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Penny-Sized Nuclear Batteries Developed
pickens writes "Nuclear batteries that produce energy from the decay of radioisotopes are an attractive proposition for many applications because the isotopes that power them can provide a useful amount of current for hundreds of years at power densities a million times as high as standard batteries. Nuclear batteries have been used for military and aerospace applications for years, their large size has limited their general usage. But now a research team at the University of Missouri has developed a nuclear battery the size of a penny that could be used to power micro- and nano-electromechanical systems. The researchers' innovation is not only in the battery's size, but also that the batteries use a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor. 'The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,' says Jae Wan Kwon. 'By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.' The batteries are safe under normal operating conditions. 'People hear the word "nuclear" and think of something very dangerous,' says Kwon. 'However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites, and underwater systems.'"
so this is what Iran has been up to... now it all makes sense.
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
So lets scale these up and replace the power pakcs on cars!
I would love to be able to drive for a few hundred years between recharges!
but I would be equally impressed by a penny that was the size of a nuclear power plant.
Dewey, you fool! Your decimal system has played right into my hands!
The announcement says that these nuclear batteries have power densities a million times larger than standard batteries. That can't possibly be right unless it meant energy density instead.
Cool stuff even so!
Everything is safe under "normal conditions"
The problem is that normal people are fucking stupid. Imagine the shitstorm when someone disassembles one of these to "see what's inside."
--
BMO
With battery disposal?
Sure, the "nuclear" bit of a nuclear battery may be have enormous power potential, but batteries will wear out much sooner due to corrosion and other practical issues.
Disposing ordinary batteries in a safe and environmentaly friendly manner is already considered to be a big pain in the ass. Now imagine that instead of corroding, toxic, acid-leaking batteries we have to deal with corroding, radioactive, nuclear-fuel-leaking batteries.
Come on now, Iron Man isn't real!
Just don't let Sony make them.. imagine the fireworks then!
Health and safety would have a field day with this.
- Dan
'nough said.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
One of the things that always stuck out at me was the mini nuclear batteries in the Foundation series of books. I had just assumed such things were impossible and were just and artifact of the time the books were written in. Apparently my imagination just wasn't flexible enough.
Good, and now let me actually have a cellular phone that can actually be powered for 100s of years. Because I'm tired of these news articles that claim some new more powerful battery is invented. Batteries are NOT more powerful until I see a cellular phone that can run for months. Cellular phones today do NOT run any longer than 15 years ago so every of the so MANY articles about better batteries I've seen are all just lies. Plain damn LIES.
"The batteries are safe under normal operating conditions."
Ergo, instant nuclear bomb; just add sledge hammer. ;)
I like to purchase one to my cellphone, one a little bigger to my notebook and... They have one big enought to power a Radeon 4870X2?
Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
it just keeps going and going and going and going and ............
Just curious. I had a quick look at the University website but couldn't find anything. This article gives a bit more info on it, http://engineering.missouri.edu/news/stories/2009/nuclear-battery-outstanding-at-conference/index.php.
Welcome our nuclear battery operated robot overlords!
There are a number of niche applications where this could be incredibly useful. As others have said, pacemakers and other implanted or critical medical devices (I'm thinking defibrillators), but also emergency lighting and well, pretty much anything that has a larger, traditional battery pack that has to be trickle charged.
A fairly obvious application would be long-life smoke detectors, since they already contain radioactive materials. You could stick one up on a vaulted ceiling and forget about it for 10 years...
http://marsandmore.com - Posters of space, spacecraft, and astronomy.
Screw that. I can fit a car inside my house, so why not a couple stacks of these that take up 2 regrigerator spaces in the basement? I don't care if they're dime sized, for home use they could be car battery sized.
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
i hope dell doesn't get their hands on this...
They already glow with the batteries they have now! But at least that is a pink/red glow, I'm pretty sure an iPod glowing green would be a Bad Thing (tm).
That said, having the black/white iPod commercials change to black/green would be interesting. Kind of bring back the black/green monochrome monitor nostalga.
Penny-sized nuclear batteries for Penis-sized nuclear submarines.
Ok, maybe I'm jumping the gun on this one, but in a recent /. article about phones not having enough battery life, I sort of tongue-in-cheek proposed atomic batteries for powering the phones. Maybe I'm not so far off the mark?
