
Researchers are developing a battery powered by diamonds made from nuclear waste - lysp
https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive-diamond-batteries-a-cure-for-nuclear-waste/
======
areoform
Our civilizational message in a bottle, the Voyager Records and Pioneer
Plaques will outlive their power sources by an incomprehensible amount. The
record is estimated to survive for more than a billion years. The power source
for less than 40 before it is rendered unusable.

The message will travel onwards forever, cloaked in dark, dashing the hopes of
any recovery. Of bringing joy to alien beings. Of giving them certainty that
they certainly weren't alone in the universe at some point in their past.

What if we could create something, some undefined means to generate a pulse
ever X years for more than a billion years? Is it possible to make a billion
year battery? Oxford's Electric Bell at a cosmic time scale? Could human
ingenuity create a device that would make our next message in a bottle more
discoverable for those beings who do not exist yet?

Is it possible for humanity, with current technology and scientific knowledge,
to transcend its cradle and create something that functions for billions of
years?

~~~
wongarsu
Sending pulses that are detectable for even just a couple light years requires
surprisingly high power (unless it's a very tight beam, which would be rather
pointless for this purpose). That would be a huge challenge with fitting it on
an interstellar probe. Our best bet would probably a geothermal setup powering
a radio beacon, located on Mercury or Mars; or maybe on a moon that is heated
by high tidal forces.

We could also try engineering something similar to natural nuclear reactors
[1], powering up a radio beacon once water rises high enough every couple of
years. That might run for a million years or so.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reacto...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_nuclear_fission_reactor)

~~~
dr_dshiv
Why not use a passive solar heliograph, e.g. a spinning cubic or dodecahedron
mirror? That should last for a million years or more.

~~~
me_me_me
At that stage you are having different considerations.

And first contact is probably less scary if you can build mega structures in
the orbit. Vanity mega structures if its sole purpose is to announce your
presence to the universe.

------
KindOne
Discussion about this topic was posted/flagged yesterday, it was a different
website.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24324684)

Discussion on reddit about this topic from 3 days ago with 350+ comments.

[https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iiedk4/energy_f...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/iiedk4/energy_firm_says_its_nuclearwaste_fueled_diamond/)

------
beervirus
eevblog had a good video about this product:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzV_uzSTCTM)

~~~
tdeck
TL;DR it's a 100 microwatt power source which is essentially nothing for most
applications.

~~~
pantalaimon
The Ambiq Apollo3 uses 6µA/MHz at 3.3V (so 20µW/MHz), so that's something.

You can also use it to charge a capacitor that can provide short bursts of
energy so you can use it for sensors that sleep most of the time, taken a
measurement and send some data, then sleep again.

------
bcatanzaro
So the first problem is that power output is very low. But the second problem
is worse:

You cannot turn this power source off.

At 7% efficiency, if you had a 1W battery, it would dissipate somewhere around
13W of heat. If your smartphone needs 5W then it would dissipate somewhere
around 65W of heat. Constantly.

Radioactive decay doesn't turn off.

~~~
scotty79
Not a problem in this case because those batteries are less than miliwatt in a
pretty macroscopic package.

~~~
bcatanzaro
Yeah. I'm just pointing out that if you tried to scale this to useful power
amounts, the waste heat would be overwhelming.

------
allears
They sure have got themselves a lot of press. However, PR skills doth not a
product make. In fact, all the noise just increases my scepticism.

~~~
tn890
Agreed. For almost 10 years now we keep hearing about these wonderful new
batteries that are just a couple years away.

Posted from a Li-ion powered device.

~~~
akvadrako
This is not like other batteries - it’s nuclear. Nuclear batteries are old
school - they have been powering the voyager probes since the 80s.

And the issues are different - less technical - more political.

~~~
saxonww
These aren't RTGs though, they are betavoltaic. Instead of using thermocouples
to capture part of the decay heat (of plutonium, in Voyager's case), they
generate current from beta particles hitting a semiconductor.

~~~
akvadrako
What’s the significance in that? I mean, why are beta particles less political
than decay heat?

~~~
saxonww
RTGs are only really useful with particular elements; plutonium is used
because it emits a lot of heat for a very long time. People freak out about
plutonium.

I think these betavoltaic cells can use elements which are less likely to get
people upset about proliferation or environmental effects. It's not the same
thing at all, but I think you could compare these favorably with e.g.
Americium in common smoke detectors (alpha decay).

Edit: also your comment just said nuclear batteries and voyager, but these
batteries are not anything like those batteries and should not be thought of
as the same, regardless of politics.

------
transfire
Radioactive batteries are certainly possible (and some exist). Achieving power
levels and safety requirements for everyday use is the difficulty.

I realized some years ago it would be possible to make rechargable hafnium
batteries. They would be awesome -- but you have to figure out a highly
effcient means of converting gamma rays into electricity.

~~~
falcolas
In a better version of the article[0], it’s mentioned how they’ve
significantly increased the efficiency - by adding Carbon 14 to lab-grown
diamonds. Carbon 14 is both radioactive and a semiconductor, meaning more of
the beta particles are changed into electricity.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333019](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24333019)

------
NiceWayToDoIT
Does not says anything about power levels?

There is debunking
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDFlV0OEK5E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDFlV0OEK5E)
it saying that power level are impractical for anything large, therefore it is
pipe dream in regards to removing all the nuclear waste.

------
mensetmanusman
Fun to think of a future civilization 1000 years from now getting an alert to
change a battery, and then all the effort it would take them to look through
ancient documents to figure out the process :)

~~~
hinkley
This talk of permanent batteries reminds me of the little power spheres in the
final Foundation series by Asimov et al.

~~~
inetknght
Stargate, zero point module.

------
Natsu
I wonder if this is non-radioactive enough to be sealed inside the human body
for things like a brain/computer interface. Implant the electrodes +
transmitter inside the skull and seal it up, then have a receiver device
outside the skull receive and interpret the signals to control things.

Hard part would be making it safe enough and just how many people would need
something bad enough to do literal brain surgery for such a thing.

