Chinese Nuclear Batteries: Deadly or Genius?

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

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Nevermind powering your iphone. Cars could be powered by them too. They have tried some concepts in the 50s. But ideally its best use is in space applications and remote research devices.

[@ghfhhable]

Hi sir, It is indeed very interesting and promising product. But I have one question though... How does the battery keeps constant power? Power should reduce over time right? A battery should have almost constant power right?.

[@poolhalljunkie9]

@ghfhhable the radiation is the power source. It's kind of like walking around with your phone plugged in. It does reduce over time, it's just a really long time. I, for one, love the idea of nuclear batteries but with the way electronic waste is handled already by people with lithium batteries could you imagine how bad it would get with nuclear? For vehicles it would def be awesome if they could make containment devices strong enough to withstand any potential wrecks while still maintaining a decent cost....and keep morons from tearing them apart.

[@AlfarrisiMuammar]

Soviet only nuclear batteries for searchlights in the Arctic Sea . Why does China need such a large amount?

[@Skiridr22]

Can you please go through some of these comments and blocked those that don’t relate

[@domenicobarillari2046]

Nuclear physicist here with some added info: TwoBit is essentially correct in all points. Using Ni-63 is about as safe as you can possibly have things in a device such as this, even in quantities of 50 Ci (Curies). A Curie is 37,000,000,000 decays per second, and while that is a large number in absolute terms, and 50x this would represent a dangerous amount of cobalt-60, say, this is NOT the case for this nickle isotope. It's all in the radiation characteristics. The radiation emitted in this case is an electron ("beta") with an energy of 67 keV max ( roughly that of a diagnostic X-ray photon, BTW). As the electrons hit the converter plates in the device , they release more electrons at lower energies such that an electrical current at a useable potential can be extracted. Keep in mind that an ampere is a flow of 6.24 x 10^18 electrons per second and so you can appreciate why so many starting, higher energy electrons are needed to make this work. As for penetrating power, these electrons have none for all practical purposes. [ for the purists, there is a slight amount of detectable X-ray from any small device holding such amounts of Ni-63, due to conversion of electrons smacking the metallic structural bits]. Ni-63 is so safe, in fact, that many chemists use it without knowing it: 50 Ci Ni-63 detectors are very common in gas chromatographs used in analytical laboratories. At one time I regulated the use in 40 laboratories in one University. FYI, the nickle is plated on copper/bronze foil and placed into a partly sealed detector capsule (by the manufacturer), from which ionization of moving sample gas reveals the presence of detectables. Best regards and good work TwoBit. DKB

[@serenitygoodwyn]

They question becomes, not, is it safe when used as intended. If it were more widely available the question is will it become dangerous when not used as intended, and Joe public with no understanding of what they are dealing with, starts doing stupid things with it. Like the guy at the local recycling centre when I took an old malfunctioning fire detector and asked him where it should go (assuming it should go in a specific area to be disposed of safely) who took it off me and started yanking it apart and didn't stop even when I objected that there was a radioactive source inside and he shouldn't do that.

[@domenicobarillari2046]

@@serenitygoodwyn The answer insofar as practical effects is that an item such as TwoBit is handling would likely have to be heavily abused to open, and has an intrinsic safety factor to begin with - its physics. I will add that his hazard chart is, in fact, useless in this regard (something I was tactfully ignoring) as it applies mainly when dealing with penetrating radiations (gamma) applied to substantial portions of the body. He may not even know what a Seivert unit is! Its hazard is from a content that has to be liberated by chemical or physical "violence", since the item in question is an internally plated, pure beta emitter, and one encased a "monolithic circuit can". Applying the material to the skin would over time result in a superficial beta burn. Trying to eat it wouldn't do much as the stomach cannot intake nickel ion, and one would wind up passing it out before even a low local dose could accrue.. Again, practically it is hard to envision how this could harm anyone in any significant sense. The sense of danger is attached, once more, to the notion of radioactivity as a mystery rather than to real science - not an untypical situation, and one I have encountered through the years in relating to the public you allude to.

[@serenitygoodwyn]

