5 ms·

Turning nuclear waste into diamond batteries

146 points by rmason 5y ago

2ctJoke 5y ago
steeve 5y ago
Every now and then this comes up. There was a thread from a french nuclear scientist explaining why this isn’t what you think it is. I can’t find it but the gist was that the power density is low and the price is several orders of magnitude too expensive (like trillions of dollars).
- cogman10 5y ago
  IDK about trillions of dollars, but it certainly would be expensive. The entire process appears to involve creating artificial diamonds in an environment where radioactive material has been gassified in order to capture it in the diamond structure. All this for a battery that provides an (effectively) infinite microwatt supply. The article tries to say that you could use this for a pacemaker (yeah right...) Really, this would only really be useful in something like a remote sensor where it can take a day/week/month to charge a capacitor that ultimately triggers report signal. The article mentions space missions, but again, this is far less practical than doing something like an RTG.
- sph 5y ago
  That's what they forget to mention every time there's a new article about battery tech breakthroughs. The bigger the claim, the damper the squib it proves to be.
gus_massa 5y ago
It was heavily discussed a few years ago, for example in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159 They last for a log time, but the important detail is that they have very low power, like 1mW with the size factor of a normal battery, so you need like a dozen for a (old) wrist watch and s few hundred to turn on a led. More details in: http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2020/08/diamond-batteries-unlikely.html http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2020/08/diamond-batteries-unli... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM (EEVblog)
- belorn 5y ago
  > like 1mW with the size factor of a normal battery It seems like Carbon-14 is just not very radioactive, and if I read the Wikipedia article right, Geiger counters can't even detect the radiation for small amounts, which makes me wonder if they would even trigger around the 1 gram in those batteries. Looking at a bit more sources, Carbon-14 radiation has a maximum distance of 22 cm in air and 0.27 mm in body tissue. The half-distance layer in water is 0.05 mm. In addition, Carbon-14 in nuclear waste tend to also include tritium, which is even weaker. If we wanted powerful batteries, low-level waste seems like a bad choice. If the material don't even need shielding to be around, it is unlikely to carry a lot of energy. Intermediate-level waste and high-level waste would likely be better suited, especially Intermediate-level waste since those do carry a lot of energy but does not require cooling.
- cameronh90 5y ago
  Could be useful for things that wake up very infrequently and run for a short amount of time.
  - tragictrash 5y ago
    Nearly all of the devices you would want to power / we have the ability to build have a lifespan orders of magnitude shorter than the lifespan of the battery. It just doesn't make sense any way you look at it. The top comment is right. There's much better, more cost effective solutions for powering the proposed device, and better, more practical uses for the 'spent' nuclear fuel.
    - kgc 5y ago
      Pacemaker?
      - orlp 5y ago
        What could possibly go wrong?
      - tragictrash 5y ago
panick21_ 5y ago
A much more practical use of nuclear waste is to make traditional RTG. Nuclear waste could also be used for medical isotopes. There are lots of other interesting things in nuclear waste. This talk from 2010 is really amazing at understanding what 'nuclear waste' actually is and what it will be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE
- lazyeye 5y ago
  I've often wondered if neutralising radioactive waste is a lesser technical challenge than fusion.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    It is. But fusion is much cooler and doesn't have the bad reputation that nuclear power does so funding is much easier to obtain for it. Unfortunately society doesn't want safe nuclear, they want zero nuclear. Massive blunder by humanity IMO and shameful that environmentalist parties that were founded to oppose nuclear continue to do so today for primarily historical/emotional reasons rather than hard facts.
    - panick21_ 5y ago
      We should have been a nuclear society since the 80s ...
rajansaini 5y ago
Could it be useful to use these to charge long term batteries to be used millennia from now? So that future generations living centuries from now can have easy power when the fossil fuels run out?
- ncmncm 5y ago
  No. Batteries only last a few years before the chemistry degrades. And anyway, microwatts are useful in certain restricted circumstances, but are easy to come by. A solar cell illuminated by starlight gives you more. Needles in a lemon gives you way more more.
schappim 5y ago
Folks interested in this, might be interested in the already available Tritium Batteries [1] that last for ~ 20+ years. SparkFun did a DIY Kit[2], but have since discontinued it. [1] https://citylabs.net/products/ https://citylabs.net/products/ [2] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/14773 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/14773
sylware 5y ago
