Unknown Error In The Submission
by
the_mad_poster
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Oh goody. Now all the uninformed environmental saviours of humanity can all hear the word "nu-cu-lar" and start jumping up and down and spasming.
I can't wait until this comes out. I'd be afraid to push the technology for fear that some moron would try to regulate it into oblivion or ban it outright just because it uses a nuclear energy source.
Never mind the incredible jump in effeciency to reduce used landfill space. Never mind the chemicals that are in current solutions, what with the fact that they're highly dangerous and all. This is NUCLEAR people! Fear it!
Maybe I'm just being pessimistic... but I fear that legitimate, useful technologies like this will be blown away by wannabe "do gooders" before they get a chance to really prove just how much better a solution they are both environmentally and economically.
-- Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Informative
Yup, you're right. If you even read the article, it says that the thin layer of dead skin on your body is enough shielding.
The emitted particles only travel 25 micrometers (!) once they hit humans.
They just need a good PR department to call it something benign. Maybe PATRIOT batteries?
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
nocomment
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· Score: 5, Funny
just think you can power your iPod with a nuclear battery, and listen to it with all FOUR of your newly formed ears! Portable 3-d stereo baby!;-)
-- /* oops I accidentally made a comment, sorry */ /* http://allyourbasearebelongto.us */
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
bobhagopian
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Amen. 99% of anti-nuclear activists don't have a clue what they're talking about. I fondly remember the massive protests when hospitals debuted nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (NMRI). Never mind that the nuclear part of NMRI had nothing to do with nuclear reactions, the mere inclusion of the word was enough to spark large-scale protests. (At least until some guy had the clever idea of dropping the N from NMRI.)
Anyway, take from that history lesson what you will. Is nuclear energy perfect? No. Is it better than any other energy source out there (with the possible exception of wind)? Yes.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
Waffle+Iron
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Any alpha emitter is stopped by the skin. That's not the problem.
The problem is if and when the contents of the battery get mixed into anything that you ingest, including air, water and food. This could happen by discarding the battery where eventually it corrodes and releases its contents, incinerating the battery, or intentional tampering and dispersal or poisoning by evildoers(tm).
Ingesting alpha emitters can create a serious cancer risk. Once they're inside you, the particles only need to travel a few microns before they hit some critical part of a cell.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Is it better than any other energy source out there (with the possible exception of wind)? Yes.
The part that I think people have a hard time understanding is this: large amounts of energy is dangerous.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it. If you're generating megawatts of power, you're using something that could kill a lot of people. The only difference between nuclear materials and convential chemicals is that nuclear allows us to get more power for less materials. We could achieve explosions of similar magnitudes with TNT, but who wants to be hauling around hundreds of tons of TNT when a bomb only a few tons in size will do the same thing?
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
DoubleD
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· Score: 4, Insightful
The problem is if and when the contents of the battery get mixed into anything that you ingest, including air, water and food. This could happen by discarding the battery where eventually it corrodes and releases its contents, incinerating the battery, or intentional tampering and dispersal or poisoning by evildoers(tm).
As opposed to alkaline batteries which are perfectly safe to break, drink, or eat.
So there is a risk, what else is new, there are many other dangerous, nasty, evil chemicals and products that we safely use each day without killing ourselves. Careful design and suitable precautions can do wonders.
-- "He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep in order to gain what he cannot lose."
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
Aglassis
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· Score: 4, Informative
You said: " The layer of dead skin blocks it outright. The radiation can only travel 25 micrometers through most liquids."
This is correct, but misleading. An alpha particle (a helium nucleus) has a charge of +2e. This makes it difficult to travel through dense matter as it will quickly loose its kinetic energy (typically about 5 MeV range--normal matter on Earth has about 0.025 eV) by being scattered by electrons in the absorbing material (note that chargeless particles like neutrons or neutrinos have very large ranges in matter). Therefore, it's energy will be dispersed throughout the matter that slowed it down. For living cells this amount of energy is enough to kill the cell or cause some reaction that will cause the cell to mutate (where it may survive on mitosis or die). Obviously this is not a concern for dead cells.
