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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.'"
Which isn't all that much better with other kinds of batteries.
I, for one, would welcome such a thing in a Laptop or even the cell phone. Or imagine fully electric cars equipped with those things.
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.
ne of the arguments that people on the far right have tried to use to convince the public that Iran is trying to build bombs and not energy is: "Iran has so much oil, why would they care about nuclear energy?"
Wow, that was classic.
A straw man argument is an informal fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent's position.[1] To "attack a straw man" is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the "straw man"), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position
What's interesting about this is that the only sources I can find (in a 2 min google search) for your statement that "people on the far right" are using this argument are various blog posts from people on the far left.
Or Dell or Apple. But speaking of Sony, I wonder if you can put a trojan rootkit in a battery?
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It's really sad that people are still so nuke-phobic. My high school chemistry class in '05 explained why nuclear power really isn't dangerous unless people are catastrophically stupid (Chernobyl.) I got it, even with my primitive teenage brain--I think nuclear power is great. Why doesn't anyone else?
a) people aren't generally that nuke-phobic. It's a strawman concocted by the rabidly pro-nuke slashdot contingent to give themselves another reason to feel superior to the luddite rabble. There are many, many nuclear plants in the US.
b) saying that Chernobyl only happened because of stupidity doesn't make the problem go away. In fact, if Chernobyl failed because of some technical flaw that would actually be easier to fix. Human stupidity isn't. If nuclear plants start proliferating in third world countries, the chance of another Chernobyl becomes likely.
b) Most of the pro-nuclear crowd ignores or minimizes the main problem which is the waste. Nuclear waste is in aggregate, difficult to store safely, and because of the relatively long half-life of many types of nuclear waste this problem will be around for a long time to come. Right now . Reprocessing doesn't eliminate nuclear waste, just recycles a portion of it while still creating the same volume of waste, just in forms and less easy to store safely (not to mention the security issues inherent in creating access to plutonium).
Dude, that joke was lame even for a cop! And it's just as lame as it was seventy five years ago.
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