I'm not sure though - these batteries might not provide sufficiently high wattage to power the phones? Still, maybe you could have self-recharging cell phones? Couple one or two of these small atomic batteries with something more conventional, like Li-ions, (or, in the future, perhaps high-temperature superconductive storage rings) and you'd not have to worry about plugging your phone in at night. Maybe while one of these batteries couldn't provide enough power, if you created arrays of 6 or 8 of them, all packaged into the phone housing, maybe they could?
I guess now we know how Gordon Freeman's HEV suit recharges the flashlight.
.... or are you just happy to see me?
[obligatory... i'm sorry]
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
How long until someone tries it? I give it 3 days from public release.
It would be great to replace the power packs of everything with them, but they are currently rated in nanoamps of output and microvolts of potential. Scaling them up (and making them cost less than $1 million for a AA cell) is the challenge and its a big one that will take a lot of work.
Shielding isn't a big problem incidentally.From other articles one of the popular nuclear sources is tritium which is used on gunsights and stairwell markings. Half life is pretty short and shielding level required is skin (i.e. don't eat it or breath it).
Does this mean I can get the green shine underneath my car without streetlights? Sweet!
'However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites, and underwater systems.'"
If this quote even reaches only one anti-nuclear nutjob and opens their eyes, just a little, to the benefits that nuclear energy can provide when handled safely and appropriately, then the world will be a slightly better place. This message needs to get spread around and stated by every single physicist, engineer, mathematician, and wrench monkey that works in any field associated with nuclear energy. It needs to be stated in every single press conference, peer-reviewed journal, and twitter feed by anyone talking about the subject that has any authority. Simply by throwing this short little blip into his discussion, Jae Wan Kwon has already earned more respect in my eyes than Michio Kaku...
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
You know, this sounds distinctly like the sort of power sources that were ubiquitous in a lot of Asimov's sci-fi, e.g., the foundation series. When I was reading that, I noted that he clearly thought that shortly everything in society would run on nuclear power. In one book, they even talked about the decay of a society until, gasp!, they went back to primitive fossil fuels. I figure that irrational fear of nuclear power and radiation is one reason why this has not come to pass, but maybe now it will.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
The US has tons of the stuff that we can tap as an alternative energy source. It gets produced as a byproduct of nuclear power generation, mixed in with the spent fuel.
Which is just sitting there.
Decaying.
And we may not reprocess it because of a directive by former President Jimmy Carter, who was afraid of "nucular proliferation" (yes, he pronounced it that way too).
Can somebody, ANYBODY, hit our Nobel Prize winning President upside the head and get him to void that EO? Please?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
The US has no business with Iran except for their oil.
The policeman role for the US is over.
Sanctions etc are an act of war, especially when the IAEA did not find anything wrong.
Even drawing the subject of Iran into something like this shows the real stance of the americanized population.
I've always wanted to be a ghost buster.
You can just add an 'l' and a 'w' and claim that was what you were saying all along.
FRA: STFU GTFO
now we can have nuclear handguns
:/
and forcefield generators the size of walnuts!
asimov predicted this to happen, but a couple billions years ahead of time
I'll be able to find my hearing aid at night and I'll never have to change the battery for the rest of my life!
Never shake hands with a man you meet in a fertility clinic.
Sulfur-35 has a half life of only 88 days so this is NOT a 100 year battery. At least not yet.
What's the catch? Too expensive? Disastrous problems if handled incorrectly? Not enough materials available? Violates a patent?
Something that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes is called a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) whereas a battery is an array of electrochemical cells for electricity storage.
3 Mile Island and more recently Chernobyl have our society so afraid of nuclear power, the dreaded China syndrome, that regardless of how safe it becomes we will refuse to adopt it.
RTG technology is the safest way to produce energy and the greenest energy known to man. It takes something that would otherwise be dangerous and turns it into something productive. NASA uses this technology to power space probes, Voyager-1 is still being powered by one today, and will continue to do so until the year 2025. Plutonium 238 is the best fuel for a RTG, because of its long half-life and the fact that it cannot (yes CANNOT) sustain a chain reaction is somehow any of it started to fuse.