If the alpha emitter is volatile or made into a dust, it can be inhaled. In this case, your respiratory system is affected. Additionally if it is ingested, your gastrointestinal system is affected. So obviously the greatest concern in the design of this battery is how its containment prevents it from being released. Logically if the alpha particle can't penetrate your dead skin cells, it won't penetrate a thin containment shield. If the containment breaks down and particles are easily disolved in water or break up and become dust easy, there is more concern about the safety of this device.
-- Suddenly, the hairy finger of a familiar monkey tapped me on the shoulder. It was time.--G. T.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
DNS-and-BIND
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And you're a fundamentalist environmentalist with a superiority complex.
Relatively *benign* mercury? Hg, the toxic liquid metal?
-- Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
ArbitraryConstant
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· Score: 3, Informative
Coal contains significant amounts of Thorium and Uranium. Burning it releases large quantities of these into the environment.
Thorium and Uranium are both in the multiple billions of years. They'll still be there when the Earth is a scorched cinder circling a long dead star.
Tritium (one of the isotopes they discussed using) has a half life of 12 years. Most of it will decay to helium and the helium will blow away in the solar wind within your lifetime.
-- I rarely criticize things I don't care about.
Re:Unknown Error In The Submission
by
carlos92
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· Score: 4, Informative
But this won't explode. It stores a lot of energy, but the POWER (energy/time) is very low. It's not like the wall outlet, which can give large amounts of energy in a very short time.
The article says that it could be used to trickle charge rechargeable batteries. Think of it as a battery "helper".
Is that a nuclear meltdown in your pocket?
by
Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 5, Funny
Yet another thing to lower my dwindling sperm count! Awesome!
Thanks, Energizer, for the Full Cavity Body Search
by
ThatsNotFunny
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· Score: 5, Funny
You thought you had problems going through airport security before!
-- "Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
Well I'll be damned
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 5, Informative
I've been harping on the idea of using nuclear batteries in cell phones and laptops for the past year or so. To date I've been called a variety of names for it, the least of which is "crazy". Yet here we are. Researchers are SERIOUSLY talking about using radioisotopes as power sources!
In case anyone is wondering how these work, the idea is that the radiation from a small amount of radioactive material (NOT fissable material!) is captured and converted into electricity or other forms of energy. There is very little radiation emitted by these devices, because the radiation IS the power! Letting it escape would be poor economy.
NASA has used these sorts of devices in spacecraft for 40+ years, starting with the Apollo missions. NASA's earlier designs produced about 75 watts utilizing a few pounds of Plutonium-238. Pu-238 was an excellent choice because it is useless for bombs, and has a short half-life (~80 years). With the public finally calming down about nuclear technology, NASA is now developing a more efficient device called an SRG. These devices get about 55 Watts per 600 grams of PU-238. This is way more efficient than current RTGs, like the ones used on Apollo.
The primary downsides to Nuclear Batteries is that they are expensive and they don't scale. They are expensive because the nuclear materials are very rare and expensive to process. If we started using these materials in massive quantities, it's a certainty that the prices would drop. They are not scalable, because the amount of materials required means that a few hundred watts is the largest device one could construct with a reasonable size, weight, and expense.
As for anyone who's worried about dirty bombs, I suggest you read this and this. The threat has been greatly overstated, and is actually less effective than a regular bomb. The real problem is the issue of keeping the materials out of landfills. Even today, there's a big problem with Lead, Cadium, and other dangerous materials ending up in landfills. Radioisotopes wouldn't be much worse, but there is an upper limit on how much you want to add to the sub-soil.
Re:Well I'll be damned
by
otis+wildflower
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· Score: 3, Funny
The primary downsides to Nuclear Batteries is that they are expensive and they don't scale.
They're also not rechargable:p
Re:Well I'll be damned
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 5, Informative
In all seriousness, there are larger RTGs. The Cassini probe started off with a few kilowatts of power at its disposal. Over time that has dropped, but the probe still has a significant amount of power to pull from. According to Wikipedia, the craft will still be producing ~628 watts at the end of its 11 year mission.
