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A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years
- CoastalCoder 3y ago"A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years" Phone OS developers: Challenge accepted.
- kjkjadksj 3y agoI bet they will make the whole phone disposable too. Battery dead? That will be $10,000 inflation adjusted please, we haven’t sold a charger in 40 years.
- charles_f 3y agoOf course not. They need to keep a way to sell new phones. Battery was a good physical limit. OS deprecation and fake hardware limitations will be the next one. Side note - if they can't sell as many phones anymore, I bet that we'll see some Android+ or iOS+ appear at some point, for the low low cost of 39.99 per month. I'm quite surprised it's not there yet
- jameshart 3y ago“Warning: no user serviceable parts inside. Void if opened. Drop and run”
- baryphonic 3y agoA couple years in: "We really have no explanation for the rapid increase in cervical and testicular cancers."
- CoastalCoder 3y agoMy friend, I think your talking about a different kind of battery-powered device.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nolok 3y ago90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.
- Solvency 3y agoIt took 50 years for people to realize fat is healthy and sugar loaded bread and grains is bad for you. Because of "science". iPhones straddling your genitalia is considered "safe"' today. Can't wait to hear from science towards the end of the century.
- m463 3y agomad hatters and radium girls [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_as_a_hatter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_as_a_hatter [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls
- nolok 3y agoMy understanding is that phone near your genitals is not recommended at least for men because the increase in heat affects your testicular production, like any increased heat source would (between the heat of battery usage and the non ionizing radiation from the radio). I remember my science teacher talking about it in high school, and that was pre smartphone era (~2003 or so). I also remember it saying that guys liked wearing boxer and jeans and the increased friction was pushing more heat there anyway. Now every 6 months we have a study about low and lowering sperm count in males, and between that and food changes and microplastics overabundance and ... It feels like that's a lost cause.
- gbrits 3y agoImagine iPhones with Geiger counters. Nicely aggregated in bite sized daily stats through Apple health
- 3y ago
- ugjka 3y ago>Betavolt says that after it has decayed the 63 nuclear isotopes become copper, which would be non-radioactive and not cause any environmental threat. Well, what happens when you throw the non-decayed thing in a firepit or run it through a wood chipper?
- zardo 3y agoA new wilderness sanctuary is born
- bxparks 3y agoBut the screen cracked 49 years ago. It stopped getting OS updates 48 years ago. And the 5G towers got deprecated 40 years ago.
- nacs 3y agoGood thing we have removable batteries in all the phones now /s
- MrDresden 3y agoIt is coming (again) thanks to one of the largest single market on the planet making replacable batteries in portable electronics a requirement by 2027 (in 3 years time) [0]. I find it highly unlikely that there will be double production of devices for the EU market on one hand and the rest of the world on the other (and the biggest producers are not going to be pulling out of the market for obvious reasons). [0] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IPR96210/making-batteries-more-sustainable-more-durable-and-better-performing https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20230609IP...
- summm 3y agoIf only. I suspect they will use the "waterproof" exception as an excuse to continue as before.
- Arnt 3y agoI hope so. I've loved that ever since the first summer with a waterproof phone. Where I live, the summer rains can drench you in a minute,
- crotchfire 3y agoYou're ignoring the third possibility which is that, given three years to do so, the lobbyists capture the regulators like they always do.
- 3y ago
- gjsman-1000 3y agoWhy phones? I want nuclear powered electric vehicles. If you could even get an EV with the performance of a Prius that never needed gas or a charge for 250,000 miles, that would be a major accomplishment.
- thriftwy 3y agohttps://designyoutrust.com/2022/08/volga-atom-how-in-the-ussr-created-a-car-with-a-nuclear-reactor/ https://designyoutrust.com/2022/08/volga-atom-how-in-the-uss...
- rsaxvc 3y agoI've been on one. Aircraft carrier. Edit: commenter seems to be editing without noting their edits. This comment was written against a their comment in a different revision.
- swixmix 3y agoFor extra clarity: > Nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers are powered by onboard nuclear reactors. Atoms in the nuclear reactor split, which releases energy as heat. This heat is used to create high-pressured steam. The steam turns propulsion turbines that provide the power to turn the propeller. Additional turbines also make electricity for the ship. As the steam cools and condenses back into water, the water is directed back through the system, and the process starts again. https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-submarines-and-aircraft-carriers#:~:text=Nuclear%20submarines%20and%20aircraft%20carriers%20are%20powered%20by%20onboard%20nuclear,power%20to%20turn%20the%20propeller https://www.epa.gov/radtown/nuclear-submarines-and-aircraft-....
