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Nuclear Battery That Runs 10 Years
Jenny writes "A battery with a lifespan measured in decades is in development at the University of Rochester, as scientists demonstrate a new fabrication method that in its roughest form is already 10 times more efficient than current nuclear batteries -- and has the potential to be nearly 200 times more efficient. Similar to the way solar panels work by catching photons from the sun and turning them into current, the science of betavoltaics uses silicon to capture electrons emitted from a radioactive gas, such as tritium, to form a current. As the electrons strike a special pair of layers called a 'p-n junction,' a current results. I can imagine lots of applications for this new battery including my own laptop."
So now instead of just overheating... my laptop can have a total meltdown?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
If you ever have an iPod with one of these things, don't send it through the washing machine, and then start stabbing it with a screwdriver...
Next time your laptop battery runs out, you get to replace the entire laptop.
-mkb
Before going off and thinking that a radioactive battery would be bad because
of toxic exposure through its mere presense, please read this Wikipedia article about Tritium, which explains
that " The low-energy beta radiation from tritium cannot penetrate human skin, so tritium is only dangerous if inhaled or ingested."
So it might make a good candidate for a household battery.
Naw ... just kidding but think of the added benefits ...
How does tritium affect people's health?
As with all ionizing radiation, exposure to tritium increases the risk of developing cancer. However, tritium is one of the least dangerous radionuclides because it emits very weak radiation and leaves the body relatively quickly. Since tritium is almost always found as water, it goes directly into soft tissues and organs. The associated dose to these tissues are generally uniform and dependent on the tissues' water content.
How does tritium change in the environment?
Tritium readily forms water when exposed to oxygen. As it undergoes radioactive decay, tritium emits a very weak beta particle and transforms to stable, nonradioactive helium. Tritium has a half-life of 12.3 years.
How do people come in contact with tritium?
People are exposed to small amounts of tritium every day, since it is widely dispersed in the environment and in the food chain. People who live near or work in federal weapons facilities or nuclear fuel cycle facilities may have increased exposure. People working in research laboratories may also come in contact with tritium.
How does tritium get into the body?
Tritium primarily enters the body when people swallow tritiated water. People may also inhale tritium as a gas in the air, and absorb it through their skin.
What does tritium do once it gets into the body?
Tritium is almost always found as water, or "tritiated" water. Once tritium enters the body, it disperses quickly and is uniformly distributed throughout the body. Tritium is excreted through the urine within a month or so after ingestion. Organically bound tritium (tritium that is incorporated in organic compounds) can remain in the body for a longer period.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Betavoltaics? I'll wait until this radioactive battery is more... stable.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
I just wonder, no matter how efficient, safe, and cheap this thing can be, if it will ever sell. Nuclear tech seems to be kind of a boogeyman still. How long until Fox or the SciFi channel makes a Made for TV movie about someone's pace maker having a meltdown and taking out 2/3 of north america.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Have we learned nothing. Calling it a nuclear (or nucular) battery will only ensure it's complete and total failure.
special pair of layers called a 'p-n junction'
The p-n junction is sometimes called by its more technical name: the "diode".
implanted defibrillators
defibrillators are usually *not* implanted, so it's worth specifying.
I can imagine lots of applications for this new battery including my own laptop
That a calculated risk: will you end up sterile and impotent or the proud wielder of a 14 inch hammer...
Trolling is a art,
nuclear decay is a completely spontaneous process. the only way to get more beta particles is to have more radioactive material. long lasting does not mean lots of power.
this reminds me of an essay I read by a second year physics student that nanotechnology would allow us to run 10GHz computers for 10 years off a watch battery. it's BS but you don't need to look at the technology to see that, it's just basic thermodynamics:
law 1. you can't win
law 2. you can't break even.
law 3. you can't get out of the game.
"So ladies and gentlemen - here we have it; a high-tech battery that lasts many times longer than those made with current technology, a clean and efficient power source for the 21st century - ideal for all sorts of gadgets and items essential for the executive on the move! Just one small thing - how do we convince power laptop users to accept having a radioactive source approximately 2" away from their testicles? Anyone?"
AT&ROFLMAO
read post above: tritium radiation is too weak to penetrate human skin. /. crowd.