Re:Well I'll be damned
by
discontinuity
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· Score: 3, Informative
The primary downsides to Nuclear Batteries is that they are expensive and they don't scale. They are expensive because the nuclear materials are very rare and expensive to process. If we started using these materials in massive quantities, it's a certainty that the prices would drop. They are not scalable, because the amount of materials required means that a few hundred watts is the largest device one could construct with a reasonable size, weight, and expense.
Actually, the point of this article is batteries that scale *down* rather than up. One of the stumbling blocks for miniturized mechanics (MEMS,e tc.) has been the lack of a comparably sized power source. Sure, you can have MEMS accelerometers powered off of your car battery (to sense when to deploy your airbags). But if you want to sever the tether and keep things at a micro scale, you must scale the power to that scale.
Also worth noting, the batteries mentioned in the article actually operate on a different principle than RTGs. The T in RTG stands for "thermoelectric." The article talks about generating power using peizioelectrics. See the figure (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeatur e/sep04/0904nucf1.html).
There also is an interesting sidebar comparing the amount of radioisotope needed for such batteries to current commercial applications in which radioisotopes are used (http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeatur e/sep04/0904nucsb1.html). Individual devices sound tame enough, but I think the real problem will be disposal - especially when everyone has one in their cell phone.
Re:Well I'll be damned
by
radtea
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· Score: 4, Interesting
A couple of nW per mCi is going to have pretty limited usefulness. Even if they boost the conversion efficiency substantially (4% at the moment, so the max is 25 times) they're still talking about a miniscule amount of power for a non-miniscule amount of radioactivity.
IAANP, and I've handled mCi sources, and treated them with considerable respect. Even pure beta-emiters like 63Ni (60-odd keV endpoint) generate significant flux of x-rays due to shake-off electrons and bremmstralung (fairly negligable). A mCi pure-beta source is going to be about the limit before you get significant levels of difficult-to-shield radiation from these effects.
The k-shell x-rays from 63Ni (or rather, 63Cu, the decay product) are just under 9 keV, which can be shielded with a bit of lead, but enough that you're talking about a battery that is mostly shielding. You very rapidly burn the size advantage.
And then there's the disposal issue--these things will wind up in landfills, just like every other radioactive source. For example, a typical (micro-curie) calibration source is aluminum-encased and about the size of quarter. I once had a student put one in his pocket, walk out of the lab, and almost spend the source in a vending machine. There is no reasonable protection against stupidity of that nature. And there's so much of it about.
So while I think these things are potentially great for certain remote sensing applications, I don't expect to see one in my cell phone or lap-top any time soon now. If we were able to make a cell phone or laptop that could run comfortably on a mCi source, it would be able to run almost forever on a conventional battery, so the advantage of a radioactive battery is not at all clear.
I nominate this story for shortest posted news item on/.
Re:but...
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 5, Informative
What happens when they blow up?
They're not explosive. Most nuclear batteries use a radioisotope that's already "burned". i.e. Pu-238 oxide is used in RTGs so that there's no chance of it burning. It still emits plenty of radiation once it's chemically stable, so the only thing you have to worry about are rednecks who think it's funny to melt down the batteries and mix them with paint for glow-in-the-dark wallpaper. Even then, I rather doubt it will have much effect on them.
Authorities in Chicago, Illinois have ordered the evacuation of the north shore after an iPod meltdown.
-- But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Re:New addition to the Patriot Act?
by
phlegmofdiscontent
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· Score: 4, Informative
Or he could buy several thousand smoke detectors today, which also contain radioisotopes (americium, I believe) for about the same price and have even more radioactive material. What's your point?
Not radioactively powered but a trickle charge
by
planckscale
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· Score: 5, Funny
It looks like this mostly a development into boosting the charge of an otherwise ordinary Li battery. If it keeps my cell battery charged for over a month as opposed to every 4 days than I could care less if my ear mutates into a chicken wing.
" Once these challenges are overcome, a promising use for nuclear microbatteries would be in handheld devices like cellphones and PDAs. As mentioned above, the nuclear units could trickle charge into conventional batteries. Our one-cantilever system generated pulses with a peak power of 100 milliwatts; with many more cantilevers, and by using the energy of pulses over periods of hours, a nuclear battery would be able to inject a significant amount of current into the handheld's battery.
