson had an actual web site.
"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." - Emily Dickinson
needs to apply for a few thousand new platinum Visa cards now..
...when they eventually do wear out? Eventually these batteries will have to be replaced and if they use radioactive material in their core then they could pose a very hazardous problem to the environment. Yucca is going to look like a playground compared to the problem with these batteries being disposed of when laptops are thrown out and replaced without transferring batteries for whatever reason.
Well, so much for me having kids!
Oh, wait... that means I'd actually have to get NEAR a real-life female first...
Heck, no. I simply wouldn't feel safe knowing that there were hazardous materials inside my computer...
(runs and hides from the Radioactive Boogeyman)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
All kidding aside, I see major problems convincing portable electronics users that they'll be safe with ooooohhhhh.... "Radioactive" devices in their cars.
It's sad, because no one seems at all concerned with the energy already put off by cell phones and the batteries could be an awesome step torward better power management.
I wonder what the disposal concerns and criteria are?
Anything you say will be held against you.
"The amount of radioactivity is so miniscule that you don't have to worry about it as much."
If I may ask a simple question here: As much as what ?
These things are so weak that even a sheet of paper will block them. These things will probably be encased in metal and plastic. Everyone who is concerned about radation near their bodies should be more worried about the antennas than the isotopes. If these things can be shown to be safer than Lead, or Nickel-Cadmium (both extremely toxic, even in miniscule amounts), then these may be the next wave of power generation...
"In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe." -- Carl Sagan, Cosmos
These are not safe. Most types of energy based on nuclear processes have harmful waste products (like gamma particles and alpha rays). Are you going to trust that your laptop has the proper radiation shielding? Keep in mind that it is most often over your crotch. Considering the already poor odds of any geek reproducing, the effects of radiating their crotches could be disastrous.
?-|||-----x<*))))><
twice the radiation, half the time! The extra radiation couldn't hurt anything, could it? It's not like I use my head for anything anyway....
...that this will not fly unless Beta Radiation hires a serious PR firm to spin its image into a happy, fun loving, club hopping, racially indeterminate, good looking female that everyone would want to have in their lap.
42 - So long and thanks for all the fish.
The radiation mentioned in the article is just the emission of beta particles -- in other words, ordinary electrons. At the energy levels associated with atomic decays they would be stopped by a thick piece of paper, to say nothing of human skin.
So this actually sounds like quite a novel and safe approach. It's not like they're shoving a few pounds of plutonium into the thing and trying to get energy from the heat -- like NASA does on space probes.
Even now we read the horror stories about kids in third world countries combing toxic piles of computer cast offs for valuable bits and pieces. Do you really want to think about adding (more than normal background) *radioactive* junk to the mix?
It sounds like the researchers are considering something with a relatively long half-life. That means a) long after one of the fuel pack mechanical energy converters gives up the ghost, the radiation will continue and b) there will be sufficient value for scavengers to go after the stuff.
Once again the fundamental question is not "Can we do it?" but "Should we do it?" While I agree that on the whole the "Protect Mother Earth" crowd is over the top, we do have a responsibility to protect fellow members of our species. Are kids better off scrounging in rice fields in SE Asia or combing through old Mobo's?
Here's more info, straight from Cornell.
2 /t iny_battery.html
i le ver.ws.html
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/02/11.7.0
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct02/cant
It seems to me that this should be safe. They note in the article that they are only creating batteries which use Beta radiation, which is too weak to hurt you. If that is true, then yeah, I would use them, if it meant my laptop or cellphone would last for 10 or 20 years.
I'd much rather have a flywheel power source.
"The amount of radioactivity is so miniscule that you don't have to worry about it as much."
yeah, if you don't drop it, shake it, burn it, eat it... sounds great to me!
Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?
Join the TWIT army now!
Hmmm...this sounds like radioactive batteries, except that I think radioactive batteries aren't mechanical. I personally wouldn't mind this at all, if the radiation that leaks from it isn't too high, that is. My only concern is that they migh be insanely heavy (both the source of the radiation and the radiation shield), which would render them useless for portable devices. Haven't read the article though, just looked at it for a few seconds.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
is that we are just one step closer to getting one of those cool laser guns that never runs out of fire power :)
"With enough memory and hard drive space, anything in life is possible!"
How is that a troll? I though it was +1 funny.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
"Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?" Sure, until my nads start to shrivel.
I hope that the long term exposure to radiation cause those damned cell-phone talkin', SUV driving maniacs to go sterile... or at least pee blood for awhile.
Not that theyre doing a lot of breeding to begin with.
Yes I know the article says its not harmful, but neither was thalidomide. At least now boyscouts wanting to make a breeder reactor in their mother's tool shed have a much easier way that doesnt involve forged documents.
as long as it wasn't a windows box. That could give fatal exception a new meaning. But seriously, with a proper means of protective housing I see no problem with it, and I feel it would be a step in the right direction in easing the reliance on fossil fuels. And for all the posts claiming dropping your laptop will result in a nuclear explosion, it would take one hell of a fall to split atoms.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
Considering how warm laptops can get on the bottom these days you have more to fear from that. Sperm is very sensitive to temperature changes and heat is a prime enemy of them (which is why the testicles are outside the body instead of inside)
-
Something like this has actually been done before. Several years ago, before is was forbidden to reseach into this technology, ABB Atom here in Sweden created a "nuclear powerplant for the home". It was safe, cheap...
Too bad they had to stop the development.
I would definitely be cautious using a battery like this, but I wouldn't be automatically opposed to trying it. Besides, if lots of radiation was leaking out of this thing, then that would be a pretty inefficient battery, wouldn't it?
And you thought all that Mountain Dew you were drinking made you sterile...
Th
If you read the article, it says that the atomic material used poses next to no safety/health risks.
The article states that the isotopes that they use only emit beta radiation. Even if it got out of its casing it would not penetrate your skin. There is no reason to fear.
People will of course fear. It is just like people getting up in arms about irradiated food. They didn't understand that exposing food to radiation does not make it radioactive. I don't think this situation would be any different.
Slashdotter are stupid and biased.
You know, radiation from the cell phone causing brain tumors?
:P
So what would ACTUAL radiation that close do!?
Blake
Only if it also lets me teleport, have laser-eyes, transform into a metallic form, or some other weird mutant power.
LongTail SSH Brute Force analysis tool is here!
> "The amount of radioactivity is so miniscule
> that you don't have to worry about it as much."
Ah, we've come such a long way since the days when it was feared that holding a cell phone to your head would give you brain tumors. Oh, wait a minute...
You shall see a cow on the roof of a cotton house.
No more steam conversions? I wonder, if applied to a conventional sized reactor, how the electrical output would change...
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
At last, more reliable superpower mutations for coders. We're the ones who deserve the proportional strength of a spider, not those stupid physicists!
The very first "micro" (as we called them back in the day) I owned was a Sinclair ZX80 which was marketed as being up to the job of managing a nuclear power plant! Maybe that could be proved true, in a way, by running it off one of these things!
Sometimes claiming "I gotta go, my battery is about to die!" is the only way you'll get a chatty friend off the phone.
I'm just too much of a sucker to hang up on people sometimes, I guess...
"Marty, you gotta come see the future! We solved the problem of overcrowding in schools."
"How did we do that, Doc?"
"The Mr. Fusion laptop computer! Since its introduction, class sizes have been cut in half!"
Visit me on the web at Permanent4.com.
I'm not a nuclear engineer, but I *have* spent many hours studying CANDU nuclear reactors.
So, the answer to the question in the post? Yes, I would(!!) feel comfortable walking around with what these guys are talking about in my pocket.
The fact is, you get more radiation from a digital watch than you do living as near a CANDU reactor as you're allowed to live (about a kilometer). These people don't screw around. In the current global climate of anti-nuclear-anything, they'd be idiots to even contemplate cutting a corner. And, hell, most of these people are good people - the sorrow they'd feel at anybody having died because of their designs would be real, and it would be deep. As far as the companies are concerned, you can't have a plant meltdown and then just rebuild it. Chances are, you have to build an entirely new facility somewhere else, since the original area is waaay too contaminated.
I fully expect that the people working on these batteries have the same mind set - they just don't dick around. (And from the papers I've read, that does seem to be the case.)
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
If these things are labeled as radioactive, then we might as well label our digital watches, our cell phones, and our PDAs as being radioactive. Those devices *already* emit radiation.
Of the three types of decay radiation alpha particles are the safest, then beta, and finally gamma. Alpha particles are bare helium nuclei while a beta particle is basically a free electron. Alpha cannot penetrate the skin, and will only travel about 1 inch in air before it snags a couple electrons and turns into regular helium. Beta particles are much lighter and tend to have higher energies. They can penetrate skin but will be shielded by thin layers of metal or plastic. Though in a battery casing this wouldn't matter much.
Isn't this similar to what they used to power the Voyager spacecraft that we sent passed most of the planets in the outer solar system a while back?
we already have problems with disposing alkaline/nimh/nicd batteries. we will be living in a disposable world for a long time...how comforting is it going to be disposing nuclear batteries into the environment?
R.I.P.
So now Checkov doesn't need to go to a nuclear Aircraft carrier. He can just steal your laptop and then get back to the Future.
one problem with advanced technology is that it is often indistinguishable from magic as every SF reader knows. The downside is how people respond to magic with awe and fear.
ugh, radiation bad, me no like radiation. it heap bad juju; it give Grog cancer.
Meanwhile, Grog likes woodstove and fireplace. Note that the pleasure of such heat sources is infrared radiation. There is a lot of difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.
the article says these devices would use BETA radiation. Whazzat? fast electrons. If they won't penetrate skin, they won't cause mutations, they won't give Grog cancer.
Slashdotters SHOULD know better. If we're half as smart as we think ourselves, then we ought to be able to distinguish between beta radiation, infrared radiation, etc. and also the safe energy levels of each type of radiation
Folks, we have a leadership role here. If we know the techie background to say whether something is safe or not, we ought to apply it to this kind of stuff.
a whole new definition of blue screen of death
:)
Yes. A literal definition.
And speaking of literal definitions:
Error #10012 - Meltdown eminent."
I think you mean "Meltdown imminent," rather than, say, to substitute, meltdown "prominent," "lofty," or "well-placed;" although I will admit such a catastrophe would be pretty egregious.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
I wouldn't have a problem with it, but I can imagine my conversation at LAX:
Me:
"My laptop is nuclear-powered, so don't drop it please."
Federal Screener (recoils in horror):
"You've got a NUKE in here?"
Armed national guardsmen (running hard toward me):
"Get Down Get Down NOWWW!!!"
Some other dudes in uniform (on the radio):
"We've got a 99-56!!! Notify STARTAC!!!"
Me: (writhing on the floor my hands pinned back)
"It's a Dell, Dude!"
"Piter, too, is dead."
So, lets say we do this and start using these "nuclear" batteries. Will I have the same problems with them leaking and exploding like I have with those old Ray-O-Vac(r) batteries I used to forget and leave in my flashlight?
Just wondering...
Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
I dont do physics ... but if theres a malfunction in the laptop and we try to save some guy on a motorbike and get exposed some radiation will we be walkin round with huge muscles and an i.q of a walnut??
Who's the marketing wiz that's going to sell these radioactive batteries? Remeber: it doesn't matter if it's a good idea, just weather or not it can be sold.
-... ---
You inspire me. I was thinking of you when I went on my "Michael is a trolling, flamebaiting twat" rampage last week. I used up about 5 anonymous proxies, but managed to disrupt several threads. Others were chiming in. It was glorious.
how are devices going to be affected?
Will we be seeing laptops that eat power like mad, but run at blazing fast bus speeds? I mean, if the batteries can power laptops at normal power useage until they're completely obsolete, what if they raised the voltage and supercharged everything beyond what would be possible with a wall socket?
changing the needed power output might raise the radiation spill-over, but it's something to look into, especially for all of us power-hungry computer users.
The World's Worst Webcomic!
Run your laptop on Nuclear energy....
"Nucular, it's pronounced Nucular" - Homer
Comments should be like skirts. Short enough to keep your attention, but long enough to cover the subject
"The amount of radioactivity is so miniscule that you don't have to worry about it as much."
keywords here are as much. I don't want to have to worry about it at all!
"Your power source will DEFINETLY outlast you."
"The last power upgrade you'll ever need."
"The ultimate power source. Just remember - this is very important - NO EXPORTS!"
"Wouldn't it be great to know you aren't wasting energy, but actually CREATING it? Matter-energy conversion is where it's at, baby."
Ryan Fenton
Why put a 10 year battery in a cell phone that will be thrown out in less than 2 years? And why put radioisotopes in the hands of teanagers?
JET Program: see Japan, meet intere
Nuclear piles have been used for power sources in deep space probes for quite a while. All of the Voyagers have used this type of power source. I'm not sure the exact workings of the mechanism that is talked about in the article, but it probably just converts the heat from nuclear decay to energy. No fision is involved, as there certainly wouldn't be enough mass to reach critical mass. The radiation is also beta radiation, so there isn't much risk of it damaging you.
Cell phone already emit radiation..... what do you think microwaves are????
Fly Fish? Participate in our forum
If I had my own nuclear battery I would radiate every spider I find then get them to bite me.
FIRSTUS POSTUS, BEEOTCHAE!
Bow down and worship my polycyclic chromatophores!
pleeeeease?!!
Mom says persistance pays.
(dreaming of the future)
I see a rack full of 1U Linux web servers, next to a similar-sized cabinet that's sealed shut and covered with trefoil warning stickers. There's a nice big power cable connecting the two cabinets.
Clean, smooth, uninterrupted power to the server rack.
For TWENTY YEARS.
Yeah, BABY! No more UPS screw-ups, batteries that quietly go flat while no one's looking...
TWENTY YEARS OF POWER... one less thing to worry about in the data center.
since cellphones already kill your brain cells with nasty radio waves, adding more radiation shouldn't scare cell phone users.
for laptop users, we already survive cooked-leg syndrom, why not package the nuke-tops as a solution for those pesky unwanted child births.
a little cooked reproductive organ never killed anyone.
So, how exactly would you get rid of the battery after use ?. Moreover, even if there is a proper way to dispose them, how can you make sure that people will be responsible enough not just trash them in a regular trash can ?. It sounds horribly risky !
I hope they do not release this for the general public. It can only cause pontenial problems
What if a person drops it hard enough and the battery cracks open? Would it create a small dirty bomb spill?
If the batteries are consider to be safe (nuclear energy is low), but what if a naughty person used a few hundred of them strapped to a grenade? Again problems.
I just see many problems with this for general use. If this was to be released, it shoudl be controlled very well. Any input by anyone?
NO! NO! Please don't mod me, I'm too young to die a troll. *click* Oh the pain, the pain...
I've got 6 monitors in my cube. What is a little radiation in my laptop? I'm probably already sterile. Woo Hoo!!!!!
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
The Committee to prevent Apsberger's syndrome approves of this.
Small nuclear power plants? We had those back in the 1970s.
(best -- show -- ever, except for when they "jumped the aliens")
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Biofuel cells that could use our own body metabolic activity to power medical implants are also being developed. Here is the article
But are you unwilling to mutate to make your company stronger?
Design for Use, not Construction!
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Blessed are the pessimists, for they have made backups.
Surely, this logic can also be applied to any new drug, but the key diff here is that may be taking a new drug as a last resort fighting a battle against a nasty disease - but are you running for your life that hard when you buy these gadgets??
VKh
[voiceover ="Tom Selleck"]
Can you imagine...
a Beowulf cluster of lame-ass "Beowulf cluster of nuclear battery" posts...
[voiceover ="Tom Selleck", tone="murderous rage"]
SHOVED UP YOUR ASS?!!!
[/voiceover]
Great. Then people might start saying that cell phones cause cancer ...