Tritium does not emit in the gamma range. It emits beta particles (electrons), and neutrinos. Both are harmless to humans, since the electrons are caught to produce current, and neutrinos can go through the entire planet without colliding with a particle.
It's particle physics, but it's not out of the public's understanding. Especially not the
---- I am certain of only one thing : I know nothing else.
I can imagine lots of applications for this new battery including my own laptop.
I'm not sure I'd want a nuclear battery on my lap. Maybe that's just me.GETPKG - Package Management for Slackware
Its about time we start turning this direction for portable power needs. If certain "agencies" and media outlets would quit spreading misinformation and lies about these viable power sources then maybe we could make some real progress in the lack in the portable power dept. The densities that we are currently capable of, pale in comparison with today's needs. This would be just the ticket if the PR were handled correctly.
Just my thoughts..... Nothing to see here.
.
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
"As the electrons strike a special pair of layers called a 'p-n junction,..."
Those special layers are in every diode (including LEDs) in the universe.
How long until Yukos Mountain becomes choice real estate as we learn to turn waste products in to new sources of energy. Like when natural gas was considered a "waste" product of oil.
"A good friend will bail you out of jail. A true friend will be sitting next to you saying, 'damn....that was fun!'"
no, A huge freaking Apple cloud you silly cloth. \o>
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Okay, I've made some adjustments to a previous story to cope with this new technology. Just a few words.
Apple: iPod Dangerous When Wet
Posted by CowboyNeal on Friday May 13, @05:43AM
from the potential-hazards dept.
somefutureslashdotter writes "What do you do when your mom washes your iPod? Fix it, of course. A teenager in Australia found out the hard way that messing with the insides of his iPod is dangerous and needed to be pieced together from basic components after it exploded, leveling several city blocks."
This is a really exciting breakthrough, but the idea is far from new. The parallel-place electrometer was used in the early days to detect ionizing radiation by knocking off stored charge with the incoming flux of charged particles. This is in a way harnessing the current created by radioactive decay. Modern radiation dosimeters use a similar principle. It was always discussed that if you could simply harness the current of the emitted betas, you would have a useable battery. Until now this wasn't feasible due to the efficiency of capturing those betas and using them as a current source. I can't wait till this is made available to the public.
Earlier story on slashdot about Cornell work on atomic MEMS
A) Have a freshly-maimed lap full of delicious, toxic, viscous, burning battery acid; or
B) Inhale the rough equivalent of breathing a couple months' worth of naturally-occuring tritium?
Take your time. This one's a toughie.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
There's not much detail in TFA on how it works. FYI a pn junction is nothing new, it's aka a diode, and is the basis of other more complicated semiconductor structures (FETs, BJTs). Does anyone know how this works? I'd imagine it's similar to the way a BJT works. In a BJT, two pn junctions join to make pnp or npn bipolar transistors, the n or p in the middle is the base and it is a very thin layer. Injecting a small amount of charge in the base causes electrons to diffuse across one of the pn junctions (of of them is doped differently than the other). The base is thin enough that before the electrons can recombine they are swept across the other junction. In this manner you get very high current gains -- a small base current results in a much larger current in your bjt. Anyone know anymore about the battery tech in the article?
Intel transfer the difficult from Hadware to software, for get more power, programmer need more technology. -- chinaitn
If it generates electricity by catching electrons resulting from nuclear fission, then how do you turn it off? Is it always generating electricity? Do you have to have a constant connection to ground so that it can sink any current that's not being used?
Don't these people know anything about marketing. I would NEVER use the word nuclear and tie it into a product. Can't they hire some marketing person to think of a new term? Joe public has know idea what nuclear really is, other than it can blow stuff up or give you cancer.
There is no mention of the power delivered by the battery - only its lifetime. It doesn't take much to run a pacemaker, but a laptop might require a battery the size of a loaf of bread, for all we know. Also, while tritium isn't all that dangerous, it IS radioactive, and carries all of the regulatory baggage that goes with that designation, so great care would have to be taken to prevent leakage during its lifetime, which wouldn't be easy.
"Anyone that has ever gotten an idea based on any of my work and done something better with it-good for you."--J.Carmack
I've heard the same thing once or twice, but this page says it's one of the least expensive radioisotopes.