How much that current could increase the device's operation time depends on many factors. For a cellphone used for hours every day or for a power-hungry PDA, the nuclear energy boost won't help much. But for a cellphone used two or three times a day for a few minutes, it could mean the difference between recharging the phone every week or so and recharging it once a month."
-- Namaste
Re:Someone who knows their physics please tell me
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 4, Informative
Some kind of reverse Peltier gizmo can't be used to create a solid-state nuclear battery?
You know, they used to use these things in pacemakers before Chernobyl happened. After Chernobyl, everyone got scared about "nuclear" anything. Now dead batteries in a pacemaker are a very real concern, whereas they used to be good until you were dead from other causes.
Don't they already...
by
NeuroManson
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Use batteries like this in pacemakers?
-- Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right.
Shoes for industry!
"My Child Swallowed WHAT?" (a rant 8-)
by
IBitOBear
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· Score: 3, Insightful
Yumm... in other news, liability law enters a whole new realm of stupid.
Most of the proles have been blisfully un-aware of the use of "nuclear bateries" (etc) in our space program. In those cases it was mostly a exercise in thermeonics, which is perhaps slightly different than this "documented" breakthrough, or maybe not, but there you go.
How out-of-the-public-mind is this? Google for thermeonics. Two entires. No wonder there isn't any funding.
Meanwhile, particle-in electron-out technologies are not all that radical. Things like the solar panels are based on this sort of thing.
So we have an announcement that what we can do big we may be able to do to nanotech scales. How new, how fresh...
But there will be hue, and there will be cry, and much gnashing of teeth will come across the land as those who cannot understand take umberage from the words of those who check facts. "That is radio active! We must not have it. Now give me some of that cadmium enriched tap water the government says is good for softening over-strong bones..."
So great technology, but we can't even get decent breeder reactors in this country. We arn't smart or "brave" enough, or perhaps we have had so many less-than-trustworthy "officilas" that we know we dare not let the usefully dangerous things near our lives. Leave the cutting edge nuclear research to the cowardly French...
So summon NIMBY and marvel as our lawyers stamp this technology, and any other technology that sounds even vaguly provocative, out in the persuit of the great god "what about our children?"
Apparently they don't deserve to survive because their PARENTS can't take the simple responsibility to to keep their kids from eating the computer... 8-)
So yea, great advance in science, all the benefits will be lost to the litigous masses. What is the point of a 1 millimeter chip if it has to wear a ten-inch warning label?
You just wait and see... 8-)
[For those who missed the subject line, this was a RANT... get a clue before you take me to task... 8-)]
-- Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development. --"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Re:"My Child Swallowed WHAT?" (a rant 8-)
by
topynate
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· Score: 5, Informative
Google for thermeonics. Two entires.
Spell it right - thermionics. You get over 5K. And if you add up the results for googling different sub-fields I bet you get way more.
Re:New addition to the Patriot Act?
by
irokitt
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Yeah, Americium Oxide. And lantern mantles contain Thorium. So It's possible to make dirty bombs anyway. I'd worry more about someone buying large quantities of fertilizer.
-- If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Would it be possible to use something that undergoes Alpha decay (say, Radium or Polonium), and convert it's moving charged particles directly into electric?
In short, you take a small amount of the radioactive substance and wrap all but one face in a lead shield, only allowing alpha particles out one face. Place a wire coil around that face, voila... moving charge (alpha particle) induces voltage and current in a conductor (coil). Insulate the coil, and draw power off it's ends. Place a little endpoint for the alpha particles to hit that's grounded to the radium/lead sample, so it can recombine into helium.
Sounds good... can someone with more physics knowledge than I poke my idea full of holes? What kind of coupling efficiency/energy output/conversion efficiency/helium generation could one expect?
Re:Random thought here...
by
Quantum+Jim
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· Score: 4, Informative
In short, you take a small amount of the radioactive substance and wrap all but one face in a lead shield, only allowing alpha particles out one face.
One possible problem, to form a narrow alpha-particle beam for small devices, a small slit or hole has to be used. Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle shows that the range of (normalized) highly probable momenta will be large since the range in location is small. This means that some particles will be fast and some will be slow; however, the actual event is hard to predict.