There is also something about "fast-neutron"/"slow-neutron" (I don't recall which one) capture based fission reactors which could give a purpose to a significant part of nuclear waste. If I understood not too badly (but I expect to be very wrong), only China and Russia have such nuclear reactors. In my country, the public research project was cancelled without being able to do the same than China and Russia. I heard that with such reactors, it extends by hundreds of years, if not thousands, the ability of fission reactors to produce "enough" energy, that based on current fuel reserve estimation. ofc, reducing energy consumption (= reduce worldwide population, reduce heating/AC, stop commuting ...) and switching as much as possible to "stored" "renewable" energy should always be a primary focus (even if nuclear fusion becomes real). wow, so many "if" and "I don't really know". :(
- natmaka 5y ago
  Breeder reactors research was quite huge (one of the first breeder was built in the US in 1951). To this day there is no such reactor working industrially satisfactorily. This architecture has been, for all practical purposes, abandoned by nearly all countries that were researching and developing it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants One of the most (if not the most) ambitious project was Superphénix, costed billions and failed flat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix The most successful was Russia's BN-800 but "problems ((...)) indicated a redesign was needed", and construction of it's successor (the BN-1200) was put on indefinite hold. Problems related to cost and process/security seem quite difficult(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor Russians are back to the drawing board. The sole officially actively pursued (since 2021) pertinent design, BREST-OD-300 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) ) will only (when completed, if ever) be a demonstrator (low power). French ahead: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surg%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surg%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration
  - sylware 5y ago
    It seems there is a difference between "fast-neutron" reactors and breeder reactors: the article states that russian BN-600 and BN-800 are "fast-neutron" reactors but not in "breeder" mode. Since I am garbage in nuclear physics, I am wondering if those "fast-neutron" reactors "but not breeders" can reuse a significant part of current nuclear waste?
cmroanirgo 5y ago
> the Bristol team warned that their radioactive diamond batteries wouldn’t be suitable for laptops or smartphones, because they contain only 1g of carbon-14, meaning that they provide very low power —only a few microwatts, which is less than a typical AA battery. Therefore, their application so far is limited to small devices that must stay unattended for a long time, such as sensors and pacemakers. I assumes that more research can make or more usable in the consumer market?
- duskwuff 5y ago
  > I assumes that more research can make or more usable in the consumer market? No. The energy output is constrained by the decay rate of C14. Increasing the amount in use would help somewhat, but it's still many orders of magnitude away from being useful. (The description of a few microwatts as being "less than a typical AA battery" is a massive understatement. Even a cheap AA-sized carbon cell can deliver a milliwatt -- a thousand microwatts! -- continuously for a few months.)
  - gus_massa 5y ago
    I agree. Some numbers: It varies from model to model, but with a few search in Google I got that a smartphone use approximately 5 watts, that's 5000000 microwatts. Let's assume that "a few" in the quoted text means 5, so you need 1000000 of these batteries to power a smartphone. Each battery weight like 1 gram, so the total weight would be 1000Kg = 1 metric ton = 2000 pounds = 1 small car.
jannemann 5y ago
> Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has zero carbon dioxide emissions; This is flat out wrong. Containing, mining, recycling and long term storage are so extremely costly and energy hungry that it does not make any economically sense in mid term to use nuclear power. And do not forget. Nuclear is not renewable. It has to be mined. There are mines which will be empty sooner than generally expected. And any kind of mass produced „nuclear battery“ which will eventually end up in land fill is a risk not worth taking. It reminds me of the story about leaded fuel. Yeah maybe a few cars are no problem. But scale up the pollution and boy will you be in trouble.
- korijn 5y ago
  Isn't it still miles ahead of coal in terms of "clean energy-ness", despite all the costs and flaws? Honestly curious, I'm not at all an expert.
- fsflover 5y ago
  >> Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has zero carbon dioxide emissions; > This is flat out wrong. No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464.
  - jannemann 5y ago
    Every energy source does require some sort of energy to make it possible to harvest it. And nuclear is no exception. We do not have any sustainable way to filter out enough carbon dioxide with any of the hypothetical excess energy. So saying there is a any energy source without any carbon dioxide emission is wrong.
    - gruturo 5y ago
      > Every energy source does require some sort of energy to make it possible to harvest it. And nuclear is no exception Indeed, and neither are solar, wind, hydro or any other - they all have environmental impact for producing the panels, turbines, dams, etc. So there are actually no exceptions at all, anywhere, which makes the classification completely useless. Could we get back to the topic now?