I looked into this technology when I built a mini robotic submarine in graduate school. But, that's when I found out two things: 1) I would have to submit to an anal probe before the Nuclear Regulatory Commiseration (NRC) would denied me the right to posses any more radioactive material than can be found in about 3 smoke detectors and 2) The room, labeled radioactive storage, in the Science building, where I attended University, with the big yellow radioactive sign is there to impress benefactors and since it lacks a smoke detector contains no radioactive material (LOL).
Improvements in power generation from nuclear fuel has become pretty safe over the last few years. Pebble bed reactor technology can theoretically remain stable indefinitely even without external cooling, though I don't think that has been put to the test. But, to be a viable energy solution a country really needs to adopt this method on mass because each reactor can only power a portion of a city so to be a major benefit a country would have one of these in everyone's backyard. RTG technology is even safer. It generates energy from the heat that occurs from the natural decay of a nuclear fuel.
If I could get my hands on say an ounce of Pu 238 I could build a RTG that would power my home, all my vehicles, and enable me to quit my job and live of the check my local electricity provider would have to pay me for the excess power I would generate. It would generate full power for ~ 87 years and not only wold I be using the greenest power available I would be providing a community service of disposing of a radioactive material.
But, echelon might flag me for even writing this post (looks around nervously)... The irrational fear of a China Syndrome scenario combined with the recent dose of terrorism (fear of dirty bombs) would never allow me to build one, even if I was a nuclear scientist, which I am not.
So, make an inventory of the smoke detectors you own. If the total is above 3 then you are in possession of enough nuclear material that would require you to get a license from the NRC. If you don't have a license from the NRC and own more than 3 smoke detectors you are likely in possession of an illegal amount of barium and could be flagged as an enemy combative and thanks to George W. Bush enemy combative have no right to any legal representation and can be summarily executed or detained for an indefinite amount of time without even informing anyone that they took you into custody.
Heck, I don't need smoke detectors that much!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
The benefits of this invention are amazing. So, how does one deal with Stupid when they get a little curious? I would dearly love to have one of these power my Rover Disco'. But because of Stupid, I have to wait for a "safer" alternative...
When can I get the rechargeable kind?
//TODO: create a signature
I think this is another sign that scientists play too much Fallout.
...and who could forget everyone's favorite weapon, Fat Man.
Seriously, Radaway was discovered/invented a few months ago.
Now we have the Fission Battery.
Frink: Nice try floyd, but you were designed for scrubbing, and scrubbing is what you shall do.
If the market can find a way to convince people to put nuclear batteries into things like exploding French iPhones and Tickle Me Elmo dolls, as well as making them readily available to your average teenage boy, then sure, I think it's a great idea.
Nuclear materials usually are not very dangerous for their nuclear properties. For most nuclear materials your skin is all the protection you need. You can get irradiated if you ingest it, which is how Nuclear medicines intnetionally work. But in many cases nuclear materials like Plutonium are more toxic as chemicals then they are dangerous as radioactive materials. You would not intentionally eat battery acid either, and evidently people don't do it accidentally very often either. The death rate from plutonium ingestion would presumably be about the same as the death rate from people ingesting car batteries.
The upside of nuclear materials is that unlike trace chemical contamination, which is hard to find and hard to clean up (e.g. think ancient leaking service station gas tanks contaminating well water), nuclear contamination is easy to find, easy to trace and easy to know when you have cleaned it all up.
would a single hundred year nuclear battery be less harmful to the enviroment or humans than a hundred years of mercury cadmium telluride hearing aid batteries and all the waste products to mine, produce and transport them?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers
Considering my pacemaker battery needs replacing every 5 years (and I'm just 41) by cutting into my shoulder, I'd like very much to know more.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
Of course this will lead to a snuke in the snizz
Before somebody says "OMFG pocket Chernobyl WTF!":
1. This does not work like nuclear plants (fission), it is really a mini-RTG (radioisotope thermoelectric generator).
2. Since this is intended for very small low power devices that need to run continuously, the amount of radioactive material will likely be comparable to that in glow in the dark toys and stickers, or watches with phosphorescent hands.
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
So when you go on eBay and buy a (nuclear) cell phone battery that says it is shipping from Taiwan, and it blows up in your back pocket, you get to take out the city along with your ass?
Do they mean the British Penny, or the American Lincoln 1-Cent Piece?
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Apparently I was wrong, the stuff used in watch hands is usually tritium or promethium, and toys and stickers don't contain radioisotopes
Those who would give up liberty to obtain working drivers, deserve neither liberty nor working drivers.
And use the waste heat to warm up your house.....
Something that produces energy from the decay of radioisotopes is called a Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) whereas a battery is an array of electrochemical cells for electricity storage.
You didn't read the article.
The batteries use Sulfur-35 which is a beta emitter. Aka, electrons. They do not use thermocouples at all.
Read about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaics
Exactly. I already did the math and I only need 50lbs of PU-238 to power my home. A meesly 100lbs and I'm good for life! (err half-life)
"I can't give you a brain, so I'll give you a diploma" - The Great Oz (blatently stolen sig)
Refineries ... Actually that was exactly Ahmadinejad's main election promise way back ... to rebuild the refineries. He tried. He tried really hard, really really really hard, and failed. (ever notice how strange it is that the dictator's "main puppet" of a theological state holds a phd in civil engineering and has taught at the best university of the country ? His sons, of this theocratic dictator, are on the way to degrees in civil engineering, again one would assume they'd see more future in religious studies, but clearly daddy theocratic dictator doesn't see much future in all that allah babbling ...). That said, if you read stories of his actions as mayor of Teheran, one thing cannot be denied : this is a serious thick-headed and stupid idiot. His actions during the "revolution" justify adding "extremely dangerous" to the "lunatic" description of his character (said "revolution" started out as a socialist/communist revolution, ended with the likes of ahmadinejad killing tens of thousands of people until the current Iranian state came into existence). Up to this day there is a big non-functional refinery standing on the outskirts of Teheran, built by Ahmadinejad. It doesn't work but it has what roughly translates to "yes we can" on the front gate. It is considered something between a failure and a sick joke by Iranians.
But the point I wanted to make, about Iran's intentions. Or more specifically, it's islamic theocratic dictator-nutcase's intentions :
There are different types of nuclear plants. You have lightwater plants and heavy water plants. (light water and heavy water denoting the isotopes of hydrogen in said water).
Light water plants are cheaper, easier to build and more energy efficient. They can be made in all sorts of power output levels (meaning they're capable of "low" output too). They can be built the size of a car up to the size of a small town. Their waste is far less toxic than the alternatives. Furthermore, they have far easier fuel requirements. They cannot, however, be used to build a bomb. They do not produce plutonium. They do not produce pollonium. They do not ... Some fuel (found in Iran) does not even need to be enriched to be used in these reactors. All modern western reactors are of this type because of the obvious advantages (only exceptions being 1 medical research reactor, which are slowly becoming obsolete)
Heavy water reactors, the first type designed, are very, very big reactors (the power device itself is very small, but you need big structures surrounding them to absorb the massive power they produce, so you cannot have small plants). They produce power in the hundreds of megawatts at least. They produce heavy elements and highly radioactive isotopes as waste product. They are very picky in the fuel they use, and will only tolerate relatively highly enriched uranium.
Guess which type of reactor Iran is building ? (hint : they wouldn't need a heavy water plant for one of these types)
Also : to enrich fuel for even a heavy water reactor they'd need a relatively small enrichment facility, having a cascade of at most a few dozen centrifuges. They did not do this, instead they've built a cascade of over 6000 centrifuges (meaning they're connected centrifuge 1 -> 2 -> 3 -> 4 -> ...). You do not need a cascade like this for power requirements, in fact it's a huge waste of power (these things need more energy per piece than Al Gore's house and boats combined).
Incidentally that cascade is precisely the critical part necessary for bomb construction (and totally useless and hopelessly inefficient for any other purpose).
Of course these facts are total coincidence and if you feel more secure ignoring this, don't let me stand in your way ...
The actual paper is "Radioisotope microbattery based on liquid semiconductor," by T. Wacharasindhu, J. W. Kwon, D. E. Meier, and J. D. Robertson in "Applied Physics Letters" (Appl. Phys. Lett. 95, 014103 (2009)). DOI: 10.1063/1.3160542
From the conclusion of the article:
Once this is working in another country, then it is game over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I wondered how Cold War spy devices recorded underwater cable traffic for six months without servicing. I now realize they were nuclear powered (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells#History).
I wonder if the environmental impact of having to replace my MP3 player's AAA battery once every 10 years with a nuclear battery is better than having to replace it every week or every three days?
I wonder if a large pack of these batteries could be used to run a Chevy volt for 10 years constantly???
In this case since the batteries are always discharging you could plug you electric car INTO the grid and dump power INTO the grid that other electric cars would use to charge their re-chargeable batteries. So in a way by buying a car like this would be great as you would get the bonus of having nearly free electricity!!!
Sounds like what they had on the Batman TV series in the 60's. Nuclear Batteries to full power!!!
I guess it also depends on the "Radioactivity" of the material used, if it is only Alpha / Beta Decay it would be almost perfectly safe. If it was Gamma / Neutron then is sucks to be in a car wreck. Also the chemical properties of the isotopes being used would be of concern if they were toxic by chemical nature....
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
If I could get my hands on say an ounce of Pu 238 I could build a RTG that would power my home, all my vehicles, and enable me to quit my job and live of the check my local electricity provider would have to pay me for the excess power I would generate. It would generate full power for ~ 87 years and not only wold I be using the greenest power available I would be providing a community service of disposing of a radioactive material.
One ounce of Pu-238 generates around 16 watts of thermal power. If you can power your home, all your vehicles, and so forth off less than that -- remember, typical RTG efficiencies would yield about 1 watt of electricity, and you promised to sell excess power back to the grid -- you need to sign off Slashdot right now and go start clearing some shelf space for your Nobels. First, though, you should put out a one-square-foot black panel. This will absorb an average of 16 watts of continuous thermal power from sunlight, letting you bootstrap your world-changing energy-efficient technologies while you wait for that nuclear permit.
Awesome, now we can have the miniaturized nucleics of The Foundation! And we can sell them to backwater countries and manipulate them with our fake techno-religion!
No, seriously, reliable nuclear batteries could be less expensive than electrical infrastructure in many countries. But they need to be cheap, or else people will have a whole new excuse to fight wars.
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
That thing was 4x bigger than that penny...50 cent peice maybe.
These have high energy density (watt-hours over the life of the device per kg), but extremely low power density (watts per kg). They could be useful for apps where you don't ever want to change a battery, but they're useless for anything but the lowest-power apps. They won't run your cell phone, or your car, or even your iPod.
They really need to declassify Beta Decay Isotoped lighter than Iron as Dangerous or terrorist materials. Beta Decay is pretty damned harmless and you cannot use it to 'Breed" other nuclear materials like you can with Neutron/Gamma/ or even alpha decay sources. Also if the decay substance is an element lighter than iron you cannot get any usable energy out of it if it Fissions. You can only get energy out of it by having the neutrons decay into Protons and eject a electron. (electricity which can be used)
Electrons will never get inside the core of another atom to change the atomic structure and therefor are not useful at all when it comes to making inert elements radioactive.
Maybe we could make large Nuclear waste processing plants that use heavy volatile elements that gamma or neutron decay to breed large amounts of light elements that beta decay, then ship the material to regional "power plants" that are nothing more than large Light element Nuclear RTG/Beta batteries.
The greenie weenies would never stand to let such a project be built because they are weenies.
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
Yo dawg, I heard you like, ah nevermind....
put the what in the where?
We can now have permanently glowing, warm toilet seats. No more *GASP* from the cold, no more splash from not seeing the 'upright, locked position' in the dark. I had considered plutonium & phosphor laced Lexan, but this would be easier.
You'll read a LOT of people asking (when the US were complaining about Iran's nuclear facilities and threatening them) "why does Iran need it?"
BBC Have Your Say has plenty of examples: look at the "reader recommended" sorting of the comments and you'll see how popular that query is.
Radioisotope microbattery based on liquid semiconductor
Wacharasindhu, T. Kwon, J. W. Meier, D. E. Robertson, J. D
A liquid semiconductor-based radioisotope micropower source has been pioneerly developed. The semiconductor property of selenium was utilized along with a 166 MBq radioactive source of 35S as elemental sulfur. Using a liquid semiconductor-based Schottky diode, electrical power was distinctively generated from the radioactive source. Energetic beta radiations in the liquid semiconductor can produce numerous electron hole pairs and create a potential drop. The measured power from the microbattery is 16.2 nW with an open-circuit voltage of 899 mV and a short-circuit of 107.4 nA.