Since kinetic energy is proportional to the momentum (squared), your device will produce energy in hard-to-predict spirts. You can calculate an average energy; however, that applies only after a large number of particles go through your device. That's one reason why these kind of devices work well as trickle-chargers yet poorly as generators.
Another problem is that you lose 5/6th of the particles from the device, or more. This is because the probability of a radioactive atom emitting a particle in a specific direction is relatively uniform. However, only one face of the material is unshielded to the device. So particles most will hit the shielded face. One one face, 5/6th of the total area, will have a flux out.
Place a wire coil around that face, voila... moving charge (alpha particle) induces voltage and current in a conductor (coil). Insulate the coil, and draw power off it's ends.
When you extract energy from the particle's kinetic energy, it will slow down. When it does, it will emitt electromagnetic energy, breaking it furthermore. All this energy is not converted into electrical energy in your device.
In the article, two methods are getting energy were tried. In the first device, the scientiests use a material that emitts beta particles - electrons - and injected them directly into a pn-junction of a semiconductor device. Normal semiconductor devices (i.e. diodes) work by moving electrons to unfilled energy levels in one substance (p-material) from filled energy levels in another substance (n-material). Moving electrons means a current forms.
This is usually induced by thermal or EM energy. In this case, the radioactive element emitts electrons directly into the semiconductor. The imbalance causes a current to form through the junction. This can be miniaturized well. It also is not as sensitive to the direction that beta particles are emitted as your device.
The second device uses a (really small!) lever attached to a piezoelectric material. Piezoelectric crystals produce electric current when stressed or vibrating. (The reverse is also true; hense why the crystal in your digital watch creates the ticks for the clocks.) The lever gets hit by - and absorbs - beta particles emitted from the radioactive element. Since beta particles are charged, the lever aquires a negative charge and the element aquires a positive charge. This pulls the lever toward the radioactive element. When they get close, electron tunnel over the gap and return their charge to the radioactive element. Once uncharged, the lever spings back to its origional position. The movement of the lever causes the piezoelectric material to generate current.
This things scientists and engineers create are truely fascinating! (...to me at least!)
-- It is impossible to enjoy idling thoroughly unless one has plenty of work to do. - Jerome Klapka Jerome
Re:Cool stuff but....
by
the_denman
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Its gonna take a lot of batteries to grind down before you would have any usable material for a dirty bomb,
Never doubt the steps some will go through to get radioactive stuff, I am reminded of David Han, "the radioactive boy scout" who tried to make a breader reactor with lantern mantels and smoke alarm parts (as well as many other things). While he didn't get his goal compleated, he got a heck of a lot closer then he should have.
Re:These are already in use for some applications
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Throwing Bricks...
by
TiggertheMad
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· Score: 5, Funny
NEWS CAMERA FOCUSES ON GROUP OF BEARDED MEN WEARING DIRTY CAMOFLAGE JUMPSUITS. THEY ARE STANDING BEYOUND A FENCE AT THE END OF AN AIRPORT RUNWAY.
REPORTER: Thanks, Dan. I am here at the end of runway 4, where we are seeing a shift in Al-Queda's tactics today. They seem to be employing some sort of revolutionary new tactic...
CAMERA SHOWS A TERRORIST HEAVE A BRICK IN THE AIR AS A JET TAKES OFF, ROARING OVERHEAD. THE BRICK FLYS ABOUT 20 FEET UP, BEFORE FALLING TO THE GROUND NEXT TO THE VISIBLY UPSET TERRORIST.
Reporter: Back to you, Dan.
--
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Re:but...
by
AKAImBatman
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· Score: 3, Informative
I wouldn't worry about that too much. Manufacturers would tend to be smart enough to choose materials that are not water soluble. In addition, they'd probably melt the materials inside a block of non-reactive metal to make sure the materials stay in a solid form.
As long as the materials are treated with respect by the manufacturer, consumers shouldn't have too much to worry about. Even if the manufacturer DOES screw up, it's doubtful that so little material could cause much of a problem. You might be interested in this link.:-)
From the fine article: "As you reduce the size of such a battery, the amount of stored energy goes down exponentially. Reduce each side of a cubic battery by a factor of 10 and you reduce the volume--and therefore the energy you can store--by a factor of 1000."
