News - Portable nuclear battery a step closer

[Kirano]

Agreed BUT tell me if I'm missing something...

Bismuth 212 has a half life of around (an hour?). How long would the battery still be putting out useable energy (genuine question - anyone know?) - I thought the main advantage of nuclear batteries was their long life (esp. given that they are not rechargeable).

Bi-212 is an alpha emitter. GOOD NEWS. Even a sheet of paper between it at your crown jewels should protect you from 'ball cancer', yet alone any casing of the device it was powering.

NOW FOR THE BAD PART - If Bi-212 is a short half-life alpha emitter, doesn't that make it excellent source material for a 'dirty bomb'. Get enough of it airborn in a blast and the contamination of the area might not last long, but anyone who inhales any quantity of alpha-emmitter to remain and decay in their lungs will not be doing so bad. While highly impractical as a real weapon, this would be extremely practical as a weapon of terror. Your victims would be alive and suffering for sufficiently long to garner you a LOT of airtime. Their public (and painful) deaths would probably induce all the publci fear you'd need.

The short answer is... no!

Firstly, Bi-212 is not an alpha emitter. It's decay product Polonium-212 is which has a half life of generally less than a microSecond but occasionally up to a minute, is the alpha emitter.

Secondly, the half life of Bismuth-212 being so short (an hour at most) you would have to create it and release the bomb in a matter of hours for it to be of an use. Creating Bismuth-212 isn't like creating a milkshake. You need a high powered accelerator and sufficient target material. So you're looking at building and setting off your bomb at the most less than an hours drive from such a facility, of which there are very few with sufficient capabilities for creating this kind of material.

Thirdly, even if you could get the material, build you bomb and transport it, realistically, this it going to take at the least an hour, if not two, by which point a half to a quarter of your material has already decayed. The point of the bomb would be to spread this stuff over a wide area right? You'd be further diluting your activity and be reaching a point where the immediate effects of the radiation would be virtually nill! It takes A LOT of radiation for someone to die of radiation sickness!

Finally, given the complexity of what you'd be trying to do, you would get noticed and stopped!

[warmstrong]

Isn't this what Terminators use ;-)

[valhar2000]

Not sure I'm so worried about my phone giving me ball cancer now, more so the mini Chernobyl that powers it!!!!!

Yeah, except that one thing has nothing to do with the other.

[Tpyo]

The short answer is... no!
... even if you could get the material, build you bomb and transport it, realistically, this it going to take at the least an hour, if not two, by which point a half to a quarter of your material has already decayed. The point of the bomb would be to spread this stuff over a wide area right? You'd be further diluting your activity and be reaching a point where the immediate effects of the radiation would be virtually nill! It takes A LOT of radiation for someone to die of radiation sickness!

Thanks for the info.

Follow-up question - surely the length of time the bismuth would be dangerous is directly related to the length of time it would be useful as a battery. Ergo - any battery based on storing charged Bi-212 would be very short lived and face all the same issues.

Re: Radiation sickness. I was thinking more of long-term issues like cancer. People would generate the immediate fear/drama, not intiial damage from the blast. If people know they were exposed, they're alive and healthy for a long time to keep whatever issue was the 'cause' of the blast in the news. Any and all cancers in exposed individuals in the future would be attributed to the blast by the press, and re-invigorate the coverage.

PS - A quick search on the interwebs suggests Bi-212 decays by both alpha (to Tl-208 by alpha emission, followed by beta emission to lead) or beta-emission (to polonium-212 followed by alpha emission to lead - note: shaky interweb source and this obviously isn't my field - I didn't even know any isotopes could have multiple decay pathways!), and that around 2/3 is by the beta/polonium pathway you describe.

[zaph0d]

Re: electric cars, they already are using/planning the use of spacecraft and deep space satellites that are powered by the decay heat from radioactive isotopes, so the technology exists!

The tech has been in existance and in use for decades. Good 'ole Voyager I and Voyager II from the late 70's use Plutonium 238 based RTG (Radio-isotope Thermo-electric Generator) that put out 470W brand new and 315W 23 years later (about 33% less). This loss was more to do with the degradation of the Thermocouples (heat to electricity conversion) than the nuclear material which was still putting out 83% of the heat it did when brand new.

Still, I don't see these going into phones/tablets/laptops etc, gotta get rid of the excess heat and these things run HOT!

In a car is more likely, conceivably you could use the excess heat to warm water and drive a small turbine to generate a little more to up the efficiency.

However, if they've found a way to convert radiation directly into electricity and have also found a way to stop-start the material degradation then it might run cold enough to put into something the size of a laptop but I doubt it'd go into a phone/tablet.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

As indicated in my previous post in this thread,nuclear powered pacemakers have been working for decades.

[Kirano]

Thanks for the info.

Follow-up question - surely the length of time the bismuth would be dangerous is directly related to the length of time it would be useful as a battery. Ergo - any battery based on storing charged Bi-212 would be very short lived and face all the same issues.

Re: Radiation sickness. I was thinking more of long-term issues like cancer. People would generate the immediate fear/drama, not intiial damage from the blast. If people know they were exposed, they're alive and healthy for a long time to keep whatever issue was the 'cause' of the blast in the news. Any and all cancers in exposed individuals in the future would be attributed to the blast by the press, and re-invigorate the coverage.