@@domenicobarillari2046 My degree was in physics, granted 20+ years ago, so I'm not inclined to 'it's radioactive so it's scary by default'. I have however worked in IT for deceased and as a solution architect am used to having to think in terms of systems and having to predict so far as is possible the creative ways users will break the system. Which tends to make me cynical and cautious. You say it would have to be heavily abused to open, that's not a problem for a user. You also say 'to be liberated by chemical or physical 'violence'' which means it can be liberated and therefor will be liberated by some. Assuming as you say even if they manage to liberate it, they are unlikely to suffer any significant harm as an individual there are still potential wider implications that need to be considered. People don't dispose of ordinary batteries appropriately sticking them in their rubbish or wrong recycling. If even a few people damage the nuclear batteries and then dispose of them inappropriately where they are taken to a central dump or recycling facility then potentially that could become a problem for the people who work there as the centralized nature of these facilities means the problem would be concentrated in one place. The facilities themselves may then unknowingly process the batteries in such a way that would liberate the hazardous material so even non damaged batteries improperly disposed of could pose a hazard to workers. Any materials produced from recycling centers could potentially achieve concentrations that could be harmful. For example, I personally know someone IRL who worked in an office in a steel plant. The plant recycled scrap, the guards were supposed to turn away any delivery trucks that set of the radiation sensors, they regularly didn't claiming the sensor was overly sensitive. Perhaps it was, but then why wasn't it recalibrated, or perhaps it wasn't and they didn't want to deal with the paperwork and hassle of refusing a truck. This was in a developed western country where rules are strict, this is a much bigger problem already in countries where the rules and consequences for breaking those rules are not so strict. For example, there have been examples of steel belt buckles for a major high-street store being confiscated at customs for being dangerously radioactive. This problem would only be worse if nuclear batteries were readily available. There is also the potential for bad actors to intestinally process the batteries with an intention to harming others. There has already been a case of a man collecting old smoke detectors and extracting the source to the point of being a hazard to himself and his neighbors. He was caught and claimed he was trying to create his own nuclear reactor. Was he, or was he planning a dirty bomb, either way it wasn't going to end well. We can't simply assume people will use them and dispose of them as intended. We cant assume that people won't maliciously misuse them. We know that neither assumption is correct. That doesn't mean we shouldn't use them but these scenarios need to be considered and tested appropriately to ensure not assume they wont become a problem.

[@domenicobarillari2046]

​@@serenitygoodwyn My answer would be that you are hunting for serious consequence for an item highly unlikely, ultimately by physics constraints and not engineering, to produce any personal or societal effect of any interesting magnitude. What I did in my previous response is what I do when explaining mitigation of hazard from nuclear power. I was for a period - when my country was rapidly expanding its CANDU fleet - a nuclear engineer for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, and designed their Shut Down System Number 2. My academic status at that juncture was MASc in nuclear engineering, later specializing in analyzing and categorizing, via Bayesian models, accident scenarios for licensing purposes. (I became a "legitimate" physicist later...) The explanations, viz a viz the more popular reactors topic , was meant to demonstrated the "layered protection approach" to engineered barriers in place in our plant, to the public, from contamination from the fission product load of the fuel should various degrees of overheat occur. Carrying the analogous discussion to the point where one has had actual release and actual uptake by the public - now know colloquially as "Chernobyl stage" failure- we are at the point of looking at actual intrinsic health hazard of any nuclear substance in question. Nickel-63 comes in at almost harmless for the physiological reasons I pointed out before (and not least its meagre, pure beta radiations). Even if NOT attempting a comparison to the plethora of more dangerous nuclides in fission product mix, it still stands as relatively harmless in face of almost any chemical or radiological toxin you can name. I repeat that its main "effect", if you will , would be a psychological one. I picture someone coming in to emergency with an odd tummy ache should he be silly enough to swallow the entire 50Ci content of one battery, and then more likely from the nitric acid the fool used to dislodge the radioactive plating. Thinking of a many battery scenario? - like your example with the 1uCi Am-241 sources from smoke detectors? Very similar if you check on the concoctions one could whip up by combination of nitric acid and hundreds of store bought detectors. Real societal risk? Hardly - more neighborhood scare and fodder for the KZbin "press". regards, DKB

[@EddieTheH]

​@@domenicobarillari2046 Yep, I suspect my nickel allergy would be the primary hazard over the radioactivity if I ate the thing.

[@ericnewton5720]

It’s a plate that keeps your food warm

[@DanielEarlester]

Gives you a great glow too

[@matgaw123]

Make powerbank out of it Would be perfect doesn't need to be fit or light because it's stored in for example backpack and last forever

[@Marta1Buck]

@@matgaw123 like, almost literally forever.

[@marginbuu212]

I could see these in really high-end watches. Not having to worry about battery life for 50 years is pretty nice.

[@straighttalk2069]

Not surviving the fifty years is pretty scary.

[@coffeeisgood102]

As a watch collector I can appreciate that idea.

[@FirstNumber1]

So the battery is charged once and then lasts for 50 years??? No way people that make regular batteries allow this to happen

[@michaellin4553]

That plus if we can get the power draw of a caesium CSAS into a lower range, you'll have a fully atomic watch

[@krzysztofkowalski2816]

engineering have to let go of the make it broken so they have to use us philosophy

[@Ryan-ff2db]

The radiation bit doesn't scare me in the least. The price tag however...

[@everythingpony]

45$? You ok?

[@Ryan-ff2db]

@@everythingpony What's $45? The price tag is over $5,000.

[@andreaphillian3947]

@@Ryan-ff2db $5,000 is nothing for a life time battery

[@Ryan-ff2db]

@@andreaphillian3947 A lifetime battery producing only 1/26th the power of an AA battery? You'd need 52 of these to run a remote control or 78 for my thermostat, which for some reason needs 3 AA batteries despite being hardwired to the house.