No, the amount of stored energy goes down polynomially (specifically, cubically), dammit! Must even science articles abuse the word "exponentially"?
-- Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
What I don't understand is why they went with the electromechanical scheme that they used, instead of epitaxially depositing a big stack of P-I-N diodes and letting the ionizing radiation work its magic directly. The article mentions a single-layer diode test, but you want a big enough stack to sap charge from the entire trail left by the alpha or beta particle that's plowing through the device.
The electromechanical scheme has the virtue of collecting almost all of the energy as (nominally) usable heat, but conversion efficiency stinks, from what I can gather. Junction efficiency won't be so hot either (for the same reason solar cell efficiency is poor - carriers are given more energy than required to overcome the band-gap), but not too bad (anything over 10-15 eV will just create secondary showers of lower-energy electrons).
Can anyone familiar with these issues tell me what I'm missing?
First observation of electron decay
by
Cardbox
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· Score: 5, Funny
Hidden away in the article is a discovery that will revolutionize our understanding of particle physics and cosmology:
Nickel-63 is ideal for this application because its emitted beta particles travel a maximum of 21 micrometres in silicon before disintegrating
This must imply that there exists a lighter lepton than the electron. Goodbye, Standard Model!
Radioactivity in the Body
by
ianturton
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· Score: 3, Interesting
This site discusses the fact that radioactive Potassium is the largest source of Beta-radiation in the body. As an earth-science undergrad I learnt that coffee is in fact too radioactive to landfill under current EU regulations.
We went on a field trip where we were supposed to use a gigier meter to determine where the bed rock changed from granite to sandstone. In fact all we could determine was which farmers used more potassium based fertilser than others. You could pick the field boundaries out in the plots but nothing useful about the geology.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh goody. Now all the uninformed environmental saviours of humanity can all hear the word "nu-cu-lar" and start jumping up and down and spasming.
I can't wait until this comes out. I'd be afraid to push the technology for fear that some moron would try to regulate it into oblivion or ban it outright just because it uses a nuclear energy source.
Never mind the incredible jump in effeciency to reduce used landfill space. Never mind the chemicals that are in current solutions, what with the fact that they're highly dangerous and all. This is NUCLEAR people! Fear it!
Maybe I'm just being pessimistic... but I fear that legitimate, useful technologies like this will be blown away by wannabe "do gooders" before they get a chance to really prove just how much better a solution they are both environmentally and economically.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Or are you just happy to see me?
Imagine going to the store to buy some new Plutonium-Cadmium batteries?
Yet another thing to lower my dwindling sperm count! Awesome!
You thought you had problems going through airport security before!
"Was it a millionaire who said 'Imagine No Posessions?'" -- Elvis Costello
I've been harping on the idea of using nuclear batteries in cell phones and laptops for the past year or so. To date I've been called a variety of names for it, the least of which is "crazy". Yet here we are. Researchers are SERIOUSLY talking about using radioisotopes as power sources!
In case anyone is wondering how these work, the idea is that the radiation from a small amount of radioactive material (NOT fissable material!) is captured and converted into electricity or other forms of energy. There is very little radiation emitted by these devices, because the radiation IS the power! Letting it escape would be poor economy.
NASA has used these sorts of devices in spacecraft for 40+ years, starting with the Apollo missions. NASA's earlier designs produced about 75 watts utilizing a few pounds of Plutonium-238. Pu-238 was an excellent choice because it is useless for bombs, and has a short half-life (~80 years). With the public finally calming down about nuclear technology, NASA is now developing a more efficient device called an SRG. These devices get about 55 Watts per 600 grams of PU-238. This is way more efficient than current RTGs, like the ones used on Apollo.
The primary downsides to Nuclear Batteries is that they are expensive and they don't scale. They are expensive because the nuclear materials are very rare and expensive to process. If we started using these materials in massive quantities, it's a certainty that the prices would drop. They are not scalable, because the amount of materials required means that a few hundred watts is the largest device one could construct with a reasonable size, weight, and expense.