This blogger comes to the conclusion that it is at least a thousand times more expensive than gold.
And here's a solid figure: the Canadian Ontario Hydro company asks about 28 million dollars (Canadian) a kilogram. Hang on, I'll get my wallet.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Disclaimer: I am a nuclear engineering graduate student.
This seems like a rather nifty extention of the technology. However, note that the fuel source, tritium, is rather hard and expensive to come by. (The total world supply of the stuff is < 40 kg.) So I see this as a great boon for, say, space probes or other fancy applications where getting your hands on some tritium gas aren't the biggest of concerns on the budget. It'd be interesting to see how they compare to other nuclear batteries that rely on heat from alpha-decay of heavy isotopes like plutonium to generate electrical currents.
As far as all the jokes about a nuclear laptop battery using this technology causing sterility, note that tritium decays via beta emission (i.e. an electron), with a range in solid materials of a few mm, so those energetic electrons will stay in the battery. Your primary concern would be if you somehow cracked the thing open and inhaled the tritium gas -- then those few mm of exposure in your lungs etc. aren't the best things to have around energetic particles. (And, as far as having to ingest nuclear sources, tritium is probably one of the better ones, since not only does it have a relatively short half-life of ~12 years, but it gets flushed out of the body rather rapidly as it diffuses into the bloodstream/water in tissues, leading to a much shorter effective biological half-life of 11 days.)
This will be awesome in iPods.
Until your mother launders it.
And you take a screwdriver to it.
And it flips you into orbit.
-- often wrong; never in doubt
People would never be comfortable with "nuking" their food, anyway.
About 25 years ago, I bought a very inexpensive digital watch that was 'glow-in-the-dark'. On the back was a radioactivity symbol that indicated the watch contained 200 mCi of 3H. As a molecular biologist who became very very careful when working with 5 mCi of 32P (a much stronger emitter) or 3H-thymidine, the idea of wearing 200 mCi of 3H seemed quite exciting.
Indeed, I believe there was a superfund site due to 3H contamination from watch manufacturing.
Company I'm working at right now just gave away a bunch of old Thinkpads. Reason being - it's cheaper to give them away than send the batteries off for a proper recycling.
So I wonder what the cost would be to recycle a spent tritium battery?
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
1) Use specific tritium charger only. Do not use a NiMH or NiCd charger - Failure to do so may a cause fire, which may result in personal injury and property damage, across a wide area. 2) Never charge batteries unattended. When charging H-3 batteries you should always remain in constant observation to monitor the charging process and react to potential problems that may occur, by running away, fast. 3) Some H-3 chargers on the market may have technical deficiencies that may cause it to charge the H-3 batteries incorrectly or at an improper rate. It is your responsibility solely to assure the charger you purchased works properly. Always monitor charging process to assure batteries are being charged properly. Failure to do so may result in meltdown. 4) If at any time you witness a battery starting to balloon or swell up, discontinue charging process immediately, disconnect the battery and observe it in a safe place, several miles away, for approximately 500 years. This may cause the battery to leak, and the reaction with air may cause the isotopes to chain-react, resulting in mushroom cloud. 5) Since delayed chain reaction can occur, it is best to observe the battery as a safety precaution. Battery observation should occur in a safe area outside of any building or vehicle and away from any fissile material. 6) Wire lead shorts can cause fire! If you accidentally short the wires, the battery must be placed in a safe area for observation for approximately 800 years. Additionally, if a short occurs and contact is made with metal (such as rings on your hand), severe injuries may occur due to the conductibility of electric current. 7) A battery can still fission even after 1000 years. 8) In the event of a crash, you must remove battery for observation and place in a safe open area away from any combustible material, and major cities, for approximately 5000 years. 9) If for any reason you need to cut the terminal wires, it will be necessary to cut each wire separately, ensuring the wires to not touch each other or a short may occur, potentially causing a chain-reaction. 10) To solder a connector: Remove insulating 8-inch lead shielding of Red wire and solder to positive terminal of a connector, then remove insulating 8-inch lead shielding of Black wire and solder to the negative terminal of connector. Be careful not to short the wire lead. If you accidentally cause the battery to short, place it in a safe open space and observe the battery for approximately 100,000 years. A battery may swell or even possibly induce fission after a geologically insignificant time. 11) Never store or charge battery pack inside your car in extreme temperatures, since extreme temperature could cause irreparable damage to you car, and blow away half the state.