... :-)
Nah. Nobody'd ever say something like that
--
Me: http://www.robertdhill.com/
Just out of curiosity. What would happen with the batteries when the person gets a new laptop. Depending on the isotope used the battery could last longer than the laptop.
there was some thread on slashdot about 50 year nuclear energy battery. that reminds of a watch made by Westinghouse in early 90s which used to claim 25 year battery. Does anyone remember the details and if it is still available in market (or similar ones)? I never saw the real watch anywhere but had seen lots of ads in trade magazines.
Things you never hear people say: "Hand me that piano"
Off-topic, but pianos don't have to be large, wooden, heavy objects. I could easily say, "hand me that piano" and be referring to my kid's toy piano.
"Hand me that grand piano" might be a little more accurate.
Just think of it as another way to clean up the gene pool.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
The battery runs on radation. If it would require tossing it probably doesn't have any more energy to give. Meaning it doesn't have any more radation (or, at worst, a fraction of what it had before).
This is different from a nuclear power station that makes energy of the actual splitting of an atom, and then has to discard anything that is not the atom that it is designed to split. This is not the same as making energy off of the radation it's fuel (and the broken down remains of its fuel) gives off.
- Sig
Do yourself a favor -- if you get this shit, do self-exams once a week.
we keep on talking about all these new batteries, but still continue to use the oldest battery system, that is lead acid. when counted in total energy, this is the most commonly used battery types in the world. until, i see some replacement of this, it would be hard to believe that battery industry has changed dramatically.
Nuff Said!
Whatever. I've been using fusion powered calculators since elementary school.
Blah Blah Blah
I mean, if radio waves don't cause brain cancer, maybe nuclear power sources will!
And for the laptop... Yeah, I want a neclear power plant next to my nuts... I mean, who doesn't want a kid with 18 arms????
This is from the article:
By Sandeep Junnarkar = INDIAN
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 13, 2002, 8:32 AM PT
Amit Lal = INDIAN , a professor at Cornell's electrical and computer engineering department and the lead researcher.
Partho Sarkar = INDIAN , a senior research scientist at ARC (Alberta Research Council)
___________________________________
The whole idea of having to 'dispose' of all this waste when we are done with these is just an indication of how far we have to go with basic education on these things. The whole idea behind these power sources is that they run off of the energy released by radioactive isatopes(sp?) AS THEY DECAY.. This means that when your power stops flowing, the unit's supply of radioactives *should* have completely exausted itself. And if it has not, it means that the miniscule amount that remains will not pose any threat to anything.
People have no problems going and getting an x-ray, flying on a plane, installing smoke alarms in thier house, etc. radiation is all around us, its normal. It all becomes a matter of how well the general populace has been educated about the risks (or the lack thereof)
INAP, but I do know that these appear to be a very good, safe idea, and if noone else is going to use them, I sure will :-)
I want one just so I can say "Atomic batteries to power! Turbines to speed!" every time I boot up.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
quote: Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy
Does this include when I plug it into my wall outlet, the electricity from which is generated by a nuclear station?
Perhaps something along the lines of "Portable Nuclear Generator for your Laptop" would have been more appropriate. The next article could be "Portable Birth Control for Men", with the same link.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
I think its okay to dispose of them like those others. Probably safer to drop them in the trash than regular nicads..
-
This is from the article:
By Sandeep Junnarkar = INDIAN
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 13, 2002, 8:32 AM PT
Amit Lal = INDIAN , a professor at Cornell's electrical and computer engineering department and the lead researcher.
Partho Sarkar = INDIAN , a senior research scientist at ARC (Alberta Research Council)
People are scared of what RF radiation could do to them. That's RF, as in Radio Frequency. Telling them that it's non-ionizing is pointless. They only understand "radiation" and they don't want to understand any more.
Now someone is proposing a nuclear battery. I wish them luck. With so many people believing that putting a cell phone next to their heads is dangerous today, wait until interest groups discover that the battery they're using is a nuclear device.
Once again, we have what is probably a technically elegant solution being offered to a seriously ignorant public. Expect the risks to be blown entirely out of proportion while "harmless" chemical batteries are added by the ton to landfills every day. Thank-you Jeremy Rifkin. Thank-you Paul Brodur. Thank-you Nancy Wertheimer. Thank-you Rachel Carson. You and your successors have taught a generation of idiots all about fear-mongering. Now we can all pay for the wages of stupidity and political grandstanding.
Meanwhile, because of our societal phobias we'll continue making a mess of our environment.
(Rifkin: Fearmonger on Genetically modified foods. Brodur: wrote the "Zapping of America", a treatise on RF phobias and science by innunendo. Nancy Werthiemer: Co-author of a seriously flawed paper on powerline exposure and lukemia. Rachael Carson: "Silent Spring"; although her cause was reasonable, her facts were not.)
Nearly fifty percent of all graduates come from the bottom half of the class!
Whaaaat ??
This is from the article:
By Sandeep Junnarkar = INDIAN
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
November 13, 2002, 8:32 AM PT
Amit Lal = INDIAN , a professor at Cornell's electrical and computer engineering department and the lead researcher.
Partho Sarkar = INDIAN , a senior research scientist at ARC (Alberta Research Council)
efficent. I wonder if this can et applied to fussion...if it can, we can just dump the whole heat watter to spin turbines thing and just turn the turbines...that might put fussion over the 1:1 ratio.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
The word Nuclear seems to have become a misnomer for anything at all involving atoms. The article you have linked to is not talking about nuclear power at all: power harvested from the nucleus is a distinct thing.
What they are doing is not making a battery out of a nuclear reactor or nuclear power source -- no fission or fusion is being used, therefore, they are not harvesting the power derived from splitting or merging nucleii, so the term nuclear would seem incorrect.
They are simply using some substance that has a certain radioactivity: it has the tendency to decay and release some energy, but other than that, is relatively harmless unless you ingest it or something (You would at least get very sick if you opened and ingested the contents of any battery, however!).
Read from the article:
You won't be glowing or sterilized if you put one of these in your lap, the danger is about as great as using an ordinary battery -- it could pop a leak and fill your lap with mercury, hydrochloric acid, or something, which would be just as bad.
Moreover, if simple radioactive decay is called nuclear because it deals with atoms, then it could perhaps be argued, that all batteries (and indeed, all power sources) are nuclear, because all electrical power sources eventually depend on generating electricity: exciting electrons, and electrons effect atoms.
It is not apparent that there is any danger with this battery that is new, that is, you can't tell by the fact that a battery uses this particular method of power generation that it would be more dangerous than any other kind of battery.
Check it out, then tell me if this is a big deal. (it's not.)
Rob
WebMaster:
BinFeeds
XXX Thumbnailed Image Newsgroups but
I'm picturing an updated Bloom County comic strip with Oliver bringing a live nuclear bomb to class.
;)
In the original comic strip the teacher scoffs at Oliver that it couldn't be live. Where'd he get the material. Oliver's answer was 9999999 glow in the dark stickers....
I guess the 2k version will be a laptop....
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
I was expecting something more along the lines of "Atomic batteries to power, turbines to speed." or something like that as I haven't seen that show in a decade or so.
Look, the point of the article is that these are very small devices. The radiation source is only emitting ß particles, which is an electron (or positron)! They can't even pass through your skin. Not only that, but if these new batts are as small as the article implies, then you could waste a half-ounce and put a lead shield around the thing to prevent any leakage at all! And if the particle won't go through skin, think what a (very thin) lead sheet would do?
It's not that bad. Now if you actually had a fission plant going on, then you'd want to be concerned.
I swear this has to be the development of a militant Femi-Nazi Feminist group bent on sterilizing all the men on earth.
God doesnt want us to develope technology so we can't find him on his secret moon-base. Dont you know anything?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Why not develop something like this for automobiles? Laptops and cellphones don't make sense, unless they can only eeek a minimal amount of power out this technology.
At least by putting them into cars, you can add all of the appropriate safety measures to ensure minimal access to the materials. Things like build really large impenetrable boxes to enusre proper use / disposal.
--WooooHoooo--
Cross Reference to Previous Slashdot Article on Cornell Atomic Battery
www.bannination.com Two things float to the top he
OK - How Atomic Batteries Work and Medical Physics 101 :)
Medical Physics
The damage done to human tissue is a function (~linear) of the amount of energy deposited by the radiation into the tissue.
This is a function itself of:
1) The amount of energy depositied by the radiation per unit of path length.
2) The length of the path in the body.
Also of interest in practical situations is this also applies to shielding i.e. if the shielding is such that the energy is enirely deposited in the shield materiel then the radition is fully shielded. If not then you have attenuated the radiation.
On one hand massive particles like Alpha Particles are 'safer' because they deposit energy quickly (they interact fairly strongly with matter), so can be stopped by very small masses like paper/foil/skin epidermis. On the other hand high energy Alpha Particles can be very dangerous if not shielded because they can carry a lot of energy into the body due to thier mass, and deposit it there as the tissue stops the particle.
At the other extreme Gamma Radiation is 'bad' because it doesn't lose energy very easily (becasue they don't interact as strongly with matter) so they cannot easily be shielded, but will at least not deposit the whole of the energy in the tissue but pass through it. Unfortunatley of course gamma radiation is highly energetic so it can still deposit a lot of energy.
So the risk of medical damage from a radioactive source is function of
1) The strength of the emmission
2) The type of emmission
3) The amount of shielding between the source and you
It is not just the radition type.
As already stated the biggest risk is when radioactive substances are ingested such that they stay in the body for some time, as this increase the energy depositied into the tissue - alpha emission is particularly bad here because it will deposit the whole of the energy into the surrounding tissue.
In this instance you may well find that a low energy beta source is a better choice, because with a low energy alpha source the raditation may not even make it out of the source's casing.
Atomic Batteries
For the interested 'atomic' batteries generaly work by using a radioactive source to heat a shield material around it. This heat can then be turned into electricity by putting a thermocouple matrix in the shield material, with the hot junction in the material, and the cold junction outside.
Now in this case we need a lot of energy in the shield material, but enough to get out of the sources casing, so low energy beta is good here.
It is safe, because the whole point of the design is that the radiation is shielded, thats how you recover the energy into electricty. You will get very very little external radiation from a well designed atomic battery.
This is not new technology, deep space probes have been using them for years because solar cells would be useless in the outer solar system
The characteristics of this sort of power generation is that it is physically small, long lasting but low current. This is ideal for portable devices, but not usable really for transport or power devices.
Practically you would probably need another battery like LiIon such that the LiIon cell is trickle charged all the time, but can supply surges of power.
This would be great in a cellphone where the LiIon battery would supply the high power needed for transmiting during the calls, and the atomic battery would supply enough to charge the LiIon and do standby - phone not got enough charge, just leave it for an hour. Conceptually you may never need to charge the phone, or change the battery, it could be fitted for life in the phone.
The challenge is finding the right materials and making it mass producable. On space probes its easy because you can cool the cold junction in the vacuum of space and make it efficient, plus you don't really care about the cost or making 1000's of them a week.
a new meaning to Energizers "It keeps going and going..."? Plus, when can I get a nuclear battery for my lightsaber? Those damn D size batteries die to fast.
Pro: Excellent theft deterrent. "Warning, you have entered the wrong password. 2 more incorrect tries will result in Nuclear Self Destruction!"
Con: Sterilization, testicular/colon/prostate cancer, or even deformed geek offspring. Unless they drop so much lead in the case that it becomes impractical to utilize as designed.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear to be bright. Until you hear them speak.
Just looked up the active isotope (Nickle-63) in my table of nuclides, and it looks pretty safe, for two reasons.
First, the half life is 100 years, so the specific activity (i.e., the number of disintegrations per second for a given amount of material) is pretty low. Hence, even if you were very close to a bunch of it, it wouldn't have very many electrons coming toward you.
Second, the energy of the electron it gives off is only 0.066 MeV, or 66 keV. This is low energy stuff, with a range (in air) of approximately diddly (my tables don't go to that low an energy!).
So, even if these are produced in massive numbers, with everything being disposed of in your local dump, you're probably OK.
In Diaspora, humanity is divided into polis citizens, who are actually computer programs, gliesners, which are basically a mini polis in an android body, and the fleshers. One of the cool things about the gliesners was that they were powered by a rod of radioactive cobalt that would last 5000 years!
Why wont we use the residual radiation in nuclear waste that is being dumped/buried for small personal power plants?
I realize it would not be as powerful or efficient as 'fresh' fuel that is needed to power a city, but since we could 're-cycle' the waste for lower power, and less efficient personal usage, such as radios, cars etc., why wont we just end this dependence and so-called energy crisis?
The amounts are small enough to be 'safe'... And its waste fuel so its cheap enough to be inefficient....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
The headline should read: Run laptop and get colon cancer.
What about the disposal of these batteries?
NEOCA - Custom LED Flashlights
Well, yeah. You'd be nice and toasty warm.
Radiation Overview
Dupe posts are
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All protons in our universe will decay in about
10^33 years from now.
You can't handle the truth.
They keep glowing and glowing and.....
Energizer will have to change their mascot to a Mutant Bunny...
Dupe posts are
The amount of radioactivity is so miniscule that you don't have to worry about it as much.
What does "as much" mean, having a radioactive power source sitting on my lap makes me fear for my ability to produce offspring. People worry about cellphones causing sterility, and they just run on Li/NiMh batteries and transmit out a focussed antenna...
Somehow not having to worry "as much" still leaves me worried enough. Nerds have enough problems getting to the point of propogating without having irradiated nether regions. I'll let them test this for awhile first.
Look, it glows! - phorm
"...chose only isotopes that emit beta particles because their energy is small enough not to penetrate skin. Radioactive material can emit beta particles, alpha particles or gamma rays--the last two of which are carry enough energy to be hazardous..."
Really gamma rays (ie photons) are the only form of radiation we'd have to worry about. They have such low specific ionization (# of ions created (due to photointeractions in this case) per cm trraveled that they can go right through your body...ionizing stuff which shouldn't be and making you sick (or worse).
The other two, beta (electrons or positrons) and alpha particles (essentially helium-4 w/o the electrons) have such high specific ionizations (due to their charges) that they will not penetrate past your skin. In fact, alpha particles won't even penetrate your DEAD skin! IMHO, I consider alpha particles are much safer (unless you swallow the emitter ) in that you could hold those 'batteries' in your bare hand and not have live skin be touched whereas the beta particles WOULD reach live skin.
In any case, all of this is just probability so 'safe' is a relative term. Economically, many more nuclides beta decay (specifically beta minus decay) than anything else so that is probably the real reason: easier and cheaper to get enouogh of the right nuclide...but I applaud the efforts at trying to show the general public that at least one type of radiation isn't so bad.
You can bet as soon as these decay-powered batteries are available I'll be the first in line to get one =)
--Jubedgy
Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis hebes
Proton decay has never been detected.
This type of battery could supply power for decades, said Amit Lal, a professor at Cornell's electrical and computer engineering department and the lead researcher.
So would that be lead as in "the man" or lead as in protect me from radiation?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
Rather than doing all of this from scratch, wouldn't it be easier to simply duplicate the power supply used by our ancient cyborg ancestors?
Then we could power all of our portable devices directly from a jack in bodies somewhere.
Beta decay is most certainly a nuclear reaction. The parent nucleus and daughter nucleus are different. The beta particle is from the nucleus, not the orbital electrons.
The description is correct.
Check the government regulations.. "LICENSEES' RESPONSIBILITIES REGARDING REPORTING AND FOLLOW-UP REQUIREMENTS FOR NUCLEAR-POWERED PACEMAKERS" http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/gen- comm/info-notices/1998/in98012.html
Those are the regulations. Actual devices were produced by Arco Nuclear Company of Leechburg, Pennsylvania. Probably in the 70's.
http://www.naspe.org/ep-history/timeline/1970s/dev ices/
...or a tin foil Jimmy Hat.
--- At my sig, unleash hell.
Someone set us up the bomb!
But seriously, if 8-10 hours of laptop time isn't good enough and you don't have extra batteries and for some reason you need a single possibly harmful (if it's beta radiation, lets hope its alpha for the sake of nuclear battery progress) battery.
