11 ms·
The unlikely revival of nuclear batteries
- nimbius 1y agoThis is a fascinating topic if anyone is interested from a historical perspective. The soviets had Beta-M powering more than two dozen lighthouses across the union at some point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta-M
- david38 1y agoIt didn’t ruin his life. Having an unstable childhood due to a mentally ill mother and later developing paranoid schizophrenia and a drug addiction (common with schizophrenia) is what ruined his life.
- b3lvedere 1y agoIt's mentioned in the article as well "Another good use for nuclear batteries is to supply power in remote locations on Earth. Beginning in the 1970s, for example, the Soviet Union deployed over 1,000 RTGs in northwestern Russia to power its uncrewed lighthouses, radio beacons, and weather stations. Most of these batteries ran on strontium-90, and each weighed about 2,000 kg. The United States has deployed hundreds of similar systems for remote power both on land and on the ocean floor, particularly for remote monitoring sites in the Arctic."
- SoftTalker 1y agoAnd some very bad consequences for scavengers who came across them and tried to take them apart for scrap metal to sell
- louwrentius 1y agoThat's the 'Lia incident' https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45014583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45014583
- selimthegrim 1y agoAnd here I was hoping they finally got that hafnium isomer to work.
- Willingham 1y agoIt is my understanding that small nuclear batteries output very little energy, so little in fact that they are virtually useless for most applications where a classical battery would be used. The upside is that they can produce power for decades without ever ‘charging’ or in this case, replacing the isotopes. In other words, the use cases aren’t as exciting as one would expect.
- xeonmc 1y agoSounds perfectly suited for watch batteries.
- wiz21c 1y agoUntil they reach the dump...
- gerdesj 1y agoMy wristwatch's "face" is a solar panel - Citizen Eco-Drive. Had it for around 20 years and it has never stopped.
- wongarsu 1y agoI prefer changing the battery once every three years over having a radioactive emitter strapped to my wrist. There is a decent case for nuclear pacemakers since changing the battery of those requires surgery, and even there it didn't get traction. Watch batteries are quick to change, I don't see the risk/benefit tradeoff working. And with smart watches we are back in "useless for most applications" territory.
- cogman10 1y agoNah, too bulky and there are already better solutions. If you have just a classic watch, then a kinetic charging mechanism is something that's been around for ~100 years. Your watch auto-charges from simply wearing it and walking around. But if you need more juice, then solar watches are also a thing that work pretty well. For a smartwatch, these batteries won't produce enough power to keep them going. It's better to just slap a bigger battery into the watch rather than a nuclear battery + regular battery.
- datadrivenangel 1y agoOne thing to note about the modern 'betavoltaic' batteries is that they don't actually have more energy density than a standard 18650 lithium ion battery, but instead give off a much smaller amount of power for a decade or two, while an 18650 would probably have lost all it's chemical abilities.
- antonkochubey 1y agoI know this is an anecdote, but I have quite a few 18650's from early 2010's still in service, of course with significant increase to internal resistance and drop to capacity, but fully functional otherwise.
- buckle8017 1y agoHe's talking decades without recharging.
- jolmg 1y agoI think he's replying to the bit: > an 18650 would probably have lost all it's chemical abilities.
- datadrivenangel 1y agoI also have many functional 18650s of that age. lithium ion cells often self discharge at a few % per month, so after a few years of no power use a cell is likely to be dead without recharging anyways. The betavoltaics will still have usable power output. The real question is what the cost/performance comparison looks like between a betavoltaic system and a 18650 + tiny solar panel system that can on average recharge the battery on an annual basis.
- m463 1y agoWonder how early EVs with 18650s like the tesla roadster (2008) or model s (2013) are faring?
- deepnotderp 1y ago
- actionfromafar 1y agoIt feels like LLM blogspam. The only "revival" I could find in the text was the mention of Beijing Betavolt.
- elictronic 1y agoArticle lists 9 companies in a big table, technology used, and what they are targeting. Your comment "is" spam because you didn't even do a simple check of the article before bashing it.
- actionfromafar 1y agoI was much too impatient, sorry.
- pjs_ 1y agoNuclear pacemaker is astonishingly bad ass
- isoprophlex 1y agoLooking at the picture in TFA, it's also quite un-miniaturized. I was surprised at how big it looked, with huge electronic components visible.
- louwrentius 1y agoI read 'Nuclear Batteries' and the first thing I think about is the "Lia Radological accident", where three men were exposed and one died. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lia_radiological_accident This incident happened in the country of Georgia, which was part of the Sovjet Union. Which probably already hints towards the root-cause of this incident (they lost track of the devices). Also: Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
- zparky 1y agooh man i read that medical report [1] a while ago. nightmare fuel, with nightmare pictures included. https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81061875.pdf https://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/Publications/PDF/Pub1660web-81...
- StrangeDoctor 1y agoThere’s something especially bad about radiological burns. Not necessarily knowing severe damage is being done, we don’t have a feedback loop to even know we should get away. And beyond the metaphysical and psychological aspects for me, they just look wrong.
- rossant 1y agoOh wow. What a read. Thank you.
- Bayart 1y agoThe Wikipedia article links to the IAEA recovery video where you can more or less see everything : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5T0GkoKG8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE5T0GkoKG8
- don-bright 1y agoI'm missing the part where they solve for the collection problem. The article mentions the boy who gathered dangerous amounts of Americium from smoke detectors but doesn't provide any kind of mechanism to counteract that risk. It seems like any mass production of nuclear battery material risks an interested human or organizational collector amassing significant quantities of that material and that risk doesn't seem to have gone down.
- Nifty3929 1y agoAlso missing is any indication of whether or not this is a rational and valid concern, or whether it's simply generalized fear of "nuclear" without basis. I genuinely wonder and would be interested in some facts about it.
- Joel_Mckay 1y agoActually, the story of the Radioactive Boy-scout is often steeped in urban legends. The TLDR is he cobbled together a breeder reactor, and found a large sample of Radium from an antique clock that mistakenly contained an old dial-paint vile. His little hobby cost a lot to clean up, and ruined his life. Nuclear energy should be conserved for space, as in the past 80 years people still haven't figured out how to safely dispose of hotter waste products. You can disagree on what this means, but every project attempt is provably wrong when projecting containment past 75 years. These days renewables are profitable, and are not a 1950's hubris driven loss-leader fission tech for our grand kids to pay the actual cost. =3
- ta20240528 1y ago" as in the past 80 years people still haven't figured out how to safely dispose of hotter waste products." Buried underground in salt rock formations. Conceived, located, designed.
- Joel_Mckay 1y ago"Underground" usually also means degraded containment (micro-tears in 15cm thick steel), seeping water soluble heavy-metal salts, off-gassing Radon, and sometimes literally on fire when using the wrong brand of kitty-litter to clean up toxic waste. When (not if) the salt caverns collapse from rotten concrete, they hope it will remain stable and dry. Even vitrified ceramic containment isn't perfect, but seems better than a caveman bucket technology. We will have to disagree about it justifying fission tech sustainability. =3
- NoSalt 1y agoWho else remembers "Shipstones" from Robert Heinlein's writings? This kind of has that "feel". https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+heinlein+shipstone https://www.google.com/search?q=robert+heinlein+shipstone
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- asa400 1y agoPatrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter!