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Nuclear isomers are a fascinating subject. I like to fantasize about batteries with energy storage of KeV stored per element as opposed to chemical batteries wh
by wolfram74 7y ago
Nuclear isomers are a fascinating subject. I like to fantasize about batteries with energy storage of KeV stored per element as opposed to chemical batteries which would be limited to a few eV per element. This is of course limited by our ability to effectively turn x rays and gamma rays into useful energy and preparing meta-stable samples.
- eloff 7y agoWell I wouldn't keep my cellphone in my pocket in that case, but joking aside, that would solve the energy density issue for electrical planes.
- hwillis 7y agoThat's an understatement. Li-air batteries would solve the energy density problems for electric planes. Storing energy in nuclear isomers would be more suited to like... single stage to orbit electric scramjets. Hovershoes and laser guns, that kind of thing.
- datenwolf 7y agoWell among other things, one problem to solve is, how to control the output power. If you were to just charge a bunch of nuclear isomers, they'd afterward release the energy by a regular decay process with a given half life (or call it nuclear "flourescence" lifetime, or whatever). This puts them on the same conceptual stage as RTGs. It should be possible to stimulate the emission of radiation, i.e. build the nuclear isomer equivalent to a chemical laser. That'd would allow to control the release of power and not depend on random decay.
- nine_k 7y agoIf we could reasonably harvest the energy of gamma rays, it could also significantly improve the efficiency of nuclear power plants, and maybe even make fusion plants somehow feasible.