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Russian Scientists Upgrade Nuclear Battery Design To Increase Power Output (sciencealert.com)
schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert: A team of Russian researchers have put a new spin on technology that uses the beta decay of a radioactive element to create differences in voltage. The devices are made of stacks of isotope of nickel-63 sandwiched between a pair of special semiconducting diodes called a Schottky barrier. This barrier keeps a current headed one way, a feature often used to turn alternating currents into direct ones. Finding that the optimal thickness of each layer was just 2 micrometers, the researchers were able to maximize the voltage produced by every gram of isotope.
Nickel-63 has a half-life of just over 100 years, which in an optimized system like this adds up to 3,300 milliwatt-hours of energy per gram: ten times the specific energy of your typical electrochemical cell. It's a significant step up from previous nickel-63 betavoltaic devices, and while it isn't quite enough to power your smart phone, it does bring it into a realm of being useful for a wide variety of tasks.
Nickel-63 has a half-life of just over 100 years, which in an optimized system like this adds up to 3,300 milliwatt-hours of energy per gram: ten times the specific energy of your typical electrochemical cell. It's a significant step up from previous nickel-63 betavoltaic devices, and while it isn't quite enough to power your smart phone, it does bring it into a realm of being useful for a wide variety of tasks.
I'd rather have a nuclear battery in a pacemaker that lasts a lifetime than having to deal with surgery every 10 years to replace a conventional one, risking infection and other complications.
Isn't beta-decay a process that produces exponentially less energy over time? Like, after 100 years, it'll still produce half the voltage (or amperage) out. After 200, 25%. But after 25 years it'll only produce 70.7% of the output, which may not be enough. Or it could be more than enough at 200 years.
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That could have been the case if it used NiFe batteries. Ironically, that is another technology invented by a European and rebranded with Thomas Edison's name. Only NiFe batteries are secondary cells, not primary and definitely not nuclear. With Nikola Tesla's history with Edison it would have been too ironic... may as well get the backing of J.P. Morgan-Chase for a little icing on the cake and put one of those Marconi radio receivers in it and Apple's wireless charging system.
Perhaps when Elon Musk bases the flying car off of Tesla's vertical takeoff and landing heliplane, we can see more or his inventions that no-one knows about. Strange that for his last 20 years no patents appear in the public records.
Nickel-63 is an artificial isotope, which means it has to be made; But, it only decays by beta decay, so a piece of foil (or a deposited schottky barrier) will prevent that from escaping.
Pu RTG's put out everything from alphas to heavy fission gammas and neutrons, so this is a gogolplex better from any radioactivity standpoint.
I hope this takes off; it all depends on what it costs to make a gram. A 3300mAh lithium battery is about $1 in quantity, but has a very limited lifetime.
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But after 25 years it'll only produce 70.7% of the output
The fraction of remaining power = exp(-t * ln(2)/100)
So after 25 years, it will be a 84%. It will be at 70.7% after 50 years. If that isn't enough, then just make the battery 40% bigger.
that is 3.3 watt/hours per gram. According to my calculations, you can use a 80 kg battery can easily power a Tesla for the next 100 years. A Model S can do 320kw/hour. No supercharger needed. Another option is to use a 16Kg battery which will charge the battery packs. Only in extreme use, long trips, etc. you may need an outside charge.
But this isn't like a Li-Ion battery that you can extract energy from at a variable rate... it's a generator that produces ~38uW (micro-watts) continuously for 100 years. So you just need ~66kg to produce a standard 0.5 amp USB charger worth of current at 5V. But on the up side... that 66kg "battery" will charge your phone for 100 years. ... and if you want to red line that tesla for 100 years straight you just need an... 8,430 metric ton battery - no problem, just buy a Model X with a tow hitch!
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/v...
These look like good things for deep space missions, but where else would you find a good use for them, that solar couldn't do more effectively?
That could have been the case if it used NiFe batteries. Ironically, that is...
I see what you did there.
Half life is 100 years.
So, half, that is 5 times the chemical batteries is available over 100 years. Right?
So, on average, 1/20 of the energy is available per year .
That works out to 1/7300 per day. But the decay is exponential, so we need a correction from mean to peak. Let us be generous and round up e (=2.7182818) to 3. So you are looking at 1/2500 of chemical battery energy per day. Divide by another 86400 to get per second. That is the max power out put of this device. Looks like you would be better off harvesting the power from local WiFi signals.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
A NiFe battery is completely different from a betavoltaic cell, even one based on a Nickel isotope.
Strange that for his last 20 years no patents appear in the public records.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There ya go.
Don't forget to put on your tinfoil hat while browsing that Wikipedia page or lizard-people will read your mind and steal them patents.
You'll quickly notice that it is all outdated and that most of his later year "inventions" are nothing but junk.
E.g. That "vertical takeoff and landing heliplane" had a single and comparatively tiny propeller - but it had biplane wings, AND they were fixed and in line with the propeller, tilting along with it.
Now... ignoring completely the tiny amount of vertical liftoff that such propeller would be able to provide (think V-22 Osprey)... consider what happens to the angle of those fixed wings and of the entire "heliplane" as it tries to lift off vertically.
I.e. He lacked fundamental understanding of how the wing works and how it lifts the airplane.
Also... from even cursory reading of the patent, it is quite clear he didn't really understand engines or the concept of efficiency of said engines.
He envisions his "APPARATUS FOR AERIAL TRANSPORTATION" being lifted by "turbines" working under "excessive overload"..."with the object of meeting the abnormal power requirements in the starting, landing and other. short operations" - while "motors will be operated at their normal rated capacity" only during "descent and alighting, as well as rising in the manner of a true aeroplane".
I.e. He thought that engines are designed to achieve maximum efficiency while working at lower outputs - while at the same time providing the infrastructure for much higher outputs.
He though that an engine designed for a compact car only needs a bit of hardening and the fuel supply and exhaust system of a truck - and it could produce the same amount of force as the engine of a semi-truck.
But the best part is where he envisions his flying "apparatus" being propelled by a STEAM ENGINE.
"In Figure 3 this apparatus is. diagrammatically indicated by 17, and may be any one of a number of well-known types, producing pressure by internal combustion of a suitable fuel or by external firing of a steam boiler.
Tesla was a genius.
But he also clearly had mental issues and was often way out of his depth outside his narrow area of expertise.
That's why his "death ray" turned out to be hokum just like his "new form of energy violently opposed to Einsteinian physics" or his mind-reading device which would work by photographing the eye.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens