Betavoltaics have been around for 40+ years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device
This device generates microwatts. You’d need thousands of them in parallel to power a typical mobile phone.
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2024
41 points (67.8% liked)
Technology
59449 readers
3574 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
A betavoltaic device (betavoltaic cell or betavoltaic battery) is a type of nuclear battery which generates electric current from beta particles (electrons) emitted from a radioactive source, using semiconductor junctions. A common source used is the hydrogen isotope tritium. Unlike most nuclear power sources which use nuclear radiation to generate heat which then is used to generate electricity, betavoltaic devices use a non-thermal conversion process, converting the electron-hole pairs produced by the ionization trail of beta particles traversing a semiconductor.Betavoltaic power sources (and the related technology of alphavoltaic power sources) are particularly well-suited to low-power electrical applications where long life of the energy source is needed, such as implantable medical devices or military and space applications.
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Why the fuck does this bot copy the text into a code block? It makes it unreadable.
I've done that so that it appears highlighted and seperated. Which client do you use? It's definitely readable for me.
It appears using a monospaced font on Jerboa. It's definitely less readable than if it was in a block quote style IMO
Edit: I'd also request that you wrap the whole thing in spoiler tags so that it collapses and doesn't take a bunch of vertical space in a thread
Thanks for the suggestions. I'll look into them.
Alright so, I added a sentence reduction functionality so the bot's responses should be smaller now and also instead of using code markdown, I just made it so that the text appears bold. The spoiler markdown seems a bit unneeded here as the sentence reduction should already make the text small.
Looks fine on Boost for Lemmy IMO!
What's the specific energy and power? If it isn't terrible, could be very good for things like spacecraft.
With all the CCP misinformation about them making 5nn chips, this could be another bullshit tech coming from the CCP.
Deep space probes are already nuclear power sources.
Right now this is mostly a radio isotope heat source and a peltier device to convert the temperature differential to electricity.
Yeah, RTDs. But I don't know if these semi conductor based ones would have better performance.
Not for space craft if what @MilderRichter says is right. To generate power from a peltier you need a temperature differential between the two sides. It is very hard to bleed off heat in space since it's a vacuum. That means a temperature differential is very difficult to achieve and it takes power to do that. Which would necessitate more of these, which means a bigger or additional heat removal system, which means you need more of these, which means a bigger or additional heat removal system, etc, etc, etc.
According to the article, it outputs 100 micro watts at 3 volts. Apparently for 50 years.
So less than 150watthours over its entire lifespan?
So you'd need 10,000 of them to generate 1 watt.
Sounds useless.
Vapor
Is this similar to Nuclear Diamond Battery that EEVBlog covered years ago?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=5M5MF6KE-jY
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Meanwhile the Voyager proves launched in 1977 are still live and kicking. Yeah one of them is getting pissy at us but it's still rolling.
Just what we need, radioactive materials in our waste stream.
It already exists, so…
...so let's make it worse?
With the amounts being talked about, it’s not really that much of a concern. We aren’t talking about putting a demon core in your pocket.
One individual Duracell is also pretty harmless but I sure am glad that people don't throw them into nature.
I mean yeah, but no one is talking about tossing either into nature.
That is exactly what I commented on. See OC:
radioactive materials in our waste stream
I took “waste stream” to mean “the process after a device is no longer used.” Some waste is recycled, some is out in landfill, and more than should ends up in nature.
Most of the time, these types of things would be recycled. But obviously that doesn’t happen all the time. The rest of the time will be dominated by landfill, but that’s actually not that huge a problem. It’s not like the metals are going to grow legs and run around irradiating stuff any more than a Duracell. The last group is the environment proper, but keep in mind there’s already radioactive shit out and about in the world. You can find radioactive rocks literally just laying on the ground. It’s not actually that much of a danger unless a large amount of radioactive material (or a small amount of highly irradiated material which this is not) manages to find its way into a pile.
Honestly, I’d be more concerned about the conventional pollution aspect than the radiation.