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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!
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."
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BMO
Just don't let Sony make them.. imagine the fireworks then!
Battery disposal is the first thing that comes to mind (as well as the "idiot throwing one into a fire" that come up above these comments), however if you create batteries that last A LOT longer, doesn't disposal become *less* of a problem? It doesn't go away, but if the batteries last as long as advertised doesn't it mean we need a lot less space to store the waste (but the waste might be a heck of a lot more toxic)?
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.
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.
TFA mentions nothing about the actual power these things can put out.
A power source that lasts forever is suddenly not very useful if it only delivers a few milliwatts. I can see its uses, but it won't be replacing lithium ion batteries in phones and laptops any time soon.
Unicode in Slashdot
Come on now, Iron Man isn't real!
That wasn't nuclear power, that was an Arc Reactor. Which is short for Story Arc Plot Hole Reactor. It runs on the writer's need for an infinite power source.
The enemies of Democracy are
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.
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).
Yeah, this isn't even close to accurate. Nuclear chain-reactions only occur under a very specific set of conditions, and some guy with a sledgehammer doesn't come close to qualifying.
I know you were half joking and not entirely serious, but it's this sort of ignorance that the idiotic population cling to as an argument not to use nuclear power, thereby holding us back for decades in using a plentiful, clean, and efficient source of power.
Of course, the same idiots that hate the pollution produced by coal power plants also hate nuclear. These idiots expect us to be gathering fart power across the globe and funneling it into a wind turbine to produce CLEAN ENERGY.
Oh wait, farts = methane = greenhouse gas. Can't use that then. Try harder next time, you stupid scientists! Meet my impossible demands whilst I rant and rave incoherently with the liberal arts degree I dropped out of because it was too hard!
'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 mean like the small chip of Americium 231 in smoke detectors?
Or the Thorium in Coleman lantern mantels?
Or Radium/ Tritium in watch dials?
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
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...
Actually, the ultimate source of farts is atmospheric CO2 sequestered by the chlorophyll in green vegetation. It's only the evil fossil fuels that add massive quantities of CO2 to the atmosphere.
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
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?
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
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...
...powering the pump for the artificial hearth...
What, you mean like one of these?
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
It is not an RTG. RTG devices run pretty hot - thermal, you get it.
What these devices do is output an incredibly small amount of electricity from the actual radioactive decay of materials. Incredibly small. Microwatts.
They are used in pacemakers and the like because of extremely low power requirements - less than a watch - and the need for a stable power source that will last years and years.
It might be possible to stack up 100 of these to power a single LED. That is the level of output from these devices. And they aren't cheap.
One correction: Ahmadinejad is not a theocratic dictator. In fact he's neither theocratic nor a dictator. He's a civil servant and a pandering politician with very little power. The real power lies with the revolutionary guard and the Supreme Leader. He's a theocratic dictator.
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.
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Your facts about the reactors are completely wrong here.
First off, you can use either light or heavy water reactor to make plutonium, it makes little difference except that a short cycle (typical but not necessary of heavy water reactors) makes better plutonium.
Enrichment is necessary for light water but not heavy water, although it can be economically beneficial for a heavy water reactor.
Heavy water reactors are no bigger, except that the capital costs makes large ones more viable.
The biggest reactors in the world are light water.
Also, the first reactors did not use heavy water, they were graphite moderated.