Material Converts Radiation Into Electricity

holy_calamity writes "Nuclear powered space probes like Pioneer have 'nuclear batteries' that (very inefficiently) convert heat from decaying isotopes into electricity. US researchers think a new material that converts radiation directly into power instead could make nuclear batteries 20 times more efficient. (Unfortunately they will likely not be user-replaceable.) The material consists of gold, carbon nanotubes, and lithium hydride."

Comments

There could be a serious benefit

[Samalie]

If this works, imagine being able to generate electricity not just from nuclear power plants themselves, but from the nuclear waste storage facility?

I would think, assuming of course this proved as pratical in pratice vs theory, that this could dramatically reduce our dependance on fossil fuels. Assuming of course you could use the "pure" radiation of the waste into electricity.

Re:There could be a serious benefit

[asuffield]

If this works, imagine being able to generate electricity not just from nuclear power plants themselves, but from the nuclear waste storage facility?

To heck with that, and with batteries - imagine being able to generate electricity from nuclear power plants themselves, rather than using them to heat water, shove it through an inefficient turbine, and then let most of the energy evaporate off in a cooling tower. The steam turbine system is horrendously inefficient. Cutting all of that out of the loop would make nuclear power so hilariously efficient that nobody would care about the waste storage (we wouldn't need much of it anyway). It would also be far safer: a lot of the stuff in a current nuclear plant goes into managing the water moving through the reactor, which is all expensive, fragile equipment that gets mildly contaminated. Replacing all that junk with some electrical cabling would be a major breakthrough.