As for anyone who's worried about dirty bombs, I suggest you read this and this. The threat has been greatly overstated, and is actually less effective than a regular bomb. The real problem is the issue of keeping the materials out of landfills. Even today, there's a big problem with Lead, Cadium, and other dangerous materials ending up in landfills. Radioisotopes wouldn't be much worse, but there is an upper limit on how much you want to add to the sub-soil.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I nominate this story for shortest posted news item on /.
What happens when they blow up?
They're not explosive. Most nuclear batteries use a radioisotope that's already "burned". i.e. Pu-238 oxide is used in RTGs so that there's no chance of it burning. It still emits plenty of radiation once it's chemically stable, so the only thing you have to worry about are rednecks who think it's funny to melt down the batteries and mix them with paint for glow-in-the-dark wallpaper. Even then, I rather doubt it will have much effect on them.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
For all the good a few millicuries of Ni63 or tirtium would do, Mr. Terrorist would be better off buying bricks and throwing them at his target.
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
Authorities in Chicago, Illinois have ordered the evacuation of the north shore after an iPod meltdown.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
Or he could buy several thousand smoke detectors today, which also contain radioisotopes (americium, I believe) for about the same price and have even more radioactive material. What's your point?
" Once these challenges are overcome, a promising use for nuclear microbatteries would be in handheld devices like cellphones and PDAs. As mentioned above, the nuclear units could trickle charge into conventional batteries. Our one-cantilever system generated pulses with a peak power of 100 milliwatts; with many more cantilevers, and by using the energy of pulses over periods of hours, a nuclear battery would be able to inject a significant amount of current into the handheld's battery.
How much that current could increase the device's operation time depends on many factors. For a cellphone used for hours every day or for a power-hungry PDA, the nuclear energy boost won't help much. But for a cellphone used two or three times a day for a few minutes, it could mean the difference between recharging the phone every week or so and recharging it once a month."
Namaste
Some kind of reverse Peltier gizmo can't be used to create a solid-state nuclear battery?
Congratulations, you've just described an RTG.
You know, they used to use these things in pacemakers before Chernobyl happened. After Chernobyl, everyone got scared about "nuclear" anything. Now dead batteries in a pacemaker are a very real concern, whereas they used to be good until you were dead from other causes.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Use batteries like this in pacemakers?
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
Yumm... in other news, liability law enters a whole new realm of stupid.
Most of the proles have been blisfully un-aware of the use of "nuclear bateries" (etc) in our space program. In those cases it was mostly a exercise in thermeonics, which is perhaps slightly different than this "documented" breakthrough, or maybe not, but there you go.
How out-of-the-public-mind is this? Google for thermeonics. Two entires. No wonder there isn't any funding.
Meanwhile, particle-in electron-out technologies are not all that radical. Things like the solar panels are based on this sort of thing.
So we have an announcement that what we can do big we may be able to do to nanotech scales. How new, how fresh...
But there will be hue, and there will be cry, and much gnashing of teeth will come across the land as those who cannot understand take umberage from the words of those who check facts. "That is radio active! We must not have it. Now give me some of that cadmium enriched tap water the government says is good for softening over-strong bones..."
So great technology, but we can't even get decent breeder reactors in this country. We arn't smart or "brave" enough, or perhaps we have had so many less-than-trustworthy "officilas" that we know we dare not let the usefully dangerous things near our lives. Leave the cutting edge nuclear research to the cowardly French...
So summon NIMBY and marvel as our lawyers stamp this technology, and any other technology that sounds even vaguly provocative, out in the persuit of the great god "what about our children?"
Apparently they don't deserve to survive because their PARENTS can't take the simple responsibility to to keep their kids from eating the computer... 8-)
So yea, great advance in science, all the benefits will be lost to the litigous masses. What is the point of a 1 millimeter chip if it has to wear a ten-inch warning label?
You just wait and see... 8-)
[For those who missed the subject line, this was a RANT... get a clue before you take me to task... 8-)]
Innocent people shouldn't be forced to pay for inferior software development.
--"Code Complete" Microsoft Press
Yeah, Americium Oxide. And lantern mantles contain Thorium. So It's possible to make dirty bombs anyway. I'd worry more about someone buying large quantities of fertilizer.
If my answers frighten you, stop asking scary questions.
Would it be possible to use something that undergoes Alpha decay (say, Radium or Polonium), and convert it's moving charged particles directly into electric?
In short, you take a small amount of the radioactive substance and wrap all but one face in a lead shield, only allowing alpha particles out one face. Place a wire coil around that face, voila... moving charge (alpha particle) induces voltage and current in a conductor (coil). Insulate the coil, and draw power off it's ends. Place a little endpoint for the alpha particles to hit that's grounded to the radium/lead sample, so it can recombine into helium.
Sounds good... can someone with more physics knowledge than I poke my idea full of holes? What kind of coupling efficiency/energy output/conversion efficiency/helium generation could one expect?
Never doubt the steps some will go through to get radioactive stuff, I am reminded of David Han, "the radioactive boy scout" who tried to make a breader reactor with lantern mantels and smoke alarm parts (as well as many other things). While he didn't get his goal compleated, he got a heck of a lot closer then he should have.
Have you seen the cost for a gram of Tritium?! That's why it's not used more.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
NEWS CAMERA FOCUSES ON GROUP OF BEARDED MEN WEARING DIRTY CAMOFLAGE JUMPSUITS. THEY ARE STANDING BEYOUND A FENCE AT THE END OF AN AIRPORT RUNWAY.
REPORTER: Thanks, Dan. I am here at the end of runway 4, where we are seeing a shift in Al-Queda's tactics today. They seem to be employing some sort of revolutionary new tactic...
CAMERA SHOWS A TERRORIST HEAVE A BRICK IN THE AIR AS A JET TAKES OFF, ROARING OVERHEAD. THE BRICK FLYS ABOUT 20 FEET UP, BEFORE FALLING TO THE GROUND NEXT TO THE VISIBLY UPSET TERRORIST.
Reporter: Back to you, Dan.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
I wouldn't worry about that too much. Manufacturers would tend to be smart enough to choose materials that are not water soluble. In addition, they'd probably melt the materials inside a block of non-reactive metal to make sure the materials stay in a solid form.
:-)
As long as the materials are treated with respect by the manufacturer, consumers shouldn't have too much to worry about. Even if the manufacturer DOES screw up, it's doubtful that so little material could cause much of a problem. You might be interested in this link.
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I'm sure in 1985, plutonium is available at every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by!
From the fine article: "As you reduce the size of such a battery, the amount of stored energy goes down exponentially. Reduce each side of a cubic battery by a factor of 10 and you reduce the volume--and therefore the energy you can store--by a factor of 1000."
No, the amount of stored energy goes down polynomially (specifically, cubically), dammit! Must even science articles abuse the word "exponentially"?
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
What I don't understand is why they went with the electromechanical scheme that they used, instead of epitaxially depositing a big stack of P-I-N diodes and letting the ionizing radiation work its magic directly. The article mentions a single-layer diode test, but you want a big enough stack to sap charge from the entire trail left by the alpha or beta particle that's plowing through the device.
The electromechanical scheme has the virtue of collecting almost all of the energy as (nominally) usable heat, but conversion efficiency stinks, from what I can gather. Junction efficiency won't be so hot either (for the same reason solar cell efficiency is poor - carriers are given more energy than required to overcome the band-gap), but not too bad (anything over 10-15 eV will just create secondary showers of lower-energy electrons).
Can anyone familiar with these issues tell me what I'm missing?
Hidden away in the article is a discovery that will revolutionize our understanding of particle physics and cosmology:
This must imply that there exists a lighter lepton than the electron. Goodbye, Standard Model!This site discusses the fact that radioactive Potassium is the largest source of Beta-radiation in the body. As an earth-science undergrad I learnt that coffee is in fact too radioactive to landfill under current EU regulations.
We went on a field trip where we were supposed to use a gigier meter to determine where the bed rock changed from granite to sandstone. In fact all we could determine was which farmers used more potassium based fertilser than others. You could pick the field boundaries out in the plots but nothing useful about the geology.
Ian