I think it's a joke, but hey Saddam is probably laughing and ordering 300 of them to make some dirty bombs for Osama.
[cx]
We obey the law of thermodynamics in this house, young lady!
Using a nuclear process is different from harvesting the nuclear power. There is a major difference between the amount of energy released from decay and the release from fusion, for example, which popular conception assumes the same.
To be overtly vague and to misuse popular misconception is a way to mislead people
The seat of power for the EMPIRE was the Metal covered multi level city-planet of TRANTOR
the seat of power for the first foundation was the resource-lacking planit of Terminus
First of all, the headline sounds like there will be a nuclear fission power plant in your mobile phone very soon. This is not at all what is meant, according to the article.
What they do mean, is that they will use the energy from the radiation that comes from nuclear isotopes as a power source. This sounds like a very nice idea.
I have an extra idea for this: How about creating power plants around nuclear waste from fission power plants. That way, the nuclear waste problem would be solved: when those new power plants generate enough energy to substitute the original plant (which produces the waste), then the original one is shut down. Then no more waste is generated anymore.
I think this would probably take too much space, because a fission power plant generates much more energy then an isotope plant can. It is worth thinking about though, since we have to do something with the waste anyway.
This may sound like we will get the nuclear waste from the fission power plants into our mobile phones. This will not happen (so this power source will not help us fix that problem), because the products of nuclear fission are much too dangerous to store with so little shielding (less than 1m of concrete)
Just great.
As if we don't have a hard enough time getting
Joe Sixpack to recycle lead-acid and NiCad
batteries let's give him some *really* heavy
metal.
Were that I say, pancakes?
Boss: Why aren't you working!? You: Sorry, Sir... but I'm kinda in the middle of a meltdown at the moment.. Laptop overheated... (While running around in a yellow canary suit )
oh hell freakin' no. As a mass power source, yes. On my lap? Not a chance in hell, at least not without enormous breakthroughs and about 50 years of safety testing. My LIon battery is weak, but my kids don't need cancer at three.
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/science/11/13/radiati on.suit.reut/index.html
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
Yeah, but then again I've always been OK about cancer.
Me: Tech support, Cornfed speaking, how can i help you?
Cust: Hi, um, my nuclear laptop isn't working... i think
Me: Ah, you must've done something to start an uncontrollable fission reaction in the system.
Cust: Is that a bad thing?
Me: Usually, yes
Cust: Sounds dangerous. What should i do?
Me: You must take this laptop to the mountains and throw it off the nearest cliff, then drive as fast as you can to the next town. I believe it'll be safe to come back in a month.
Cust: Would everything be ok then?
Me: Sure.
I'll take one of each.
I know cars use too much power to be powered by one of these, but they could be used as part of a hybrid powered car. What's wrong with 4+ power sources? Solar cells on the entire top surface of the car, RTG, hydrogen tank, fuel cell and batteries in the trunk, and a small engine under the hood with a big electric motor. Don't forget regenerative braking and anything else you can come up with.
You're covered no matter what happens. The batteries charge when it's sitting still in the dark or the sun, braking down a hill, engine running, etc...
Wind generator?
this reminds me of the uproar that was caused a couple of years ago when the FDA wanted to irradiate meat to prevent further outbreaks of E.Coli etc. If the public remains uninformed about different types/uses of radiation there will be little progress in this field. Beta decay can be stopped easily by a sheet of paper, nevermind whatever the manufacturer encases the isotope in.
I think these kinds of devices are way overdue, we have been dependent on nicekl cadmium battery technology for way too long. But how does the battery industry see this? I'm sure they don't like the idea of consumers only buying batteries once every 200 years or so, talk about cutting into their profit margin. Now I really can see a bright green energizer bunny that keeps going and going and going...
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
Its pronounced nuc-u-ler
-Homer Simpson
Notice how GWBush also pronounces it that way? Homer for president!
The challenge is finding the right materials and making it mass producable.
And then what? Are these atomic batteries safe for the landfill? Are they at least safer than the Pb, NiCad, LiIon, and NiMH batteries that consumers are supposed to recycle practically anywhere batteries are sold, but never do?
All we have to do is drop off these batteries at a local RadioShack, but what percentage of consumers actually do this?
How does the danger of atomic batteries in the local landfill compare to these other heavy metal toxins?
use plutonium power cells. I think a pacemaker counts as a personal electronic device...
"We are all geniuses when we dream"
- E.M. Cioran
A truly innovative power source would be a laptop with an integrated steam engine. You could just insert pieces of coal in a slot and the laptop would run fine for a while. There could even be a whistle and a exhaust pipe :) And when you're out in the wilderness and your battery runs out, you just chop down a tree and you've got power for a long time to come...
I wish that my brain could do SMP...
Oh THAT'S right.... it comes from the atomic decay of Uranium.
The fact that what we normally think of as a nuclear 'reactor' speeds up the process, and this battery idea wouldn't is irrelevant.
So what happens when slashdot posts a link to a laptop powered by one of these things?
Kaboom!
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
I hear Microsoft is developing a new OS for nuclear-powered laptops codenamed "Steer".
From the article:
Some researchers are also working on more efficient solar cells and methane-powered fuel cells.
Does that mean I have to fart into the laptop to recharge it? Hmmm...this could be an excuse to drink beer at work...
Read my keyboard review.
Q: Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
A: Only if it's disposable.
I spent years wearing a wristwatch with tritium gas lights on it...
I read up, and the radiation cannot penetrate the glass tubes that contain the gas.
Obviously tritium in this form and quantity is not really dangerous... but the point is that adequate shielding is all that is required.
those things are neat.
Ever researched how they really work?
Odds are that what your highschool teacher told you is 100% wrong... hint: it's not 'light pressure' or 'expanding gas' on the hot side.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Watch "Akira Kurosawa's Dreams" sometime. Then you'll understand.
--It burns! --It's loaded with wasabi.
According to this CNN story (which I'm sure will be a Slashdot story by the time I finish typing), some company in Florida claims to have invented an amazing radiation-proof fabric that will stop alphas, betas, and gammas (!!).
Since they're seeking investors and I don't want to be sued, I will refrain from any comments about whether this is or isn't complete B.S. and fraud. Caveat emptor.
Gee, maybe I should buy a couple bolts of this stuff and learn to sew, so I can start selling radiation-proof pants...
>;k
are overgeneralizing... it depends heavily on the energy level involved.
Tritium (Hydrogen-3) is a pure beta emitter, and a very low energy one at that; it's emissions can be stopped by a sheet of paper, or your first layer of skin, etcetera. It's quite safe to use..
Unless you ingest it, breathe it in quantity, etcetera... then it will STILL cause cancer even at such low energies.
It is possible to convert the radioactive decay directly into electric energy without going through heat. Alpha and Beta particles are charged and they are released at relativistic speeds. This create a magnetic field that can be harnessed.
See U.S patent 4,835,433 "Apparatus for direct conversion of radioactive decay energy to electrical energy".
This technology has been demonstrated to be an order of magnitude more efficient that RTGs.
Stop worrying about the risks of nuclear power and start worrying about the risks of not using nuclear power.
Is it just me or does the domain printed after the URLs in this comment make it look like the idiots are the BBC and UBuffalo?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?
I'd feel a lot safer with a little nuclear pile than with a little 5000psi tank of hydrogen.
-- Heisenberg might have slept here.
Lead shielding is only useful against gamma/X-rays. Against Alpha is it completely overkill (a thin sheet of paper is enough) and with beta (at least high-energy beta), the slowing down of the Beta particles in lead actually *causes* X-ray radiation.
This is called `brehmstrahlung' radiation. In fact this is how X-ray machines work.
Well if I remember correctly (from my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle days) radioactive ANYTHING glows green... my mouse glows red... and my cold-cathode glows blue... Does this mean there'll be a warm white light around my case as all times?
Jeremy Logan's Website.
I've just returned from a business trip to moscow with my laptop. Somehow I feel that if I had been carrying a nuclear powered laptop I might not have been allowed into the country or perhaps even worse, I might not have been allowed to leave. Also, what effect would a radioactive power source have on an X-Ray machine. Perhaps there would be way to check whether a laptop contained a bomb without tearing it apart. I think this idea needs a little thinking about, and besides, wouldn't a fuel cell be safer and cheaper.