PS - A quick search on the interwebs suggests Bi-212 decays by both alpha (to Tl-208 by alpha emission, followed by beta emission to lead) or beta-emission (to polonium-212 followed by alpha emission to lead - note: shaky interweb source and this obviously isn't my field - I didn't even know any isotopes could have multiple decay pathways!), and that around 2/3 is by the beta/polonium pathway you describe.

You are correct, my mistake! It does decay in part by alpha emission. My previous points still stand though...

Regarding how long it would be dangerous for... I don't understand how this battery concept really works - most of the concepts that people have posted above(zaph0d and CAT-THE-FIFTH) rely on much longer lived isotopes! How they can make an isotope with a one hour half life useful for a long term battery is, currently, beyond me. I imagine that what ever this 'nuclear battery' is, it's very different from what we've seen previously.
But even if it were to remain dangerous for a length of time - what are you going to do? Steal loads of watches?!?

And finally, regarding the issue of radiation induced cancers.... That's something that, frankly, is incredibly difficult, if not impossible to quantify. Over 20 years on from Chernobyl and we still don't know (and may never truely know) the 'number' of cancers that were caused by that event as opposed to natural cancer rate + any number of other potential cancer inducing routes. We're not even sure of the dose limit at which the effects of radiation are quantifyable. It's all statistical guess work.

The other thing to bear in mind is - an event like this would put people exposed on a medical watch list. They'd get far more regular check ups, as there chance of getting a cancer would be elevated, and it's more likely that a cancer would be spotted early and there chances of survival greater! Ironically, they'd probably be more likely to survive in the long term!

[crossy]

However, if they've found a way to convert radiation directly into electricity and have also found a way to stop-start the material degradation then it might run cold enough to put into something the size of a laptop but I doubt it'd go into a phone/tablet.

I remember reading something about carbon nano-tubes being used as some kind of "solar panel for other radiation".

EDIT:
There's High-energy Beta-particle source for BetaVoltaic Power Converter but that could be complete moonshine. On the other hand, Nuclear Energy Conversion with Stacks of Graphene Nano-capacitors seems to come from a decent source.

[Blademrk]

I had a Bismuth crystal as a Christmas present (a 2" high pyramid shaped piece) hard to believe it could be the key to powering a nuclear battery.

[ajax2061]

now your really have to worry about exploding iphone batterys !

[bobfoc]

Despite the fact that this is absolutely my area of research (I study isotope for medical purposes - physics remains the same), I've heard almost nothing about this! :s

Rest assured though that it's not going to be a 'mini-chernobyl.' This is going to involve harnessing the decay energy from bismuth-212 and using that to power a device. Quite how, I honestly don't know.

In order to turn it into a nuclear bomb, you'd need material that was fissionable and someway of getting it to achieve critical mass (usually a ball of C4 surrounding the fissionable core.) No device as small as a watch could be turned into a weapon that could 'blow half a city up.' Sufficient energy just isn't there in the material!

Edit: Further poking around on the internet indicates that a 'nuclear battery' would run of the nuclear decay of a long-lived excited state of Bi-212 which the hope to somehow force to release its energy on cue.

In short, nothing to do with nuclear fission. Nothing to do with nuclear bombs!

So let's stop the unnecessary fear mongering before it really gets going and admire the coolness of technology, k?

When did thee folk here all of a sudden lose their sense of humour????

Must've decayed like Bi -212

[Kirano]

When did thee folk here all of a sudden lose their sense of humour????

Must've decayed like Bi -212

Oh, don't get me wrong, I appreciate it may have been said with humour in mind. The sad fact is though that if you mention the word 'nuclear' anywhere, in any context, many people honestly believe that it must be going to cause/create...
1) Another Chernobyl
2) A nuclear bomb

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The first post I made in the thread was about a Plutonium power pacemaker that someone has been using for 34 years.

[Kirano]

The first post I made in the thread was about a Plutonium power pacemaker that someone has been using for 34 years.

I had noticed CAT-THE-FIFTH! And a good post it was too!

What intrigues me is that - Bi-212 has a half-life of 1hr, as compared to the Plutonium pacemaker you mention which has a much much much longer half-life (thus it's completely understandable that they have used it to power devices!) How something with such a short half-life could be used to power a device like a phone battery for many many years is competely knew to me - and assure you that the technology would be very, very different from that which powered the pace-maker, the Voyager satellites and the mirad of other applications there have been of long-lived radioactive isotopes!

tl;dr - No one's been ignoring your post Cat, it's just that what they're talking about in this research is very different!

Edit: oh and I get as well that this may have been in response to my above post #28. In which case, further kudos to you!

[eugenius]

I hope it's not made in China.

[crossy]

I hope it's not made in China.

OMG can you imagine the Daily Mail coverage on that?! "Yellow Peril Assault and Battery", etc.

Actually I remember reading a short sci-fi story where the "black hats" did exactly that - they sold the west dirt cheap power packs then held them/us to ransom by threatening to explode clusters of them.