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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.'"
Haha, yeah. Until Joe Public hears the word "nuclear" and shits a brick.
Just don't let Sony make them.. imagine the fireworks then!
Which isn't all that much better with other kinds of batteries.
It's one thing to clean up after someone drilled a hole in a Lithium battery and had it flame up.
It's another to decontaminate the livingroom, car, Starbucks counter the guy stopped at for his coffee, etc, because he got liquid radioactive semiconductor on his fingers and wiped it on his pants.
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BMO
"Iran has so much oil, why would they care about nuclear energy?"
For the same reason Canada does.
Canada has almost as much oil as Iran and has a large civil nuclear power program. Here in Ontario we get about half our electricity from nuclear power, despite all that oil in Alberta and elsewhere.
So anyone bringing this point up about Iran is just demonstrating their complete ignorance of the world, and disqualifying themselves from being taken seriously regarding American foreign policy.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
'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...
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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.
The Iraq-Iran war was over 20 years ago. They could have rebuilt their refining capabilities by now had they chosen to do so.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Oh I agree. Having a bomb-making capability is certainly a fringe benefit. However in today's energy-starved world, nuclear power makes sense for ANY nation, and ESPECIALLY for an oil exporting nation. Because if they end up consuming their own exports, what ELSE are they going to export? Sand? Dates?
There is a valid argument for a nuclear powered Iran without even considering nuclear weapons. But, as you said, having some would certainly be a bonus.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
They misspoke or were written down wrong. Six orders of magnitude more power density than chemical batteries wouldn't be a battery. It'd be a bomb. Further evidence toward a mistake is that they were just talking about "high energy density".
Why do so many people confuse energy and power?
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