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Agreed. For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new batteries that are just a couple years away. Posted from a Li-ion powered device.

• akvadrako 6y ago
  This is not like other batteries - it’s nuclear. Nuclear batteries are old school - they have been powering the voyager probes since the 80s. And the issues are different - less technical - more political.
  • jayd16 6y ago
    Is it really only political? Can I buy a working nuclear battery outside the US/EU?
    • akvadrako 6y ago
      It seems like it: https://soranews24.com/2013/01/17/atomic-batteries-for-sale-on-chinese-website-good-for-20-continuous-years-of-pocket-sized-nuclear-power/ https://soranews24.com/2013/01/17/atomic-batteries-for-sale-...
  • spullara 6y ago
    70s :)
  • saxonww 6y ago
    These aren't RTGs though, they are betavoltaic. Instead of using thermocouples to capture part of the decay heat (of plutonium, in Voyager's case), they generate current from beta particles hitting a semiconductor.
    • akvadrako 6y ago
      What’s the significance in that? I mean, why are beta particles less political than decay heat?
      • saxonww 6y ago
        RTGs are only really useful with particular elements; plutonium is used because it emits a lot of heat for a very long time. People freak out about plutonium. I think these betavoltaic cells can use elements which are less likely to get people upset about proliferation or environmental effects. It's not the same thing at all, but I think you could compare these favorably with e.g. Americium in common smoke detectors (alpha decay). Edit: also your comment just said nuclear batteries and voyager, but these batteries are not anything like those batteries and should not be thought of as the same, regardless of politics.
• myself248 6y ago
  Pacemakers have had these for years, they exist just fine. They're not going to run your Li-ion-powered device because that device needs millions of times more power than a nuclear battery produces. The nuclear battery just produces it for millions of times longer. These are not a replacement for smartphone batteries. But they might do well for things like solar-powered remote weather stations (another place you'll also see radioactive power sources, though those tend to be thermal rather than betavoltaic). A wristwatch might be interesting. These already run 7-10 years on a coin cell, or a few days per solar charge. A betavoltaic cell could likely produce enough power to drive the LCD if not the beeper, and do so almost indefinitely. I wonder what would wear out first.
  • paranoidrobot 6y ago
    > A betavoltaic cell could likely produce enough power to drive the LCD if not the beeper Another product, perhaps - but not this one. While they're cagey about giving actual numbers - the rendering that Dave of EEVBlog found was of a 100 microwatt device, about the same size/volume as an AA battery. At 100 microwatts, that's apparently just enough to drive one segment of a watch LCD display[1]. [1] https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is-consumed-by-one-segment-of-an-LCD-display-on-a-calculator-or-a-digital-watch https://www.quora.com/How-much-power-is-consumed-by-one-segm...
  • knolax 6y ago
    > The nuclear battery just produces it for millions of times longer. IIRC Last time I checked most betavoltaic cells of this scale only last around 20 years.
    • myself248 6y ago
      Sure, and a cellphone drains its battery in about 20 hours.
      • knolax 6y ago
        20 year / 20 hour = Year / Hour = 365 * 24 = 8760 hours per year, so about two orders of magnitude off from lasting "millions of times longer".
• snowwrestler 6y ago
  I’m old enough to remember when Li-ion was itself an almost-magical-sounding new battery technology that seemed to take forever to get here. Who knows if this will pan out, but new technologies often get big press long before they make it to consumers.
• Multicomp 6y ago
  > For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new batteries that are just a couple years away. My dad showed me a copy of some of his popular science magazines from back when the world was in black and white (the 70s) and even in those pages, there were amazing new batteries just around the corner. Graphene batteries, nuclear batteries, carbon batteries, etc. They never make it out of the hype train factory.
  • dogma1138 6y ago
    Silicon–graphene is used in high voltage LiPo batteries, while Graphene was theorized in the late 1800’s and modeled in the 1950’s it hasn’t been isolated until 2004 where the first single layer Graphene was created using a sticky tape of all things. So while in the 70’s people were thinking about Graphene application because the physics were modeled and studied we didn’t had the ability to produce it and we still have limited ability to produce it at scale. This isn’t just about hype but rather what is possible with our current level of technology and manufacturing capabilities.
• dogma1138 6y ago
  It took over 30 years until lithium ion batteries became prevalent and we are still improving their chemistry and structure, heck the first commercial NMC batteries came out around 2012.