
Tiny 'nuclear batteries' unveiled - FreeRadical
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8297934.stm
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pmorici
What kind of current can a dime sized nuclear battery supply and at what
voltage? All the article says is "useful" amounts of power.

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tigerthink
_The University of Missouri team says that the batteries hold a million times
as much charge as standard batteries._

Does that help?

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m_eiman
No, that says nothing about the current and voltage. It could trickle out a
teensy bit of current for a very long time, which wouldn't be useful for e.g.
a laptop.

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ars
This is going to make tiny flying spy machines possible.

Micromechanical Flying Insect:
<http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/~ronf/mfi.html/>

[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/10...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2007/10/08/AR2007100801434.html)

<http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2009/04/flighttheory/>

The biggest unsolved problem for these is the power-to-weight ratio (real bugs
are amazing). Nuclear batteries is exactly what they need, if they can be made
very small.

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pyre
> _(real bugs are amazing)_

Real bugs don't have to record/transmit a/v data or record/transmit controller
signals. They also spend most of their time refueling or in search of fuel.

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chrischen
Wow I can't wait for the day I can power my computer for a month on one
charge! Actually these nuclear batteries probably won't be rechargeable, but
they may outlast the electronic devices they power. Which means we could see
computers and electronic devices being sold without the need for chargers.
Just buy something and it works magically! That's probably the future.

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DanielBMarkham
If these are truly a million times more powerful, and the average computer
battery lasts about an hour, that means these batteries could last a million
hours, or around 114 years.

I think that's long enough for me!

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chrischen
Yea and think about Apple, who are crazy about making unremovable batteries.
No more complaints about unremovable Macbook batteries. They can truly make a
disposable self-contained product.

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davidw
Err... for some values of 'disposable'...

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NathanKP
From the article:

 _Nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of
devices, such as pacemakers..._

It seems sort of strange that the article writer talks about how up until now
nuclear batteries have had to be very large to work effectively. Yet then the
statement is made that such batteries have been used in pacemakers, which I
assume must be much smaller.

Does anyone know anything more about pacemakers and this claim that nuclear
batteries have already been used to power them?

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yannis
Yes they did sometime in the 60's. I was actually involved with research in
the early eighties where one option for an artificial heart (not a pace-maker)
was to use a tiny Stirling Engine powered by an isotope heat source.

The general public has a revulsion for anything 'radioactive', however radio-
active material if handled properly is quite safe. For many years people did
not realized it, but all Smoke detectors had radioactive americium 241. If you
ever renovate an old home just don't put them in your pockets :)

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gfodor
Unfortunately they're already calling them "nuclear" so I doubt this is going
anywhere unless some better buzzword takes hold -- it's a shame but people are
just too scared of the word.

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gcv
I wonder if that's a generational thing. When I hear "nuclear," I tend to hear
"exciting source of relatively clean renewable energy." Of course I know about
weaponry, and I know about Chernobyl, better than most, but I also hold that
atomic power is a tool, just like any other --- dangerous in the wrong hands,
and dangerous if misused, but also a source of progress.

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pyre
There are plenty of 'eco-activists' today that are very anti-nuclear. People
still think that anything relating to 'nuclear' means that I could make an
atom bomb out of it in my backyard with bubblegum and baling wire.

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teuobk
Medtronic made some nuclear-powered implantable pacemakers in the 1970s.
Supposedly, they worked fine, but adoption was hindered by the word "nuclear."

My biggest concern is disposal. I don't like the idea of millions of these
things ending up in landfills, even though I'm sure there would be an
aggressive recycling campaign associated with their introduction.

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ars
> My biggest concern is disposal. I don't like the idea of millions of these
> things ending up in landfills

Why not? You can replace 1 million regular batteries with a single one of
these.

The radioactivity is not a problem, it's well enclosed in the device, and when
the device is spent the radioactivity is probably close to background levels.

A landfill is the perfect place to put them and let them decay into passivity.

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pyre
> _The radioactivity is not a problem, it's well enclosed in the device, and
> when the device is spent the radioactivity is probably close to background
> levels._

It depends on how efficient the device is. That said, the problem if 'nuclear
waste' is largely created by ourselves. All of that 'nuclear waste' is still
useful, we are just too lazy to utilize it.

A good portion of that waste has completely spent its radioactivity. There is
a portion of it that is useful as medical isotopes. There is still more that
can be put to other uses. We just need to find applications for the waste
rather than spend all of our time trying to find a way to store it.

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charlesju
Lets start a list of applications we could use with nuclear batteries:

\- Nuclear powered electric cars. Recharge like how one would change oil.

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DanielBMarkham
The killer app for these: flexible nuclear battery-powered e-books with color
e-ink and 20-year lifespans.

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Mongoose
I'd be interested to read what Energizer and Procter & Gamble think about this
kind of tech.

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cmars232
Reminds me of the Foundation series -- the 1st foundation miniaturized nuclear
powered devices.

