4 ms·
We've been getting a slow drip of press releases about this concept since at least 2016. Has anything substantial changed, or is this just a reminder? Reality
by duskwuff 2y ago
We've been getting a slow drip of press releases about this concept since at least 2016. Has anything substantial changed, or is this just a reminder?
Reality check, because everyone always gets excited about this: the power density of these devices is on the order of 10 µW/cm^3 - about eight orders of magnitude lower than a lithium-ion battery. Technical advances may improve that somewhat, but it will never be competitive with conventional power sources.
- adastra22 2y agoUnlike a lithium ion battery, it will NEVER need to be recharged. Not on civilizational timescales at least.
- rcxdude 2y agoThat's cool, and useful for some applications, but it's still not a replacement for basically anything the average person would use a battery for.
- adastra22 2y agoThe thing is radioactive. This isn’t meant as a replacement for everyday use.
- chmod775 2y agoAs long as you don't crack open the casing and diamond shell around the carbon-14 in order to eat it or use it as a skincare product, you'll be just fine handling the thing. Inevitably someone will do that, but only because they've somehow avoided deleting themselves from the gene pool through any of the more available options. And even then they'll probably still manage it some other way before the carbon-14 can do its work.
- science4sail 2y agoYeah, this sort of thing is unlikely to replace lithium batteries in EVs or portable electronics (unless you want to play with more intensely radioactive materials, which is a can of worms). The more likely use case would be for extremely long-lived stationary devices - for example, a remote monitoring system that is only accessed once every few years.