News - Portable nuclear battery a step closer

[HEXUS]

Packs in “up to a million times more energy” than a conventional battery.

Read more.

[jimbouk]

Well how else are we going to power our 12" Quad-HD screen smartphone with a 16 core CPU?

[demonwolf]

Sooo.. power sources for iron man armour are potentially in the works. HIGH FIVE!

[bobfoc]

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

[FeaRdXcisionZ]

This will not end well.

[Roobubba]

No longer the 'power of a million candles' - this is the 'power of a million batteries!'

[flearider]

fook the suitcase bomb ..now we have to worry about a smartphone or watch that can blow half a city up .. yeah great news .. but we are far from rdy for this .. and most of what we have

[Kirano]

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?

[Turquoisetim]

Great for the elctric cars

[duc]

When did the University of Surrey become a subsidiary of Cyberdyne Systems.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2007/1...60427320071220

[Phage]

I thought this was about the small reactors mentioned here.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01...n_2505738.html
I had a very interesting chat with a bloke from Urenco about them.
http://www.urenco.com/custom/1/homepage/default.aspx

[crossy]

Well how else are we going to power our 12" Quad-HD screen smartphone with a 16 core CPU?

Timing's great considering all the hype over these "smart watches" this week - couple one of those with this "nuke" battery and you might actually have a usable product. Especially if these are rechargable in some way - sorry if this is daft, only did high school physics a couple of decades ago.

But is Bismuth another one of those "rare earth elements" in which case are we going to have to go cap in hand to the Chinese again.

Of course, if the power-storage/weight ratio is good then I foresee phenomenal demand - once scaled up - for electric cars. Interesting...

[scaryjim]

There's plenty of nuclear batteries in use already, albeit on a much larger scale - Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators convert the heat generated by nuclear decay - usually of Plutonium 238 - into electricity. Of course, there would be certain health issues with carrying around lumps of material that naturally glow red due to internal heating from their own radioactive decay

Bi-212 appears to have a pretty short half-life and ultimately decays into a stable isotope of lead, so I guess it makes sense as a target for portable applications. Can't happen soon enough IMNSHO (imagine, a battery that could power your smartphone for 2700 years )

[Tpyo]

In short, nothing to do with nuclear fission. Nothing to do with nuclear bombs!
(Some text deleted)
So let's stop the unnecessary fear mongering before it really gets going and admire the coolness of technology, k?

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 testicular 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.

Thankfully, I severely doubt they intend to stock these things in your local electronics store any time soon.

[Kirano]

Especially if these are rechargable in some way - sorry if this is daft.

It's not daft at all actually! But 'recharging them' would be complicated!

So, the Bismuth-212 decays first by beta emission to Polonium-212 which in turn decays by alpha emission to inactive (stable) Lead-208. Now, if you could find a reaction that woudl take you from the Lead-208 back up to Bismuth-212, then you could recharge it. I can think of a few that would do it.

Having having looked at the relevant tables, I'm not actually sure how they make the Bismuth-212 in the first place! :/ The only stable isotope of Bismuth is 209 and I can't see an easy way of getting from that to 212! Then again, they have a whopping great big big accelerator system, far outside the range of the stuff I usually work with, so anything goes I guess!

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 only problem is, what happens in a car crash and all that radioactive material gets released? While Bismuth and it's decay products are 'relatively' harmless on paper, the effects get serious if you breathe it in!