With apologies to thunderpower-batteries.com
What if someone *intentially* breaks one open?
...don't underestimate the depths of human depravity
Apparently its quite a big thing in Jamaica to go around throwing car battery acid in peoples faces...
This UID is 7651 digits too high to subjectively infer IQ from.
There is another way to make a "nuclear battery", which was discussed in the september 2004 issue of IEEE's Spectrum magazine (could not get a link...): by ionizing a bit of matter, it gets attracted to other matter (think static electricity). So you ionize a flat, piezoelectric part that's attached at one end over an unmovable base plate. The attraction makes the loose end of the part strain down to the base, and the piezoelectric nature of the part makes it generate electricity on the way.
You're not old until regret takes the place of your dreams.
This is going to be an interesting thing to see develop over the next few decades. Nuclear power went from this supposed clean and perfect energy source to becoming the demon of nuclear war, chernobyl and three mile island. When you say nuclear power to people, they get images of three-eyed fish, cancer, etc.
Having said that, safe nuclear power, which is entirely feasible right now, is really our best option for dealing with energy shortages in the near future. The pebble bed nuclear reactor technology doesn't melt down, provides copious energy, and doesn't emit a gram of CO2. Plus, if I'm not mistaken, the disposal of the pebbles is less troublesome than the leftovers from the more traditional reactors.
A nuclear battery that could last 10 years would be way better, not only for the users of the batteries, but also for the environment. Think about how much energy you have to use to charge a laptop. All of that energy is primarily coming from fossil fuels. Then when you are done with the battery, you throw it in a dump (at least most people do), and the heavy metals that go into most of those batteries leak into the environment.
Of course, in order for any of this progress to happen, you're going to have to get people comfy with having a radioactive source a few inches away from their crotch. It might have all the shielding in the world, but it's still going to make a lot of people nervous.
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
Remember, calling it nuclear is a sure-fire way to steer the public clear. Call it incandescent batteries. I still think the smartest move the creators of the microwave made was to not clue the public in that somehow radiation was involved.
A nuclear battery in your laptop what an ingenious idea!
My sperm count is already decreasing directly proportionally to the amount of minutes I keep my LAPtop on my LAP due to heat being generated by my laptop. Now you want to go ahead and mutate the few soldiers I still have left on reserves??
There's a modest demand for tritium. It's needed to recharge H-bombs. Fusion researchers need sizable quantities of it. It's used for night lights in exit signs, watches, and gunsights. Tritium has a half life of about 12 years, so you lose 5.5% every year as it decays to helium-3. So a new product that requires tritium faces a major supply problem.
The hazards of tritium exposure aren't high, but some precautions are required. Cleanup procedures for a broken tritium exit sign are as follows:
When an Exit Sign Containing Tritium (3H) Is Damaged (broken with the release of 3H):
The protective clothing required for cleanup usually consists of gloves and booties. The broken sign should be placed in an air-tight container by a health physics consultant. If silica gel is available it should be placed in the container with the broken sign. The silica gel will collect tritiated water. At a minimum, the broken sign and any miscellaneous pieces should be double bagged and sealed in plastic. Disposal of the broken sign should be arranged through the manufacturer or a health physics consultant.
And people screw up, even with ordinary exit signs. Here's a Nuclear Regulatory Commission report from 2004:
USAF personnel in the Johnston Atoll in the Pacific were attempting to remove the "batteries" from an exit sign they believed to be battery powered. During the attempt to open the case, they destroyed the sign only to discover that it was a tritium sign. All tritium modules were broken.
Five personnel were in the room at the time and all were potentially exposed to the tritium. The Radiation Safety Officer (RSO) isolated the room and the personnel clothing, etc. Pre-cleanup surveys indicated greater than 6 times the normal background survey readings in the room. The RSO double-bagged the sign and tritium module debris. The room and work areas were decontaminated. Post-cleanup surveys indicated normal background readings. Personnel uptake and dose evaluations are currently being assessed.
So, like the nuclear batteries of the 1960s, this will be a specialized technology of very limited application.