You can't win Darth. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
The titanium cage of the TiBook will protect me and those seated around me from gamma rays as well as beta rays. It's titanium ... DUH!!
Ellen Feiss told me that this was so one night as we shared a joint after 'doin it'.
It did not protect her from the spooge though if ya know what I'm sayin. That girl is a wild cat !
People don't really understand how most technology works in the first place. So, if the company doesn't print "radioactive source inside" on the side of the phone, nobody will know the difference anyway.
You could tell folks that the thing runs on a pixie dust generator (converting freely available pixie dust from the air into electricy) and I'll bet if you said it with a straight face at least 50% would believe you.
Now users can use that third hand growing out of their forehead to use cell phones and that will solve driving and talking issue once and for all! 2 hends on wheel one to talk on cell phone.. Perfect!
...and nobody is going to be trading in for a newer model every eighteen months.
Standardize the removable laptop batteries.
it will, when ever you move energy through somthing it loses part of the energy. since they are not heating water to make steam to push turbines, you have more efficent powerplants.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
It's about time that this came into play for battery powered devices. The older NASA satellites all ran on "nuclear" power, actually most ran on the beta and alpha particles because the long halflives and powerful decays allowed the satellites to last for 30+ years, such as the probe that left our solar system 2-3 years ago, and the satellites around jupiter right now. Currently, shielding techniques for gamma rays are too heavy (lead or other heavy atoms) and they are too dangerous in low shielding around the battery because gamma rays have the ability to transmit enough energy into DNA and perform substitutions and translations that can make your children be born with a tail or something. Beta particles have an distance of something to the negative 7 meters, which is pretty small and easy to shield. That and beta particle is a form of a charged radiation so that you can effectively shield the source by providing enough of a voltage or ground so that the particles won't harm you. Alpha particles, in my opinion, are the safest forms of radiation (unless you eat it, I'll explain in a second). Alpha particles are simply helium particles that have a varying momentum and lack electrons, meaning that it's a relatively large, charged particle that can be deflected. So they too can be effecively shielded against. If you eat it, the lining in your system isn't thick enough to stop the particles, so the +2 charges can enter your system and kill off cells very easily, and rapidly. In my opinion, radiation powered batteries are great if engineered right. In case you're wondering of my validity, I am a nuclear engineer.
Unfortunately, such a battery would be too big for a laptop (unless you can significantly reduce the power requirements). Based on Cornell's press release, they plan to use Nickel-63 with a half-life of about a 100 years. So how much Nickel-63 will they need?
Looking at a handy dandy table of the isotopes gives a half-life of 92 years and a decay energy of 67 keV per disintegration for Nickel-63. Also, it has an atomic mass of 63 g/mol. 1 Joule equals 6.24E+15 keV, so to produce 1 Joule of energy you would need:
6.24E+15 kEV/67 keV/disintegration = 9.32E+13 disintegrations
One Watt is a J/s, so to produce a Watt of power you would need 9.32E+13 disintegrations per second. So, how much Nickel-63 is needed to get this many disintegrations per second?
9.32E+13 / (1-exp(1/2903299200*ln(2)) = 3.90E+23 atoms
(Note 2903299200s = 92 years). Dividing by Avogadros Number and multyplying by the atomic mass gives a mass requirement of 40.8g for each Watt. A typical laptop computer consumes ~50 Watts giving a required mass of ~2 kg.
While a bit high, this probably isn't too bad, especially since future technologies can probably lower the power requirement to 10-20 Watts. However, the above calculations assume 100% efficiency. I have no idea what the actual efficiencies are, but they are likely to be less than 50% since the proposed battery uses a mechanical process to produce the electricity. This alone would double the mass. In addition this is only the mass of the nickel. The other components and any shielding are likely to double or triple the mass, so the overall battery would likely weigh 8-12 kg (18-26 lbs). Much too heavy for a laptop.
This is not to say there aren't many very low-power applications for which such a battery would be ideal, but a laptop isn't one of them unless the power requirement can be dropped below about 10W.
Where do you want to glow today?
One specific example where nuclear decay is used to generate electricity is in radioisotope thermal generatures used by NASA on space probes. In these RTG's Pu-238 decays (alpha decay in this case) to create heat which is then converted to electricity. While it's not fission or fusion, it's still energy created by nuclear (not atomic) processes.
Nuclear reactors generate energy from the fission process in which uranium is interacts with neutrons to create an unstable isotope, which then fissions releasing more neutrons and a lot of energy. The emitted neutrons then cause more fissions creating a sustainable chain reaction. Of course, after this reactor is shutdown, there are a lot of radioactive nuclides that decay and generate a lot of heat as well.
Of course, what is novel about this battery is the way that they are capturing the energy of the beta particle.
Ok i'm just bullshitting you. :)
The average person doesn know and won't understand whats going on.
all the customer neets to know is its the newest thing out there, it works best for them and its good for the environment... wether its
Most people just expect new stuff to work...
you don't need to tell them it has a half life of X years, tell them to bring the laptop/cellphone/car/... back in 6 months and they get a new one with all the newest fetures and the company has the old one recylced.
when the customer asks how it works the sales rep gives the typical ansewer (i get this all the time) "I don't know, I just work here"
Batteries that last decades? Ultra-small? Only beta decay? Wonderful! Where can I order mine? I won't wait for the manufacturers to include them. I have several uses for them now. Afraid of the radioactivity? About as afraid as I am of the K-40 in my (and all human) blood.
....we should think of all the children we would save with this technology on our laptops--by not having them.
Yeah, but you are probably basing (emphasize probably) your power requirements on the adapter size of a generic laptop. That's kinda skewed. The adapters are sized such as both run the laptop and charge the battery. Battery charging wastes a tremendous amount of raw power as heat, and probably ends up about 50% of the power consumed by the laptop while charging. You could build your atomic pile about 50% that size because now it _is_ the battery and doesn't need to be electrochemically charged.
:)
Of course, you may have a DELL with 2.8GHz processor, now that may require a 120 Watt adapter
TurboD
Would heat be a problem with these like the "Rat thing" dogs and "Reason" gatling rail gun?
Yes I just finished reading Snowcrash for the first time and no I didn't read the article.
This is where I keep my clever quotes "" Yup I only got a pair, so I better not waste em!
if we can have this for a laptop and cell what about other things that use batteries or other things like desktops, have a few in there and you would never need to have to worry about blackouts and such. and just because how about a small one fot remotes so you never need to change the batteries again.
and if the power sources is always running do you have to turn the laptop off, instant on might become a reality.
Actually, it was a conservative estimate based on a review from Tom's Hardware indicating power consumption levels around 42 W for a DELL laptop. I will admit that 50W is probably on the high side. With appropriate power management, power requirements in the 30W range are probably achievable, perhaps even lower for PPC architectures like the powerbooks. However, even a 10W battery would still likely weigh over 1.5 kg (3.3 lbs), which is too much.
The energy that these things produce does arise from transitions in the nucleus, so they are nuclear. I would probably call them engines before I would call them batteries, there is no way to recharge them. More "fuel" needs to be added.
Alpha particles emitted from radioactive decay tend to have higher energies than beta particles, however the stopping power of every kind of matter for alpha particles is much higher than for beta. As a matter of shielding goes, alpha is easier to shield for.
While any "shielding" is absorbing the energy of radiation, it is transforming that energy into lower energy forms. The primary new forms of energy will be:
- electron/positron pairs (pair
production, giving rise to 511 keV gammas for the
annhilation of the positron later on),
- scattered electrons,
- x-rays,
- Auger electrons
These primary products will themselves be absorbed in various ways, producing a cascade.The highest energy beta I've worked with is the 4.9MeV of Cl-38. But with a 37 minute half life, it isn't going to be an energy source.
The "most common" high energy beta emitter I've worked with is 1.7MeV P-32. With a half life of 14.28 days, it isn't likely to be considered for the "battery" business either.