- elzbardico 3y agoIt is a fucking shame politics, ideologies and greed for power makes the world so fucked up. It would be great if instead of nuclear powered air carriers we had nuclear powered cargo ships.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
- rsaxvc 3y ago100 microwatts - I can't imagine a phone idles on that. About 36 microamps at 3.6 volts. > less than a coin at 15 x 15 x 5mm Slightly smaller than a stack of four US dimes.
- jvanderbot 3y agoSo 10 stacks in a pack and you have 3.6v and .3 amps? Overnight you'd stack up a couple amp hours, which is about a phone battery, right? Edit oh microwatts not milliwatts
- themoonisachees 3y agoA modern smartphone, no, not currently. Feature phones maybe, if made specifically with low-power parts. Personally I'm interested in putting this in a watchy [0], that can get around on tens of microwatts average consumption because of deep sleep states and an e-paper screen. [0] https://watchy.sqfmi.com https://watchy.sqfmi.com
- rsaxvc 3y agoThat's more the scale I was thinking .You'd still need a rechargeable battery or large cap to run the ESP32 in any useful mode.
- desireco42 3y agoIf they manage to produce more wattage, then it can work, ink device or something with low power usage could benefit from this. Get a texting device like blackberry that will always work, that would be epic. I get that they are confident they can produce more power, but usually these diamond/nuclear batteries produce really small amount of power.
- herschel113 3y agoAnd most likely always hot. The nuclear process can most likely not be controlled, and will just provide energy the whole day long. A small sidecar battery may hold charge for peak usage, but still the nuclear battery have to churn atoms all the time to provide the mean power. And the conversion process usually is not very efficient either (but I don't see numbers for this particular device).
- kwhitefoot 3y ago> will just provide energy the whole day long. Dimension it for just a little more than the average consumption and use a super capacitor or battery to soak up the excess when the phone is idle. I imagine one would need the battery anyway to cope with short term high demand such as photography.
- jvanderbot 3y agoOnce you fill your storage you cup runs over. Now you need to radiate something. Heat, radio, light, whatever. You could always run a crypto mine when battery is full and phone is idle, but yeah youre heating your pocket regardless.
- RenThraysk 3y agoTritium radioactive batteries been around awhile. https://citylabs.net/products/ https://citylabs.net/products/ Just sounds like using something with a longer half life.
- fsh 3y agoI find it a bit worrying how science-illiterate the some "tech" reporters appear to be (calling Nickel-63 "63 nuclear isotopes"). Also 50 Ci is an awful lot of activity to produce 100 µW. Being anywhere near a hypothetical 1W version would be quite scary.
- worksonmine 3y agoIs this Mossad or not-Mossad?
- mytailorisrich 3y agoThat'll probably be useful for niche applications but not general public smartphones because phones last for a few years at most, this would carry disposal costs, and risk of pollution would probably be too high (Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years so while it does decay into copper it takes time...).
- jabl 3y agoHow to tell the author is completely clueless wrt nuclear physics: What the company is apparently saying: "To create the radioactive battery, Betavolt's scientist used nickel-63, which is a radiactive element, as the energy source... " The author describing this in his own words: "The compact battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes to generate..." "
- perihelions 3y agoThere's another news article by a different author that makes the same bizarre mistake: - "Beijing-based Betavolt said its nuclear battery is the first in the world to realise the miniaturisation of atomic energy, placing 63 nuclear isotopes into a module smaller than a coin." https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-battery-betavolt-atomic-china-b2476979.html https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-battery-betavolt-... Are they both copying this text from some other source?
- throwaway4aday 3y agoI'm guessing this is due to poor translation combined with lack on knowledge on the reporter's side resulting in the error not being caught.
- elzbardico 3y agoYou could use such a phone to heat yourself if you ever get stranded with a non-functioning car in a snow storm. Or use your phone to fry eggs
- lolc 3y agoYour fingertip gives off more heat than a stack of these.
- debacle 3y agoI'm okay with recharging my phone, thanks.
- elzbardico 3y agoGiven the amount of shielding a radioactive power source in device you use close to your head would require, if your bricked your phone it would give a whole new meaning to the term paper-weight.
- photochemsyn 3y agoThe only plausible use for such batteries is as a power source for deep space probes like Voyager - but yes, we should do Voyager 3.
- MrDresden 3y agoThe inhabitants of Terminus would be proud.
- z_ack 3y ago"The compact battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes to generate 100 microwatts and a voltage of 3V of electricity through the process of radioactive decay" So the battery produce 0.1 mW or 0.0001 W: what "phone or drone" works with this microscopic power ? It isn't sufficient to power a sigle LED. IMHO this article is a sum of: clickbait + incompetence and, if the translation from Chinese is accurate, scam. The phrase "uses 63 nuclear isotopes" also make me ROFL.
- jvanderbot 3y agoIt's more helpful to think of it as a power generator that produces that level of power. Then you use it or store it. Having an onboard power source coupled with storage is an amazing win. And these power generators (not batteries really) are very small. So, when phone is "off" it pulls some mW from each of the many such power cells onboard to charge battery, then when phone is "on" it works like normal.
- z_ack 3y agoNo really, no. It's the same to declare that you have a box of matches and burning them it gives you a substantial help to warm up your house in the middle of winter. "which measure less than a coin at 15 x 15 x 5mm" , if you stack a large amount of that component still the power generated is ridicule, in fact they tell us: "Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025", aka, 3V 0.33A and you are using volume employed by the lithium battery, reducing further the phone operability. This pretended to be innovation will go nowhere, like all "miracle battery" seen before, solar panel covered street, e-cat, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays , the high demand of clean energy makes flourish nonsense startups, scam, pseudoscience, etc. That is very sad.
- z_ack 3y agoP.s. More critical thinking is required before reposting this kind of article, those are, anyway, all very similar: computer generated mock, no test, no prototype, no scientific documentation, no peer reviews. Only a before-unknown company that declare a miraculous breaking ground tech. I'm sure that if I declare can produce an anti-matter base battery capable to give power to your phone and also your CAR, the "news" will propagated everywhere, in article identical to technical review.
- thedougd 3y agoMaybe enough to power a feature like FindMy on an iPhone?
- RecycledEle 3y ago100uW will not power my phone.
- hereme888 3y agoA Chinese company telling me their radioactive batteries are safe...sure. And somehow the radiation doesn't travel beyond the thickness of the battery and phone.
- fastneutron 3y agoThe idea of this making it into any consumer product is science fiction, and articles like this can be safely ignored. Some back of the envelope math to illustrate why: - The decay energy of Ni-63 is 66 keV, but since the energy is split with an irrecoverable neutrino, the average recoverable energy per decay is more like 17 keV. - The typical power consumption of an iPhone is about 10 watts, give or take. - Converting (1eV = 1.6e-19 J, 1W = 1J/s), we get 2.72e-15 Watts per decay. - Assuming 10 Watts for your phone, we get 3.68e15 decays/second, 3.68e15 Bq, or *99364 CURIES* of activity - The US NRC exempt quantity for Ni-63 is currently 1e-5 Curies (10 micro-Curies) (10CFR30.71, Sched. B) For reference, the activity of the Am-241 in a typical smoke detector is on the order of 0.1 MICRO Curies. A betavoltaic battery for a smartphone would need a full 20 orders of more activity per unit, 18 orders of magnitude higher than the current regulatory limits, and we're talking about a product that nearly every person in the country owns. The item would be physically warm to the touch, could never be turned off, and would need piles of paperwork to track the origin, transfer of custody, and proper disposal. Maybe this makes sense for remotely-deployed military equipment and other niche applications where the user would go thorough the necessary licensing steps, but for consumer products, forget it. Absolute fiction.
- EA-3167 3y agoThe fact is that beta batteries have been around since the 1960's, and for the reasons you've described they're not really useful for commercialization. I'd add that even if they were somehow absolutely foolproof, you'd still need strict regulatory oversight of disposal/recycling. The cost would be immense, the benefits would be slim at best.
- m-p-3 3y agoI wouldn't mind having a dumb watch with one of these batteries that would basically never need to be replaced throughout its lifetime. That would be a cool exercise to make it comsume the tiniest amount of power as possible.
- rkangel 3y agoMy (Citizen) watch is solar powered which achieves the same effect without the nuclear complexities. Not as cool obviously!
- lucysienna 3y ago[dead]
- 0xbadc0de5 3y agoThese are woefully underpowered for consumer electronics and always will be - only really useful for maintaining volatile memory. This idea has actually been debunked more than once. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5MF6KE-jY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5MF6KE-jY