~~~
qayxc
It's safe enough already - betavoltaics are only held back by their super low
power density and insanely high price.

~~~
Natsu
What about the size?

~~~
Dylan16807
You can make them very small, a couple millimeters. The power density will
cripple you long before you hit a size limit.

------
kavalg
TLDR (kind of)

* Using alpha/beta decay in a diamond structure to generate electricity in the battery

* Utilizing nuclear waste in the process

* They say the battery is safe for civil use (e.g. not limited to military/industrial use)

* About the same price as a LiIon battery for a Tesla (~$9K)

* However, it recharges itself and shall last for decades !

* They want to do a pay as you go sales, but also extract revenue for the utilization of nuclear waste.

* Done with the PoC. Doing a commercial prototype. Outlook is ~2y time to market.

* Targeting the UPS market at big cloud datacenters as a first customer

* They say technology works from nano scale (bots) to cars and industrial applications. However military/industrial could be first large deployments (no need to comply with same regulations)

------
not2b
Perhaps useful to power sensors in remote areas that only need a bit of power
but solar isn't a good option (maybe in mines or underwater). The power
density is too low to handle anything than needs a lot of power.

------
Zenst
I posted this a day ago and a great comment worth checking:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320915](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24320915)

------
puskavi
I wonder if this was the same company EEVblog debunked. It was mostly
marketing claims, as these things make so little energy its pretty much
useless on earth.

------
zenexer
Wasn’t this debunked? As I recall, after some digging, it came to light that
the amount of power offered by a typical-sized battery from this company even
at 100% efficiency would be on the order microwatts. There was even an article
paid for by the company with an illustration displaying 100 uW on the unit.

I’m not at my computer and can’t easily dig up sources at the moment, but I
doubt they’re hard to find.

------
aaron695
Unlike usual, this fake product at least is getting some comments about how
it's fake.

But still there seems no emerging consensus it's fake, and this has been
posted multiple time.

If nothing can be done about this egregious example, think about what happens
to the other 99% of times where it's fake but it takes a little more thinking.

~~~
Cerium
I don't understand. It is nearly useless but it does not seem fake to me.

~~~
aaron695
This is similar to what the Russians for example do... but, what if,
technically, we are not sure, in the future, you can't be sure.

People have posted half hour long videos explaining this and the circles
continue.

If it's 'useless' it should be flagged and not posted again.

I'm not a lawyer so technicalities on the English language don't interest me.

To barely begin, the title is "Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries a Cure for
Nuclear Waste?"

Because it has a question mark might work in a court room, but I'm not
interested. We are not children. It's just deceitful and fake.

------
jedberg
> Radiation levels from a cell, says the company, will be less than the
> radiation levels produced by the human body itself, making it totally safe
> for use in a variety of applications.

That makes sense until you put say 10 of these devices into and on your
body...

~~~
lstodd
Not at all if it actually puts out less radiation than the same volume of
tissue.

------
loukrazy
A way better write up than this fluff piece: [https://www.wired.com/story/are-
radioactive-diamond-batterie...](https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive-
diamond-batteries-a-cure-for-nuclear-waste/)

~~~
dang
Ok, we've changed to that from [https://www.electronics-lab.com/self-charging-
thousand-year-...](https://www.electronics-lab.com/self-charging-thousand-
year-battery-completes-lab-tests/). Thanks!

------
m0zg
Whenever I see a headline like this, it makes me think of this paper:
[https://www.socmot.uni-
konstanz.de/sites/default/files/09_Go...](https://www.socmot.uni-
konstanz.de/sites/default/files/09_Gollwitzer_Sheeran_Seifert_Michalski_When_Intentions_.pdf).
TL;DR: sharing one's intentions and receiving attention/praise for them seems
to make follow-through less likely.

------
mrmcd
It cost me $10k to mod the battery on my phone, but now I won't have to charge
it again for over 5,000 years.

------
Ericson2314
What a headline...

------
transfire
One big problem -- I expect existing battery companies would make sure tech
like this would never see the light of day, even if it were possible. Too much
money to be made with disposable batteries.

~~~
Nasrudith
That conspiratorial trope misses the prisoners dilemia aspect of it. Assuming
no other sensible objections to the technology (like assuming radiation would
scare people from buying it and get it banned from many contexts regardless of
actual danger) they know that if they discovered it competitors could do so as
well. Furthermore if they went with it they could practically monopolize the
market with short term gains and even if they destroyed their steady income
stream (unlikely given there would still be some demand) the short term gains
could be reinvested elsewhere. Relying on publically traded corporations to
think long term when there are short term profits to be made? That is the
opposite of the norm.

~~~
teawrecks
The Light Bulb Conspiracy would like to have a word with you. Planned
obsolescence is how technological advances are funded.

~~~
phaemon
The conspiracy that was continually undermined by its own members and
collapsed after just 6 years? I think that reinforces their point rather than
yours.