There are lots of trans-uranic radio-isotope sources. Pu-238 with a 87.7 year half life is useful, and has been used. It's predominantly a 5.1MeV alpha emitter. People get nervous about it because they think all plutonium is for bombs. Sorry, that's Pu-239 you're looking for.
There is carbon and possibly some potassium in that laptop. Most certainly there is carbon and potassium in the owner of the laptop (a human). All "new" carbon contains appreciable amounts of C-14 (157 keV beta, 5730 year half life). All potassium contains K-40 (1.33 MeV beta. 1461 keV gamma, 1.28E9 year half life). For most people, those 2 isotopes are the "source" of most of their lifetime radiation exposure.
The next largest source of radiation exposure in your life (after yourself), is your spouse.
In many cases, the "amount" of radioactivity required to power the battery sounds large from a DPS (decays per second) point of view, when you re-express this as a mass of the isotope it is often extremely small. There is often not much "mass" of isotope to dispose of.
A rule of thumb, is that we want to start looking at classifying something as being not radioactive, after 10 half lives have gone by. Or activity is down by a factor of 1024 for those who live with binary arithmetic. If we had a HUGE amount activity to start with, 10 half lives may not be enough. We may need 20, 30, .... But,
if you are looking at something like Pu-238 with
its 87 year half life, we have structures that are
900 years old around us. So, we know how to build
to dispose of things like Pu-238. Pu-239 with its
24000 year half life is more of a problem. We
need to be able to get back into the repository at
some point, as it is unlikely that the structure
containing the waste is going to last 240000
years.
Paul Brown did better than this in the 80's. A battery which converted decaying gamma rays *directly* to electrical energy. He was harassed by the NSA and others and is now dead. He was arrested for running a meth lab in his basement, more than once. Yeah right... Free or inexpensive energy is something _they_ don't want you to have. http://www.rexresearch.com/nucell/nucell.htm and http://users.erols.com/iri/Pauleulogy.htm
13 month old baby, broke the looking glass..
> Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power
> source inside your laptop or cellphone?
Yes, I'd feel comfortable, and I don't fear
black cats or ladders either.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
Windows Chernobyl!
1.5kg (without the benefit of a conversion table) is what I would guess about 3lbs or there'bouts. Why not make the entire chassis into the power supply? They're making parts of engine blocks out of ceramic, why not a laptop chassis? (Note: GM 2.5L "IronDuke")
Just a thought -- I hope the idea gets off the ground. I wouldn't mind toting a seperate brick, if they let me take it on the plane, that would charge/run my laptop during 6 hour flights. (RDU to SJC) Unlike the not so reliable 12V jacks under some seats...
Read the info on cornell's site.
This technology was funded by DARPA (defense money) for uses where they need to have a battery in sensors in a missile that is sealed in and have it last for quite a long time. (the example they gave) So whatever these get used for military and medical will probably be the first applications because this is where the longevity properties are really neccessary. After a while it will filter into consumer use...
Increasing the efficiency of devices is great, but if this really pans out they could change they way we view electronics. (think about NEVER having to change a battery, or worry about plugging something in, it just works for 50 years)
Because, sometimes they just have to touch the stove.
-YY1
...but only if it was 1950s radiation that didn't kill things, and instead mutated them into strange and exotic life forms. Hopefully, this radiation would mutate me into a superhuman with psychic abilities.
Glow-in-the-dark watches have NUCLEAR material in them... (why do you think it "glows" at night?)
here's a link: http://www.oasisllc.com/abgx/environment.htm
"If anything can go wrong, it will." - Murphy
just that. neutrons that are moving fast or slow.
the reason they are more dangerous is that they (being uncharged) have a much easier time entering a nucleus. and potentially causing it to become unstable (radioactive)
(ps. you have your alphas and betas swapped.;-)
Nobody has asked for or posted real technical details. I'm somewhat disappointed in /. tonight--there's more to being a nerd than running LINUX!
Here is a page describing the research.
Here is a PDF file with real details, including construction, etc.
and be a slashdot editor as well.
Can you help???
I am also perfectly happy with the little Radio Isotope Generators used inside of people. I am less happy with what happens when there are larger numbers of these things knocking around. Morticians know about these things when they are inside pacemakers and that they must be removed before cremation.
If there were larger numbers of these thermal generators knocking around, would they be correctly disposed of?
From actually reading the article, you will see that the materials that they use have short decay paths (meaning that the decay only goes through a couple of stages to get to it's final stable non-radioactive configuration) and that the only radiation emitted is in the form of beta particles: "Beta particle" is just the high-energy physicists name for a "free electron": Do you die if you touch both terminals of a 9V battery at the same time? I haven't yet =)
Oh, if you follow the E2 link: a positron is basically a positively-charged variation on an electron, with about the same mass, weight etc, and so as far as this little rant is concerned, I'm just going to look at electrons - they're basically the same type of thing.
The difference between an electron and a beta particle is that it is thrown (ejected) from the radioactive material, and so it is physically unattached to an atom: Because electrons are so small (in sub-atomic terms) being hit by a beta particle is like having a small marble dropped on your foot from a centimeter or so above that foot.
Alpha particles on the other hand are a LOT heavier: These are a helium nucelus: 2 protons and 2 neutrons. Back to the "dropping" analogy - having one of these hit you is like having a BUS dropped on your foot from that same height - it does a LOT more damage, whereas the marble (beta particle) may do no damage at all.
However, big and bus-like as alpha-particles may be, try this: See how far can you throw a bus. Seriously. And then see how far you can throw a marble. It takes a lot more energy to throw (emit) an alpha particle then a bate particle, and for that reason, people often make the mistake of thinking that alpha-particles are less harmful then beta particles: Not true. Now, think about actually catching that bus you threw. Oops, splat, road-pizza. While the marble might sting your hand a bit when you catch it.
Alpha particles are more harmful then beta particles, it's just that the're a whole lot less likely to actually hit you. Beta particles are a whole lot more likely to hit you, but are trivially easy to stop - it takes a veritable river of them to do any damage, and if you're getting that much juice through your body, you should stop swinging on those power-lines =)
"Gamma-rays" are a different type of radiation altogether: This is called electromagnetic radiation, and shares this category with things like the light hitting you from the monitor that you are looking at right now and radio-waves. This is in the form of something called a photon. Photons are smaller again then electrons, but even a very (and I use this term loosely) "slow" photon travels many times faster then even the fastest electron - the "speed of light" even =)
As far as radioactive damage from Gamma radiation is concerned, this is like the fairly harmless marble (electron) but being forced through your skin at extremely high speed - like a bullet.
Now from reading this, you might think that ANY radioactive exposure is possibly leathal, but you've got to bring things into perspective:
The ground you walk on, your bedding, the air we breathe, the food we eat: Almost EVERYTHING has some trace of radiation being emitted. Don't lie in the sun - you'll get browned by radiation (admittedly Ultra-violet and Infra-red mainly, but the sun also emits copious quantities of alpha, beta, gamma and other radioactive particles. Heck, buy a geiger counter (I saw a link in the comments above somewhere) and crank the sensitivity up: tick-tick-tick - it goes crazy with the amount of background radiation being emitted.
So: Given the amount of radiation that surrounds us at all times anyway, is the miniscule amount required to power a pace-maker or to generate the 12V for my computer really going to concern me?
Using a laptop powered by one of the devices described above isn't going to change my reproductive changes at all, as the chances of the beta radiation escaping the case are basically none. Even the DIRECT, UNSHIELDED MANUAL handling of many radioactive substances will do no damage for a short exposure, which is more then you can say for most of the substances that are put into batteries - There is a reason that lithium is stored in oil, and you really DON'T want to see a carbolic acid burn.
Oh yeah - This technology is a good idea. The only actual draw-back is that the substances required are fairly rare, and that the prices for the batteries will be VERY steep, as there will be very little turn-over of stock. However the rarity issue has never stopped the petrol companies - and the end result of their products is highly toxic, where as this is fairly benign.
In summary: Bring it on!
Anyway, that's my 50th of a dollar.
-Trav
ruined 3-4 cell phones already, I don't want to be around when she drops your flywheel powered cell phone. I'd feel a lot safer with the atomic phone thank you.