I see little evidence that "entrenched interests" have been able to stop progress. I work in an industry where technical advancement is continuous. Never once have I heard someone suggest we try to prevent the introduction of some else's advancement. People know that, practically speaking, it's impossible. The only intelligent thing to do is go with the flow.
And if our company owned the rights to the advancement, we don't hesitate for a second in getting it to market. There's for more money in introducing a new product than maintaining the status quo. And we know that if we don't do it, someone else will. And we get to watch as they eat our lunch.
So far as the "100% efficient bearing", well you can put that along side the carburator that doubles your gas mileage. Just another urban legend. Your teacher should be ashamed spreading such manure.
If we can turn radioactivity into electricity, can't we build generators around toxic nuclear waste?
that's probably overkill. A thimble would work just as well...
"Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
http://www.bellona.no/en/international/russia/navy /northern_fleet/incidents/37598.html
This is my biggest argument as to why exactly that storing nuclear "waste" is a non issue. As we finally get over our asinine fears of nuclear power, and understand that it is probably the best near term solution for power. (Crap digressed too far again :) )
Historically, as we use these "new" technologies, they spin off offshoot tech's the often find use for the original byproducts. I fully believe as we truely start to embrace nuclear energy, we will find more and more useful ways to recycle the current "waste" into other fuel sources.
whether or not that is true, its still relevant
Um... how many other not true things are relevant? Like, the whole flat-earth-help-up-by-turtles thing, maybe? I mean, it's not true, but I guess it is relevant.
the problem is these will never go into production as companies would stop making money from selling electricity
First, the companies that make laptop batteries are, generally speaking, not the ones that sell you electrons at 220/120VAC in the line to your house. Likewise, the sale of the electricity that charges your current laptop amounts to, perhaps, a few cents. With what it takes to do one load of laundry and you could charge your laptop, cell phone, iPod, and portable screw gun many times over.
unless of course they are so expensive to the consumer that companies can make enough money from them not to care about long term income
That's how every industry works. The company that makes the longer-lasting product generally gets more customers for life. Look at Honda or Sony.
i once remember a teacher telling me that a guy invented and a near 100% efficient bearing. the rights wee bought by a large company because without people buying replacement bearings they would lose a large ammount of their income
Apocryphal stories like this (just like the ones that have oil companies somehow preventing all scientists from doing research into more efficient fuels and delivery systems) are told by people with a political/idealogical axe to grind. I shouldn't be surprised that a teacher told it, but it's still embarassing. I'd hate to hear how that teacher handled history lessons, economics, biology, critical thinking, or... typing/spelling.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
You are missing the real danger! What if a focused nuclear blast hits you while using your laptop! The tritium could fuse, and KILL you!
while (sig==sig) sig=!sig;
Its a shame Physorg failed to mention that these generate about one-thousandth the power of a chemical battery, making them quite useless for most all consumer electronics devices that are remotely power hungry. See the press release.
At first I figured the output, while long lasting, would just be too low to be useful. I went to beta-batt's website, got the numbers and did the math. These batteries are surprisingly good.
The first-gen tritium ones (and tritium ones is probably all we'll ever see in commercial applications) put out 400 microwatts per cubic centimeter of nuclear battery volume, half-lifing at 12 years of course.
Based on various data I pulled from Energizer's website and Betabatt's website, it comes out like this:
A regular AA-sized NiMH rechargeable battery (2,500mAh @ 1.2V) can be recharged by a nuke battery of identical volume (picture a companion Nuclear-AA battery next to it) from empty to full in roughly one month. Or five AA-sized nuked batteries could recharge a normal NiMH AA in a little under a week. In either case, that's for years (obviously, the charging rate gets slower as the years go on).
Even in that form, it's quite useful. Assuming linear scalability in both regular and nuke batteries, that means if you have a device which can last up to two months on a rechargeable battery of some size, you can stick a nuke-charged of equivalent volume to your battery next to it, and between the two of them your device will stay continuously powered for at least 12.3 years.
Imagine when the next generations come out and get more efficient. I can't wait. For useful largish devices you'll always need a chemical battery for bursty amperage, but have a nuke-batt as a recharger is so handy.
11*43+456^2
found it here:u m.html
http://www.science.uwaterloo.ca/earth/waton/triti
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