I'm sure that in 1985 plutonium is available in every corner drugstore, but in 1955 it's a little hard to come by.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
I recall having read that RTGs were used extensively in remote Siberian locations during the Soviet era. Apparently, leaking from these RTGs, and the possibility of theft to make a dirty bomb was a concern, and may still be. The Soviet records may have been poor or lost during the transition.
Don't get me wrong. I think these devices can be made very safe; but how do you "revolution proof" any kind of reactor?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What's the theoretical cost of say a AAA for my remote?
Big Energy, "One-vigintillion Dollars!"
Us, "Wha--What?"
Big Energy, "We chose this price point due to it sounding cool and do you know how much it cost to vacation on Saturn? Pay up. You're use to it"
It's called the Ford Exorbitant
Atomic Batteries to power!
Turbines to speed!
http://www.carlustblog.com/2009/05/the-batmobile-1966.html
GP was correct, and you appear to have a reading retention problem since the points you raise were addressed. Did he not say that internalizing radio active materials was bad, citing the exact same thing you did: nuclear medicine? Are you disputing that Plutonium is more dangerous as a toxin than a radioactive material? it may not be a strong toxin (simmilar to caffeine which you can tolerate at less than a gram) but it's also not a strong radioactive material. A gram of Plutonium would make you more sick from it's chemical toxicity than it's radioactivity.
So what point were you trying to make?
The first thing I thought of was the civilization in Asimov's Foundation series that took over control of neighboring economies by selling gadgets powered by little nuclear power sources.
Web 2.0 == Giant Blogspam Circle Jerk
Call me paranoid, but while I'd likely be OK with having nuclear batteries in more common items (my laptop, maybe my car), having a nuclear power cell implanted inside my chest doesn't sound like such a great idea...
Because it's like water, it gets used in water (which your body uses a lot of).
Because it's too heavy, the water is the wrong shape and forms the wrong shape chemicals (which your body needs in the right shape to do the things it needs with it)
Because it's radioactive, you have it sitting there doing important stuff then BOOM (OK, a very quiet boom on the scale of a human, but a honking big one on the scale of molecules) you don't have water any more.
If the tritium battery is surrounded with something hydrophylic so that the escaped T2O doesn't get taken up biologically until it's had a time to turn into H H O then it's safe.
Check up the health and safety requirements at the JET laboratory when working on tritium fusion.
Some materials are eliminated from the body quickly whereas others stay around. Something that gets stored in your bones might not be harmful at all if it were not radioactive, but because it stays put, being radioactive it does damage over a long period of time. Materials used in nuclear medicine are designed to be eliminated quickly so although they are radioactive they are gone in short order. A speck of plutonium just stays whereever it is in the body and irradiates the surrounding tissue. That's why it's more dangerous than say water enriched with tritium. Tritium water in the body gets diluted with every soda you drink.
...
That's the real issue with these things. When they become disposable, then people will dispose of them and there will be radioisotopes everywhere. The chemical should be a water soluable one that is not accumulated in the body.
...
The Voyager missions were nuclear powered. We are still in communication with these probes, and they are twice as far from the sun as Pluto is! They each have nuclear batteries onboard, and are an example of engineering at its absolute best.
My question is, if we were to launch those probes today, and heavily publicize them, would the public stand for launching nuclear material into space? Or would there be so much irrational fear about "What if they come crashing down on earth and BLOW UP NEW YORK!! ZOMG!!"? I honestly don't know the answer, but I expect that nowadays there would be a much larger crowd shouting about it than there was in the 70s.
Nuclear car batteries would be a godsend if you ask me, and I think almost everyone would agree if they merely didn't know it was nuclear. Most people already have nuclear/radioactive devices in their homes and don't know it. (Smoke alarms). Others depend on the function of nuclear batteries for their lives (pacemakers, etc). But I question whether people would accept it if it were widely publicized.
Not a troll. Genuinely curious what people think. My experiences with people is that they are terrified of the words "nuclear" or "radioactive" and have extremely irrational fears associated with them.