What the anti-Cassini radiophobes have to say about all of this. If I throw my nuclear laptop on the couch, will they protest because the perigee passes dangerously close to Earth?
Personally I think they're the result of eating too many nitrates and what not but who knows...
The problem with the "wait and see" paridigm is that once the threat is recognized it is already too late."
WTF would you want a battery with a half-life of 100 years when the avarage laptop have a "full-life" of maybe 3-5 years????
yes and no.. don't care if it's in my laptop,
cellphone.
It can be dangerous however in the factory which
makes these things as you'll have a high concentration there.
But it's a good idea..
hope they'll make the things so powerful that
it can provide power for cars, so we can get rid
of fossil fuel
Learn about pinball machines on www.flippers.be
melts down in your laptop not in your hand
well, if it makes you feel better...you could try these sexy Faraday Cage boxers :)
Theyve got a really neat "deluxe shielding" shirt as well, for you mad scientists out there who want to look good and be safe when you present your experiment to the unsuspecting public...
disclaimer: may cause mutation in offspring.
Depending on your needs, it seems that you can already find a large panoply of *ahem* "protectives"...
this picture shows one good example but it looks quite heavy and I don't know about shielding capacities...
Now, as Faraday Cages have top shielding qualities in my opinion, THIS looks like a lust...darn...must 8)
Seems our ancestors already had the nifty radiation problem, as we found VERY early models... They even had (cute) custom holes for heat dissipation 8p Ahh ! to think about our geek ancestors and their Dremel v0.1....
The tradition of geekness having largely pervased other members of this planet, there are some Geeks that already took the hint and they even have Howtos for Home Made Customs Specials !!! Now you really have no excuse to make one yourself !
Now, the main page is here. Enjoy !
I hope to have dampened your anguish in the bottom front departement 8p
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Is the amount of radioacive material any greater than used to be in old glow in the dark watches?
Er... Just because the laptop is useless doesn't mean the power source is too, you just buy your next laptop from a manufacturer who's laptops take the same size battery.
If the battery is going to potentially last several decades it seems reasonable to expect manufacturers to standardise on dimensions and connections, in much the same way we have AAA, AA, C and so on in the current cell market.
If nature abhors a vacuum, why isn't there more dust in the world?
... And then you have the tecnofreaks who excuses their obsession with solving everything by technological means by blaming others for being cautious and wary (burnt child etc).
Having meditated for a while and doing yoga, I can verily testify that ALL electronic gadgets have a negative impact on us. Not so much our physical health, but also our mental health. Especially our state of attitude regarding others and ourselves, which is really more critical than physical healthiness.
It's just that we're so UNCONSCIOUS of our state of mind and what alters it, that we don't notice. Many times a day we then become slaves to machinery and time. We *become* robotic, lifeless and uncaring. We created movies like "The Matrix" and "Terminator I & II" because more and more people feel their *lives* overtaken by computery, so-called entertainment and rules.
No, I can't PROVE everything in this world, and I don't see why I should either. Logical minds demand proof, while some things "you just know". By becoming sensitive, you can even feel it sometimes. But of course, this does not meet your demands for objectiveness. Then I'd like to ask: Why must there be proof for everything? What becomes of *life* when you dissect it into bits and pieces? What are you left with? When did you last feel you REALLY lived? When did you last hear a joke that didn't play on negativity?
Yes, people are ignorant, but so are scientists. It's just that bad scientists fail to admit this. A mind that thinks it knows, will be closed to the endlessness of possibilities.
" Lal said that he chose only isotopes that emit beta particles because their energy is small enough not to penetrate skin. Radioactive material can emit beta particles, alpha particles or gamma rays--the last two of which are carry enough energy to be hazardous, said Lal."
It's been a while since I've studied nuclear physics but I was certain that I recalled the further into the greek alphabet, the worse the radiation is, hence I believe the journalist has just confused beta and alpha. Alpha being the cumbersome/bulky (basically helium) atom that is easily stopped, and beta being the negatively charged electron burst, which can penetrate further than alpha.
boner
Does a Tokamak use the same principle? Or is it entirely a heat reaction? I should clarify... is energy taken from the Lithium shielding in the reactor the same way this battery would? Or do they just pull the heat out of the reaction and use it to run a generator?
If you're a terrorist with 10 kb of Plutonium, you'd be awfully dumb to try and POISON people with it. IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but isn't 10 kg of Pu roughly the minimum amount you need to be able to set it off (as a nuclear explosive)?
X Whoops... Should have looked in the smoke detector that's just off the shelf...
Old smoke detectors used to use photoelectric sensors that were sensitive to everything including steam, etc. Too many false alarms were caused by these units and they couldn't be relied upon to sense smoke at low levels to be of real use in warning people. These days, if you buy a smoke detector, you're buying a device with an Americium based ionization detector that detects smoke and at low enough levels to be a real advance warning.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Unfortunately, at least semiconductor-based betavoltaic battery efficiencies are pretty low-- a tritium-silicon battery has an efficiency of about 7-8%, but can realistically be improved to ~10% or better. Nickel-63 throws those electrons a lot harder than tritium does, as well-- hard enough to damage semiconductors. Another technique is to use a conventional lithium-ion battery charged by a lower-powered betavoltaic battery, to work around the relatively low power density of betavoltaics (~1 milliwatt per cubic centimeter) while taking advantage of their high energy density (100 watt-hours per cubic centimeter-- wowza!).
...when you're writing a game...tweak the difficulty of "Easy" to something [your mother] can cope with. -- onion2k
They will use the heat to create steam and run a turbine. This battery is only intended for small power requirements.
Alpha Beta Gamma Delta Epsilon Zeta Theta Iota Kappa Lambda Mu Nu Xi Omicron Pi Rho Sigma Tau Upsilon Phi Chi Psi Omega... Whatever...
SIGMA PHI EPSILON!!!
Anyway, seriously, People seem to be afraid of radiation in all forms... morons. Reminds me of the quiznos commercials with the guy wearing pants...("I fear change, and I shall keep my bushes") It takes a lot more than dropping a small bit of radioactive material to set off a nuclear explosion. Hate to ruin your jokes... You can easily find how atomic bombs work (just do a search for "How to make an atomic bomb" on google) and you will find that in no way would a little shock to the battery cause any damage. If it was that easy to do, EVERY COUNTRY ON EARTH would have nukes.
Now, on to the radiation. I'm no expert, but if someone is making a device using radioactive elements, don't you think that they would make sure to shield the user from the radiation? It wouldn't make sense to kill off your consumers, would it? I mean, they aren't tobacco companies...
Anyway, I would definitely use one of these batteries, and therefore everyone else should, too... you damn bandwagon jumpers.
A nuclear water heater for my house. Give me an 80 gallon vertical cylindrical tank with a hemispherical concave bottom. Place a several kg sphere of vitrified Pu-238, and voila! 80 years of hot water. See this site for data on Pu-238 (used in NASA RTGs for years).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
I should explain that I had a 2 year term of leukemia caused by cellphone radiation, fortunately it has cleared up over this year. However if my previous relationship hadn't finished due to the side-effects screwing up my firend's life, then I wouldn't had had this year alone to recover everything.
That depends, if you're talking something like a 50's era watch or a smoke detector then the ill-effects are lower than a microwave. However, I suggest you'll find the smallest nuclear source is a 50's antique in the USA, of course it's not safe, useful or viable.
However, you will find that both sides were completely silly then, and needed small pacific island countries like new zealand & australia to tell them to grow up, get a real life & a sense of humor.
Here's the deal, shields are needed with layers to protect yourself enough. However, anyone who wants to spend that much time away from the opposite sex is either gay or stupid enough to worship the flag.
- Kaos games and encryption systems developer
I dedicate this PE to Brainfuck, the greatest programming language of all time.
Exkuze me, pleaze to be tellink me how I am to h4x0r3d te Leenux
[In 'Doctor' mode], I spent a good ten minutes telling Emacs what I
thought of it. (The response was, 'Perhaps you could try to be less
abusive.')
-- Matt Welsh
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