146 points by rmason 5y ago

Every now and then this comes up. There was a thread from a french nuclear scientist explaining why this isn’t what you think it is. I can’t find it but the gist was that the power density is low and the price is several orders of magnitude too expensive (like trillions of dollars).

cogman10 5y ago
IDK about trillions of dollars, but it certainly would be expensive. The entire process appears to involve creating artificial diamonds in an environment where radioactive material has been gassified in order to capture it in the diamond structure. All this for a battery that provides an (effectively) infinite microwatt supply. The article tries to say that you could use this for a pacemaker (yeah right...) Really, this would only really be useful in something like a remote sensor where it can take a day/week/month to charge a capacitor that ultimately triggers report signal. The article mentions space missions, but again, this is far less practical than doing something like an RTG.
sph 5y ago
That's what they forget to mention every time there's a new article about battery tech breakthroughs. The bigger the claim, the damper the squib it proves to be.

gus_massa 5y ago

It was heavily discussed a few years ago, for example in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13060159 They last for a log time, but the important detail is that they have very low power, like 1mW with the size factor of a normal battery, so you need like a dozen for a (old) wrist watch and s few hundred to turn on a led. More details in: http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2020/08/diamond-batteries-unlikely.html http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2020/08/diamond-batteries-unli... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM (EEVblog)

belorn 5y ago
> like 1mW with the size factor of a normal battery It seems like Carbon-14 is just not very radioactive, and if I read the Wikipedia article right, Geiger counters can't even detect the radiation for small amounts, which makes me wonder if they would even trigger around the 1 gram in those batteries. Looking at a bit more sources, Carbon-14 radiation has a maximum distance of 22 cm in air and 0.27 mm in body tissue. The half-distance layer in water is 0.05 mm. In addition, Carbon-14 in nuclear waste tend to also include tritium, which is even weaker. If we wanted powerful batteries, low-level waste seems like a bad choice. If the material don't even need shielding to be around, it is unlikely to carry a lot of energy. Intermediate-level waste and high-level waste would likely be better suited, especially Intermediate-level waste since those do carry a lot of energy but does not require cooling.
cameronh90 5y ago
Could be useful for things that wake up very infrequently and run for a short amount of time.
- tragictrash 5y ago
  Nearly all of the devices you would want to power / we have the ability to build have a lifespan orders of magnitude shorter than the lifespan of the battery. It just doesn't make sense any way you look at it. The top comment is right. There's much better, more cost effective solutions for powering the proposed device, and better, more practical uses for the 'spent' nuclear fuel.
  - kgc 5y ago
    Pacemaker?
    - orlp 5y ago
      What could possibly go wrong?
    - tragictrash 5y ago

panick21_ 5y ago

A much more practical use of nuclear waste is to make traditional RTG. Nuclear waste could also be used for medical isotopes. There are lots of other interesting things in nuclear waste. This talk from 2010 is really amazing at understanding what 'nuclear waste' actually is and what it will be. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rv-mFSoZOkE

lazyeye 5y ago
I've often wondered if neutralising radioactive waste is a lesser technical challenge than fusion.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  It is. But fusion is much cooler and doesn't have the bad reputation that nuclear power does so funding is much easier to obtain for it. Unfortunately society doesn't want safe nuclear, they want zero nuclear. Massive blunder by humanity IMO and shameful that environmentalist parties that were founded to oppose nuclear continue to do so today for primarily historical/emotional reasons rather than hard facts.
  - panick21_ 5y ago
    We should have been a nuclear society since the 80s ...

rajansaini 5y ago

Could it be useful to use these to charge long term batteries to be used millennia from now? So that future generations living centuries from now can have easy power when the fossil fuels run out?

ncmncm 5y ago
No. Batteries only last a few years before the chemistry degrades. And anyway, microwatts are useful in certain restricted circumstances, but are easy to come by. A solar cell illuminated by starlight gives you more. Needles in a lemon gives you way more more.