The penny-sized nuclear battery means that pocket watches won't have to change batteries.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Calcium? That seems likely to end up in bones. Also fluorine. Phosphorus. No. Bad idea.
...
Put a $2 deposit on them and you'll have most of them returned. The rest will be picked up by the same meth-heads who go through the garbage cans for pop bottles.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I don't necessarily agree that these types of batteries would ever really enter the "readily disposable" mentality. People will/should know that the battery will last several lifetimes. I would assume that the throw away mentality will still be applied to the device itself, but they'll salvage the battery to use in something else.
A styrofoam cup will last as long as those batteries but people throw those away.
...
http://www.orau.org/PTP/collection/Miscellaneous/pacemaker.htm
Dropping my iPhone would carry a WHOLE NEW PROBLEM, one much greater than "oh no! did i scratch my screen?", "does it still work?", "why do i still not have a rubber case and screen protector for it?"
Instead it's, "A FREAKING NUCLEAR MELTDOWN??? AHHHHHH Are you kidding me!!?"
Check out my new app in Apple's App Store:
iNuclearExplosion
Or because you have "transport" and "nuclear" in a regular schedule there.
Could be...
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
The actual article is here.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
Ahh, more classic Slashdot snark stupidity. Make a pseudo-rational claim and then insult the opposition by calling them "weenies".
It's not that your idea is all bad, but in the real world corporate America will gladly poison and kill thousands to millions for profit. For a current example consider coal ash/fly ash http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fly_ash. The coal lobby has bought enough legislation to keep this stuff completely unregulated. Actually it is rather toxic.
It has radioactivity: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=coal-ash-is-more-radioactive-than-nuclear-waste which has been shown to contaminate areas near coal fired power plants. It also has toxic heavy metals:
(from the above linked Wikipedia article).
There is a vast amount of this dangerous material in unstable storage and it has already caused big problems. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/10/01/60minutes/main5356202.shtml and http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/01/science/earth/01ash.html.
So, since you think that anyone who is worried about environmental issues is a "weenie", I propose that you put your money (or in this case your health) on the line. Get some coal ash, a 3 or 4 cubic feet and spread it around where you live. Make sure it gets in your food and in your lungs. The coal industry says that you have nothing to fear, and you can surly trust them with your life. if you choose not to do this then I suggest that you shut the fuck up
Maybe next time I should do more double checking my figures and less time writing my posts.... Sorry for my bad math!
My field is Computer Science (applied mathematics) but my strongest math area is base number systems...
I'm not going to be able to retire with my 1 ounce of Pu238 after all :(
But, I still think RTGs have many real world applications. My minisub could be mapping the worlds ocean's right now... rather than sitting in a Physics professors office if it was powered by a RTG.
Also, I never meant to imply that an average Joe should be allowed to build one, or pick one up at his local Wal-mart. But, I do think that the NRC should be more open minded, and not reinforce the public's unrealistic fears about nuclear power, and be much less restrictive about who they license.
A modern reactor is much simpler to run and magnitudes safer than their predecessors. The big argument against nuclear energy is waste disposal. I would think much of what a fission reactor considers waste could still power a RTG application for quite some time.
The dirty bomb fear is mute IMHO. If I was crazy enough to want to create a dirty bomb, I'M NOT, I could get the material, and I'm not a well funded terrorist. I recall reading about some teenager that took barium (from broken smoke alarms) and used a lead cube to make an ion gun, which held the collected barium, that he aimed at a block of aluminum. This produced enough radioactive material that when the NRC swooped in he had a small breeder reactor up and running! I'm sure they over reacted even though this was obviously reckless behavior, insane might be a better word, when they quarantined the entire town.
After taking a deeper look at the article these are more battery than RTG but I don't understand the applications they suggested. I don't want to replace my pacemaker battery with that kind of half life! But I doubt an RTG could be scaled down to fit in the human body either, LOL!
So, thanks for keeping me on my toes... and the interesting conversation!
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
So I guess the new line of Energizers really will keep going and going and going!
...to over 9000!
As a writer, I think of being able to use a laptop anywhere, anytime without ever having to worry about losing my work. but my neighbour across the street is a cardiologist. Imagine how much safer his patients would feel with batteries that last. (And I don't really care if it's a battery or an RTG - a rose is a rose by any name.) Yes, I find the idea of anyone having a nuclear power pack inside or on their body odd. Not scary, just odd. And if Stupid can get him/her self killed by toying with it - then obviously it isn't ready for the consumer market. Then again, maybe weeding out a few of the "Stupids" isn't such a bad idea. Let's start with everyone who thinks they're smart enough to label someone else. ;-)
Actually, the fundamental flaw was the comrade-tards who decided to turn off all the safety systems and use one reactor to power the other's pumps, in an experiment. They tried it before, but the safety systems shut everything down. I think they were running one reactor at about 6%, which apparently is very dangerous. When they disabled their safety systems, then yes, the graphite-tipped control rods combusted with the steam bubble that built up, then they melted and went boom. If they had built a reactor with a positive reactivity coefficient (or was that negative?) that meant reaction speeds went down as heat went up, such as American/French/Canadian designs do, it wouldn't have gone critical. If they had bothered to build what's called a sarcophagus (concrete bunker) around the reactor, then the very small explosion would have not produced a vent of radioactive material. If they had bothered to build an energy-producing reactor, instead of a breeder reactor (Chernobyl was not a power plant, it was a weapons factory), then really, none of this would have been possible. Still, I blame the comrade-tards, and their hatred for the West. This is why Socialism is so bad. It breeds hatred for capitalism and free will, which includes freedom of religion. Please, American Democrats, think about this when you decide whether or not to re-elect a Marxist for a president. Hear the Warning from Soviet Russia! Or, if you prefer, Read it.
1. order thousands / millions of "Penny-Sized Nuclear Batteries"
2. take nuclear fuel out
3. google "how to make atom bomb"
4. refer any of those results
5. make an atom bomb
6. deploy
7. profit / disaster ?
The chemical should be a water soluable one that is not accumulated in the body.
Ah, but then you worry about ground water contamination. If it's non-soluble, it's more likely to pass through the digestive system without being absorbed, and the durability of the packaging should ensure that even if it's content could be digested it wouldn't unless somehow they broke the battery's casing open and then ate it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Dammit, "its". I must be losing it.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
You are right of course. I was assuming that all groundwater eventually led to the sea but that is not true. Some of it no doubt just sits there . Also concentration up the food chain would have to be considered. But the groundwater bit really makes this just too nasty. Radioactive shiznit absolutely needs to be disposed of in abandoned salt mines where there are no earthquakes. This isn't something your average shmoe can be trusted to do. One of these batteries improperly disposed of and no big deal. Millions in landfills and in cheap broken toys however would be a problem. People don't buy many smoke detectors. They buy many more mp3 players, calculators, watches, flashlights etc. I mean if this could power a few LEDs you'd have a flashlight that would never have its batteries run out and also never need a lightbulb - everyone would want one. Of course there would be zillions made and lost and thrown out because they got wet and the wires inside corroded away.
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Yes; well, I'm sure the endeavor is to use such low-grade radioactive materials that even substantial amounts in ordinary landfills would have a minor negative impact overall. (Ideally.)
That was basically the whole intent of this penny-sized battery (well, that and the size)... supposedly the stuff is so tame that your skin is adequate protection against the radiation even without the battery casing. Their problem is it doesn't deliver much power that way... (hence the push toward also making them very small, so they can hopefully be packaged in units that deliver substantial amounts of power. Ever dissected a 9-volt? They contain six 1.5-volt cells in series.)
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Your skin is adequate protection against plutonium. If you had a lump of Pu, with no Pu dust on it, then you could safely hold it in your hand. However it is NOT tame. If you inhale a tiny speck of Pu dust, it sits in your lungs and gives your a 100% chance of lung cancer. Imagine isotopes of strontium ( acts like calcium in the body and is stored forever in your bones ) or who the heck knows what else.
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If you inhale a tiny speck of Pu dust, it sits in your lungs and gives your a 100% chance of lung cancer.
Ah, that's perhaps a slight exaggeration, but I'll allow the hyperbole for the sake of your argument. Yeah, the idea is to keep it in a form that won't be inhaled and won't be stored long-term in the body if it does somehow get into you. As I said, the people designing these things are not oblivious to any of this.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
I want one for my MP3 player!
The "H-Word" has died for me.