schappim 5y ago

Folks interested in this, might be interested in the already available Tritium Batteries [1] that last for ~ 20+ years. SparkFun did a DIY Kit[2], but have since discontinued it. [1] https://citylabs.net/products/ https://citylabs.net/products/ [2] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/14773 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/retired/14773

sylware 5y ago

There is also something about "fast-neutron"/"slow-neutron" (I don't recall which one) capture based fission reactors which could give a purpose to a significant part of nuclear waste. If I understood not too badly (but I expect to be very wrong), only China and Russia have such nuclear reactors. In my country, the public research project was cancelled without being able to do the same than China and Russia. I heard that with such reactors, it extends by hundreds of years, if not thousands, the ability of fission reactors to produce "enough" energy, that based on current fuel reserve estimation. ofc, reducing energy consumption (= reduce worldwide population, reduce heating/AC, stop commuting ...) and switching as much as possible to "stored" "renewable" energy should always be a primary focus (even if nuclear fusion becomes real). wow, so many "if" and "I don't really know". :(

natmaka 5y ago
Breeder reactors research was quite huge (one of the first breeder was built in the US in 1951). To this day there is no such reactor working industrially satisfactorily. This architecture has been, for all practical purposes, abandoned by nearly all countries that were researching and developing it. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor#Future_plants One of the most (if not the most) ambitious project was Superphénix, costed billions and failed flat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superph%C3%A9nix The most successful was Russia's BN-800 but "problems ((...)) indicated a redesign was needed", and construction of it's successor (the BN-1200) was put on indefinite hold. Problems related to cost and process/security seem quite difficult(?) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BN-1200_reactor Russians are back to the drawing board. The sole officially actively pursued (since 2021) pertinent design, BREST-OD-300 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BREST_(reactor) ) will only (when completed, if ever) be a demonstrator (low power). French ahead: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surg%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surg%C3%A9n%C3%A9ration
- sylware 5y ago
  It seems there is a difference between "fast-neutron" reactors and breeder reactors: the article states that russian BN-600 and BN-800 are "fast-neutron" reactors but not in "breeder" mode. Since I am garbage in nuclear physics, I am wondering if those "fast-neutron" reactors "but not breeders" can reuse a significant part of current nuclear waste?

cmroanirgo 5y ago

> the Bristol team warned that their radioactive diamond batteries wouldn’t be suitable for laptops or smartphones, because they contain only 1g of carbon-14, meaning that they provide very low power —only a few microwatts, which is less than a typical AA battery. Therefore, their application so far is limited to small devices that must stay unattended for a long time, such as sensors and pacemakers. I assumes that more research can make or more usable in the consumer market?

duskwuff 5y ago
> I assumes that more research can make or more usable in the consumer market? No. The energy output is constrained by the decay rate of C14. Increasing the amount in use would help somewhat, but it's still many orders of magnitude away from being useful. (The description of a few microwatts as being "less than a typical AA battery" is a massive understatement. Even a cheap AA-sized carbon cell can deliver a milliwatt -- a thousand microwatts! -- continuously for a few months.)
- gus_massa 5y ago
  I agree. Some numbers: It varies from model to model, but with a few search in Google I got that a smartphone use approximately 5 watts, that's 5000000 microwatts. Let's assume that "a few" in the quoted text means 5, so you need 1000000 of these batteries to power a smartphone. Each battery weight like 1 gram, so the total weight would be 1000Kg = 1 metric ton = 2000 pounds = 1 small car.

jannemann 5y ago

> Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has zero carbon dioxide emissions; This is flat out wrong. Containing, mining, recycling and long term storage are so extremely costly and energy hungry that it does not make any economically sense in mid term to use nuclear power. And do not forget. Nuclear is not renewable. It has to be mined. There are mines which will be empty sooner than generally expected. And any kind of mass produced „nuclear battery“ which will eventually end up in land fill is a risk not worth taking. It reminds me of the story about leaded fuel. Yeah maybe a few cars are no problem. But scale up the pollution and boy will you be in trouble.

korijn 5y ago
Isn't it still miles ahead of coal in terms of "clean energy-ness", despite all the costs and flaws? Honestly curious, I'm not at all an expert.
fsflover 5y ago
>> Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has zero carbon dioxide emissions; > This is flat out wrong. No, it's not: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26673987 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26603464.
- jannemann 5y ago
  Every energy source does require some sort of energy to make it possible to harvest it. And nuclear is no exception. We do not have any sustainable way to filter out enough carbon dioxide with any of the hypothetical excess energy. So saying there is a any energy source without any carbon dioxide emission is wrong.
  - gruturo 5y ago
    > Every energy source does require some sort of energy to make it possible to harvest it. And nuclear is no exception Indeed, and neither are solar, wind, hydro or any other - they all have environmental impact for producing the panels, turbines, dams, etc. So there are actually no exceptions at all, anywhere, which makes the classification completely useless. Could we get back to the topic now?