[@johngoard8272]

Now I am no expert or engineer but two things strike me straight away and that is a) the release of any radioactive material should the battery get severely damaged b) how do you recycle these batteries if they become non-usable before the amount of radioactive material is exhausted? Thankfully the cost is going to make them not for general consumption for a very long time.

[@neon-john]

The half-life of Ni-63 is 100.1 years In 100.1 years, it will be down to half the original battery.

[@saltymonke3682]

​@@neon-johnstill a hazard

[@jadesea562]

Incorrect. The smoke alarms on our ceilings are rarely touched and wayyyyyyy less likely to be damaged. Handheld electronics are dropped regularly. Thus, handheld radioactive batteries are multiples higher in risk and danger than smoke alarms isolated on ceilings that are rarely touched or toyed with by accident-prone humans. Relative behavioral norms matter.

[@smokeyninja9920]

A fission reaction doesn't occur accidentally, it requires specific radionuclides, and very specific conditions. But they aren't using the explodey radionuclides, and even if they were, the specific conditions are impossible to create accidentally. The only concern with these proposed nuclear batteries is if the case is damaged and it starts leaking radiation (probably detectable by a sudden decrease in power). Idk if that's preferable to lithium batteries tendency to explode if the internals get exposed to air, but it's cheaper to swap a battery than replace a whole device (well in theory at least, the likes of Apple and Samsung disagree with this notion and feel replacement batteries should cost at least as much as a new device)

[@DanielEarlester]

Yep, 240volt cables are fine in plastic cases.

[@CiaranMcHale]

On a tangential note, in the UK you can buy a smoke detector with a sealed 10-year lithium battery for about £15, and a carbon monoxide detector with a sealed lithium battery for about £20. Unfortunately, after 10 years you have to throw away the device and replace it with a new one, but there are several potential benefits to doing this. First, the overall cost will be comparable to, or cheaper than, a device in which you need to change AA or 9v batteries every year. Second, there is a risk of people forgetting to replace batteries on an annual basis, so it is less risky to install a device and remember to replace it once a decade (in both cases, occasional "low battery warning" beeping noises will help remind you). Finally, even mains-powered detectors have a recommended operating life of only 10 years. Hence, it would be overkill to use a $5000 radioactive battery in a smoke detector that will be replaced in 10 years, when significantly cheaper options already exist.

[@pieterpauwelbeelaerts5995]

​@@CiaranMcHale the thing I really miss with batteries today is: 1) you need to buy them or 2) you need to recharge them (manually) with chargers, which I mostly forget. Smoke alarms that go off because you forget batteries, well, they awake you in the middle of the night. Hate these things. While a 5000 dollar battery is definitely overkill, a device that charges a battery in a smoke detector automatically (like a solar panel) or a fuel cell, I would gladly pay for that, if the device doesn't make a sound.

[@CiaranMcHale]

@@pieterpauwelbeelaerts5995 It is possible to buy smoke/CO ("CO" = "carbon monoxide") detectors that are wired in to your electrical system, so you never need to change a battery. However, there is a possibility that sensors and electronics might malfunction over a long-enough time span. For this reason, it is recommended that smoke/CO detectors (regardless of whether they use batteries or mains-supplied electricity) be replaced every 10 years (source: an internet search). Because of this, it doesn't make economic sense to put a $5000 battery that can last hundreds/thousands of years into a smoke/CO detector that should be replaced after 10 years. However, it is possible to buy a smoke/CO detector with a sealed-in lithium battery that is rated to last 10 years. These work out cheaper than hiring an electrician once per decade to replace a wired-in smoke/CO detector, and about the same price as a smoke/CO detector that uses batteries you need to recharge/replace once per year.

[@EddieTheH]

Fiestaware is NOT depleted uranium. It's simply uranium that was never refined in the first place.

[@everettputerbaugh3996]

The brand name of the plate is "fiesta". The name of the company that made it is "Homer Laughlin". They are quite collectable, at least the original ones. They were reintroduced with somewhat different colors a while back. WW2 interrupted their supply of uranium oxide, but after the war they could get depleted uranium. The DU is under the glaze?

[@dannyleung2796]

A battery stops discharging when the device using the energy is turned off and the energy stayed within the battery. Nuclear batteries decay continuously to produce energy, when the device shuts down, where does the energy go?

[@NoHandleToSpeakOf]

Heat.

[@silversonic1]

That's verifiably untrue. Batteries continue to deplete even when stored. Chemical reactions continue to occur, even when there's nothing to pull the electrons away. The energy most often is lost as heat and/or the electrons find new homes in their surrounding environment. It's why batteries have expiration dates.

[@dannyleung2796]

@@NoHandleToSpeakOf Then where does heat go? Isn't that a problem? Imagine your phone gets hotter and hotter in your pocket because it keeps pouring heat that has nowhere to go.

[@NoHandleToSpeakOf]

@@dannyleung2796 Dissipates.

[@lagrangewei]

@@dannyleung2796 battery doesn't have high heat density, so that heat is not really problematic. your phone give off heat all the time. in fact your body give off heat all the time and the heat cell produce is not that much lower than a nuclear battery. if you are not going to get heat stroke, the phone will be fine. the main problem with nuclear battery isn't heat, it that it doesn't produce much power. so you are not going to get super bright screen out of it.

[@jamesmcpherson1590]

Safety and cost aside, considering that solar radiation can cause magnetic data corruption, it seem probable that nuclear radiation could cause the same problems, so if you wanted such a battery to power a phone, you'd need heavy shielding and/or error correction, or you'd need a data medium that is not susceptible to radiation induced data corruption. I'm sure there will be lots of applications where such a battery would fill the perfect niche, but for anything with magnetic data, I'm thinking there are a lot more technical problems to solve before the tech becomes feasible.

[@upehs]

The orange plate is more interesting than the topic of the video😂

[@stuntmonkey00]

@@upehs In PHYS101 they passed around samples and a geiger counter for us to try out. Then the red fiestaware plate got passed around and it set off the geiger counter the most lol. "You would all wash your hands after this" was what the instructor said lol.

[@bobrobertsNotUrBob]

here to say the same thing (kind of cause I always knew we would get to nuclear batteries), I have a lot of orange in my house..is there any info on what chemical they used or what?

[@melissablick779]

@@stuntmonkey00 Wonder how bad it was for folks who ate off such plates for years

[@nickreno644]

The topic is extremely interesting. You on the other hand, you are extremely boring. This is something that could help mankind in many many ways and if you’re so bored, maybe you should just find something else to mock? ❤

[@Scummit907]

My god..... We've have had the WHOLE FUCKING SET for a few years

[@sebd6651]

The problem is not the technology itself. They are perfectly able to create a safe, powerful and affordable nuclear battery for consumers. The big problem lays with the consumers themselves. The fact that a lot of electronics get's dumped into a garbage truck where it may end up in an incinerator fuming out a nuclear cloud. Thinkers who like to take things apart and create silent killers in your neighborhood and people obtaining large quantities just to create a dirty bomb. It's for these reasons we will not see any affordable nuclear batteries so a different battery technology is required for consumers.

[@johnywhil]

i have a bad news for you. average fossil coal plant....

[@scottthomas3792]

When I was in high school, the physics teacher had one of those orange plates...she did a radiograph with it...a shadow of a skeleton key on a sheet of Tri-X Pan 400 speed film... exposure time was a few weeks, but you did see the shadow of the key. This was the '70s...

[@Souchirouu]

Having these as a back-up for infrastructure projects sounds really huge from an IT perspective. You can probably strap a bunch of these onto network/server equipment for the digital infrastructure and give yourself enough time to get a team out there to fix the problem before an outage occurs.

[@terryburgess7613]

Why would anyone want a 50 year battery in their phone or laptop? You're gonna replace them in 5 tears max.

[@emirmorca5751]

Well that’s just assuming the technological rate will keep up. But at this rate? Without planned obsolescence? I think phones could last decades. No?

[@terryburgess7613]

@@emirmorca5751 could last decades, but most people will want the newest unit anyway

[@AgentOffice]

Maybe you put it in your new laptop

[@mimo5383]

I still actively use my iPad mini 128gb gen 2 (2013). Sure its only good for super limited things like a book reader or media consumption, but then it still works totally fine, even if it can't install anything from the app store.

[@terryburgess7613]

@@mimo5383 Would you want a battery that will last for 40+ more years in that machine?

[@CiaranMcHale]

The £20 carbon monoxide detector in my house contains a built-in, non-rechargeable, lithium battery that is supposed to last 10 years (at which point I throw away the carbon monoxide detector and buy a new one). Likewise, pacemakers have a built-in lithium battery that lasts about 10 years (at which point the pacemaker, rather than the battery, is replaced). My point is that devices that require just a tiny trickle of power for about a decade, lithium batteries do a good-enough job for most applications.

[@mrme21]

My dad has one of those pacemakers, and getting it replaced every 10 years is really dicey business at his age. That said, your point is not invalidated because solutions like magnetic resonance charging are possible solution, at least in the case of pacemakers.

[@coffeeisgood102]

I love that plate. No more fear of deadly bacteria in my food killing me and the bonus is it keeps the food hot.

[@Demonoid1990]

If that plate is "radioactive" it makes me wonder what other mondane objects we have laying around home that are as well..

[@calvinl2149]

Bananas.

[@IonorRea]

Most of the old radioactive stuff was already banned a long time ago, so unless you have some grandpa-era radium-infused watches glowing at night without the need for sun exposure, you are probably safe. But, there is so much toxic cancer-inducing stuff all around you and likely even on you ranging from recently sued Johnson & Johnson baby powder for giving women ovarian cancer to various forever chemicals used in rain-resistant clothing and low friction cookware, not to mention Made in China cheap clothing infused with heavy metals and all that chemical makeup junk made from chemicals people struggle to even pronounce due to which more sensitive women bodies facing significant rises in cancers and their babies birth defects that unless you live near nuclear fuel reprocessing site or poorly managed uranium mine/waste disposal site, radiation is likely least of your today's health concern... Everybody with a modern smartphone has a Geiger counter, as every time ionized radiation hits a camera, it produces a flash in an image as you can see on footage from Chernobyl, and this effect is used in some smartphone apps to give you rough estimates of X-Ray radiation, so you can check radiation levels around you for yourself, though you would not be able to find alpha radiation with this method despite ingesting/inhaling weak alpha radiation emitting particles can still give you some nice tumor as happened to Gulf War veterans inhaling atomized depleted uranium particles used in armor-piercing ammunition that spread across Iraq to make for some unhappy parents..

[@NoHandleToSpeakOf]

You could strap a small solar cell to the back of your phone and it would give more power at night off the star light.

[@AgentOffice]

No even in the day it's worthless

[@doityourself3293]

since isotope is about $250K per gram your looking at a battery in the $5k-10K price range.

[@AgentOffice]

Worth it

[@pedrowoolson4273]

Yeah, we need a 50 year battery for a device that a bloated operating system renders useless in 5...

[@basu_104]

1 sec in and I got the answer. Next second, I subscribed. Thanks for being actually to the point. Regards

[@jtbl100]

@4:21 The first floor mopping robot was made by iRobot, called Scooba, and came out in 2005. Not 2015.

[@scarletevans4474]

Are you sure about the numbers? You talk about 0.12 micro Sievert per hour, so 2.88 micro Sv per day and about 1.0512 mili Sv (mSv) per year, then suddenly jump 6 orders of magnitude (to around 993 Sv) from that?? HOW ON EARTH did you calculated it so that you suddenly jump by a factor of about 1000000???

[@Cherokeeseeker]

@@scarletevans4474 you beat me to it and you also brought proof.

[@scarletevans4474]

@@Cherokeeseeker Glad I could help! I usually like to know whether the numbers people give in videos at least make sense. I don't try to calculate everything myself, but 6 orders of magnitude of difference is too blatant to not notice that something was probably messes up or mistaken with something else! 😲

[@dergrive88]

Yeah... lmao it's basically impossible haha he did conversions wrong I guess

[@Cherokeeseeker]

@ I got super excited about betavoltaics a few years ago, until I saw the power output. Maybe replace the cmos battery on a motherboard?

[@stevesether]

It's sloppy editing, and miss-leading narration. The .12 micro sieverts/hour is just background radiation, not the battery. Unless he took the thing apart, which would be dangerous, there's no way to measure the radiation from the thing since the beta radiation is blocked by the casing. His numbers come from some published number of the total radioactivity level of the battery, not that meter he bought that's not able to measure anything from the battery.

[@gcewing]

Another problem with radioisotope power sources is that they put out a constant power whether they're being used or not. If no electrical power is being drawn, the power is dissipated as heat. So a phone with a 10W nuclear battery in it will be hot all the time, even when it's turned off.

[@Semargle]

This battery is really low power. But the first plane flew only 36 meters. And secondly, we don't use a phone or laptop all the time. During downtime, this battery can recharge the main battery, such as an ionistor.

[@connorferguson2269]

Nuclear batterys wont become consumer grade, id only trust that sort of thing with trained techs

[@davidmccarthy6061]

True, there is no way to make it idiot proof because they are always producing a better idiot.

[@Zindo.Majesty.HisMajesty]

Do they fit in pagers?😂 I love the idea if it’s safe.

[@utube091116]

Big no no, as history tells us how we treat our waste

[@Mike80528]

Isn't the biggest issue the steady state of solid-state nuclear batteries? It will ALWAYS be putting out peak power that you would have to dissipate somehow. That's fine for very low power devices, but devices that have surge power requirements are a problem.

[@mrme21]

I guess dissipating it as heat won't be too problematic for most use cases. For surge requirements presumably you'd pair it with capacitors or traditional batteries.

[@JohnJohn-ts6ux]

Hi sir appreciate your videos I find it interesting, but really why give us sponsor ad, it's not fair on us because it's enough we see KZbin ads come on respect😢

[@straighttalk2069]

This is common practice on you tube videos and that's why the right facing arrow on your keyboard is your best friend, just keep tapping it until the ad has disappeared.

[@stchan8569]

He has to make a living. Do think about the time researching about the information put to us and the effort to make the video.

[@circuitdotlt]

I'll keep replacing my CR2032 cells in my smart devices for now.

[@roldi49]

Doesn't Voyager have a kind of thermal nuclear battery? Smokedetectors with radioactive materials are forbidden in many parts of the world - except in the US.

[@stanislavjaracz]

Great episode. Never thought of a nuclear battery but now when you described it, pretty interesting concept. Thank you.

[@TwoBitDaVinci]

I’m glad you found it interesting, you’re very welcome!

[@utakubeta8311]

A better use would be as a perpetual battery charger. That is one of these tiny 3v jobs are constantly pushing out 3v @ .1amp or .3watts forever. That would mean after a period of time your XYZ would be recharged. Using lithium as the actual battery think of it as moving data from a HDD to a SSD. HDD are slow but better for long term usage, but SSDs are very fast. A nuclear battery of this design would be a constant trickle of power to guarantee effective perpetual power. just a thought for a use. Again, as noted, best use is a space-based item that needs emergency power that can always be relied upon in case of primary power failure.

[@_icscata_]

Short answer: they will revolutionize everything. Game changer kinda stuff.

[@thisbymaster]

It doesn't seem to be a good candidate for cell phones as they are disposable. Same with Laptops, better to put them into a basement connected to your house grid which has constant usage and long life needed. Then you can surround it with lead walls for safe keeping.

[@dwurry1]

I think your assesment of the Nuclear Batteries is wrong. If a battery's internal emitter becomes exposed and ends up in food (any plant that absorbs copper) it's a fatality for the person eating the food. Or if a user has a phone with the battery and that phone is destroyed, say in an auto accident or dropped from a high hight or burnt up in a fire, anybody who comes in contact with those remains via inhaling the dust or contamination in food, it's a fatality. Not a sickness, an almost certain fatality. Floods happen. Urban wild fires happen. Houses burn down. These batteries are a terrible safety concern. And, oh, by the way the AMOUNT of the battery in a cell phone exceeds a smoke detector by about 100x or more.

[@asiano3385]

At least they cannot explode as easily as lithium batteries.

[@shdwbnndbyyt]

Hmmm, I think that the glaze on the plate for food is in fact illegal in the USA nowadays. But not back when the plates were made. Do not eat acidic foods off of that plate.

[@HydrogenFuelTechnologies]

I love how you guys watch my amateur videos on the same topic, don't say nothing in the comments but then make your own video discussing the same thing. Only I'm telling you we can make the Tritium.

[@enriquemedranda2901]

the betavolt nuclear battery is actually a power generator

[@_Caedwyn]

in first 5 seconds you gave me all the answer i wanted , and for that you have gained a sub and like my brother. THANK YOU

[@infinitypanther]

I'm not sure when, but some where back in 1950's or 60's camera companies made fast camera lenses with radio active glass and Pentax was one of them. There's a KZbin video about the Pentax glass.

[@chimerawizard5639]

are they really batteries though? do they only store energy or do they generate energy?

[@StephenSmith304]

@@chimerawizard5639 Well they do run out eventually so think of it as a very low power very long lasting battery.

[@chimerawizard5639]

@@StephenSmith304 the point is that it actually isn't a battery though. It's more of a reactor. constantly generating that voltage and it's up to you to either make use of it or let it go to waste.

[@MonographicSingleheadedM-sp2wk]

@@chimerawizard5639 makes sense. Then again it s half way between a reactor, and a battery tbh. U can refill a reactor ( am pretty sure u can, dunno xD ). This is called a battery cuz it s single use.

[@julianhigginson1044]

I'd call it a battery still.. plenty of batteries are not rechargeable. carbon, alkaline, etc. The big difference is that batteries tend to be an electrochemical reaction (electrochemical cells) while this nuclear decay + some kind of "solar cell" in a box. so while you can consume the energy in other batteries faster or slower depending on what you pull from it, this battery will deteriorate from its date of manufacture exactly the same, whether its even in a circuit or not.

[@exharkhun5605]

Well, there's the end of recycling as a viable concept.

[@zackatwood2867]

@@exharkhun5605 it degrades into copper, that’s recyclable

[@dmitribrown5274]

What if you take the radio active material separate it and produce said batteries?

[@exharkhun5605]

​@@zackatwood2867 ​ & @dmitribrown5274 Let me first say I was thinking mainly about materials recycling, not product recycling. (although handling even minor radioactive products in bulk has it's problems) The problem is that, even if products are labeled, you can't see from the outside of a product what the state of the batteries is on the inside. You can't see how much of the stuff has already degraded to copper. You only know it's half-life. With the way products are created these days, glue, no screws, in materials-recycling the products are often cracked open. You can't do that with a radioactive hazard inside. Radioactivity is cumulative. We already have this problem with fire-alarms. Sitting on one fire-alarm isn't a problem for anyone for ever. Pile 50 together in a corner for 5 years and you have a radioactive hazard zone. No exaggeration. It's the same for the workers, even the most minor radiation accumulates. They will need to be monitored, and when they have their maximum yearly absorbed dose you can't use them for anything else in that workplace. In my eyes you can only mitigate this with very strong product controls and labeling, lot's of monitoring and robust workplace best practices. Materials recycling isn't very profitable (at least money-wise) in the first place. So will that work in this day and age, in the recycling industry? The answer is probably not. The same problems occur in ship breaking, radioactivity from the immense amounts of oil accumulates in ships bunkers. The lowest paid people in the world break these hulks up. They live to about 35 / 40.

[@exharkhun5605]

Let me first say I was thinking mainly about materials recycling, not product recycling. (although handling even minor radioactive products in bulk has it's problems) The problem is that, even if products are labeled, you can't see from the outside of a product what the state of the batteries is on the inside. You can't see how much of the stuff has already degraded to copper. You only know it's half-life. With the way products are created these days, glue, no screws, in materials-recycling the products are often cracked open. You can't do that with a radioactive hazard inside. Radioactivity is cumulative. We already have this problem with fire-alarms. Sitting on one fire-alarm isn't a problem for anyone for ever. Pile 50 together in a corner for 5 years and you have a radioactive hazard zone. No exaggeration. It's the same for the workers, even the most minor radiation accumulates. They will need to be monitored, and when they have their maximum yearly absorbed dose you can't use them for anything else in that workplace. In my eyes you can only mitigate this with very strong product controls and labeling, lot's of monitoring and robust workplace best practices. Materials recycling isn't very profitable (at least money-wise) in the first place. So will that work in this day and age, in the recycling industry? The answer is probably not. The same problems occur in ship breaking, radioactivity from the immense amounts of oil accumulates in ships bunkers. The lowest paid people in the world break these hulks up. They live to about 35 / 40.

[@exharkhun5605]

@@dmitribrown5274 The problem here is that you have people doing that work. It's unskilled work but you're going to have to treat them like lab technicians, constantly monitor the radiation dose they're receiving. And if they're over the limit you'll have to send them home. That's if you do the work in the west of course.

[@rgmoses2189]

Tritium is cheap since when? There's only a few kilograms produced WORLDWIDE every year and demand of it is rising as more nuclear fusion companies pop up

[@passby8070]

Seem to make a lot of sense for sensors and its communication modules.

[@rwerk66]

What is the heat output? It should be significant as the conversion efficiently of these devices is usually quite low. The best hope for these is as a low speed charger for a conventional rechargeable battery. By the way the mars rover using an RTG also carries lithium batteries and uses the batteries to provide the higher power needs and then recharges from the RTG continuously. An RTG is 10% thermally efficient and therefore the RTG is hanging out the back so that just the right amount of heat is used to keep the internal warm and the rest is dumped out the back. The betavoltaics are likely under 28% efficiency. Meaning that for every 1 watt of power generated the battery will release over 2 watts of heat. That heat is constant even if the device is off. Without a significant rechargeable battery the phone would require betavoltaics of the maximum load and these would be generating energy at all times at that maximum load. So if you need 5 watts at peak load then the batteries will be generating over 15 watts of heat energy even when the phone is switched off. This is hugely impractical. A rechargeable battery is way more practical. And at best you might add a few of these to extend battery life - or provide trickle charge than nowhere near a power source. you'll still have a phone that is 3x as hot as if it were charging by another method!!!

[@vianniesasser3314]

Could a giant version be built to power ships and submarines? A all-electric ship or sub would be awesome. Lots of space could be saved. So much plumbing, turbines, steam machinery, etc. Could be eliminated plus the vessel would be much quieter.

[@glenpitts6813]

I faintly remember, sometime in the 80's that a man in Utah developed a nuclear battery the size if a Coke can that produced 120v forever. It was on Tv news. Never heard anything more about it.

[@stevesether]

I'd take issue that this nuclear battery is "safer" than a smoke detector. Right on the label of the thing it says it contains 50 curies. That's not a small amount of radioactive material. It's rather a LOT. A smoke detector, by comparison has around 1 micro curie.

[@mikezclips6735]

This is what i have been waiting, us able to harness the radioactive decay as energy. Hopefully this will be developed further

[@urbanstrencan]

Interesting tech, nuclear batteries would never thought I would hear about it❤❤ Great video

[@weltonbarbosa206]

3v... can it replace 2 AA 1.5v batteries in a controller ?

[@94accordlove]

What if a phone with a nuclear battery is destroyed in a car crash causing the release of radiation? Wouldn't that mean that the crash site becomes an unknowingly radioactive situation for both the survivors and respondents to the crash?

[@DarkZerol]

These batteries are not used in power hungry devices like smartphones, tablets or computers but rather low-energy long distance relay stations or lights in remote areas because they can generate power without needing any intervention to replace them for months to years. They are actually very small batteries that generates energy by slow radioactive decay. The concept isn't new, the Soviet Union actually use such form of batteries to power remote outposts though the batteries were larger and much less compact.

[@angeldelacruz08]

and how strong if u detonate this small nuclear battery

[@ashtaroth1975]

It's more a generator than a battery, you can't recharge them

[@RSCB]

Yep

[@oliviere1215]

I never heard of Duracell "generators"

[@ram64man]

I’m all for it, imagine, that tech in a train , or in a home battery

[@Oneill_from_Ireland]

If you decide to calculate how much wattage goes into a high priced mini- workstation with a Ryzen 9 processor, this would be a fortune, but would power your new PC's for the next many years to come.

[@rtos]

Primary lithium cells of high quality can be made to last two decades or more.

[@mrme21]

Love the show, but I feel like one crucial detail was missing. You point out the current cost of the battery, it's high, but is it high simply because of manufacturing scale, or because of the underlying raw material costs? At least a napkin sketch of the raw materials cost would help contextualize this.

[@tonysu8860]

The video inferred although not saying explicitly that it's mostly a raw material scarcity problem by comparing to tritium which is cheap. But because only this particular battery was described, it also held out the possibility that another chemistry could have a different cost value.

[@IronmanV5]

These will most certainly cause a meltdown. They'll meltdown your back account.

[@lavaot5207]

It would be really interesting and useful por pacemakers, to avoid constant surgery for maintnance, but for now the price tag is ridiculous

[@marlonlacert8133]

Testing my Geiger counter, I started to think it was Broken... UNTIL, I tested the dam soup cups... YIKES!!

[@kathrync829]

After seeing what happened in the Midde East with the exploding pagers and other exploding electronics, I'm even more uncomfortable having an entity that isn't a friend make these things for me.

[@robertbe2520]

Your iPhone battery animation was phallicly funny! Good job!,

[@partythenwork]

based on the cost this will just be a battery for the future. with technology and progress the costs of electronics always goes down. solar power and precision fermentation used to cost mounts of money, but those have all been reduced. this technology is no different

[@ruthwickline1000]

Just a quick question about the Fiesta dish.. was that an old one that they say you should not eat off of - or the new ones? Because I love my Fiesta dishes.

[@AgentOffice]

Can't wait to buy them !!

[@g.4279]

Those price tags are crazy. These could be made really cheap but I guess the issue is that there is low demand so you get high prices.

[@julianhigginson1044]

It's weird to compare it to a phone or laptop battery, as they are rechargeable. This isn't. It's a very fundamentally different thing. Compare it to other small low power primary cells like LiMnO2. Definitely an impressive tech but I have a lot of trouble really imagining anything that runs off coin cells needing to run for 50 years. Especially at that cost and that very low power output capability. I also want to know more about that orange plate, like when and where it was bought and how often this kind of thing appears in everyday life. Maybe I need a Geiger counter...

[@alfredocolamonicci7693]

Just like Cigarette, tobacco, freon, anabolic steroid etc, when it was introduce to the market they are safe to consumed or use.

[@sikz26300]

Phones really don't need a 50 year battery though, maybe 2-5 years could find a sweet spot between size, voltage, and life span.

[@saltymonke3682]

If there's a sign that says "Not To Dismantle", I'm 1000% sure that someone somewhere will throw it into a garbage compactor or shredder and will create a radioactive hazard.

[@robincross4625]

back in the 1950s there was a vision of having very small nuclear reactors behind every house in all neighborhoods. It didn;t work out for about the same reasons.

[@seandelaney8639]

which element's decay releases UV or x-rays?

[@DrBernon]

I think that if they manage to lower the price, we could see self charging phones, where the normal battery is slowly being charged by one of these. But that price is astronomical. I'm surprised they will even produce something that expensive.

[@bes12000]

It shouldn't cost that much thats crazy, radioactive material is abundant

[@robfowler1495]

They are only that expensive due to lack of competition, no mass production, and a compelling reason for them to be cheaper.

[@mjouwbuis]

Is it the first of its kind to be mass produced, or the first of its kind of which is said it will be mass produced pretty soon, any moment now?

[@thekaxmax]

That's a production sample

[@stinkenlinken]

What make/model is the Geiger counter?

[@jjasper7512]

Would love to see one of these batteries powering one of those really light and small children's drones, never landing for 50 years would be really cool, although at close to 3 million a pop it's a novelty I'll pass on!

[@SantaClause-m9h]

Fiesta ware is so cool I love the stuff, really expensive to buy if the seller knows what they have. I have a really nice uranium class fruit bowl that I use regularly.

[@vangildermichael1767]

The nuclear battery thing. An awesome idea. But the choke-hold you mention, PRICE. I'm pretty sure, I didn't quite know what I was hearing at the time& it was 20 years past. I think Elon was talking this same thing, but using spent nuclear fuel. Which is "free???"

[@HC-tc7gv]

very informative video, thank you. The depleted batteries or damaged will be disposed how? Aren't most batteries thrown into garbage?

[@thekaxmax]

Once depleted it's not dangerously reactive; toss it. Damaged: wrap in aluminium foil and ask the manufacturer

[@HC-tc7gv]

@@thekaxmax haha. i like your style. do you dry your car oil into the street runoff drain?

[@thekaxmax]

@@HC-tc7gv nah. Next door's prize roses.

[@tronskifpv]

thumbs up just for that intro

[@zackatwood2867]

If processor tech slows or phones use the same modular battery slots it could be viable, people die when their phone runs out of power, metaphorically, and on occasion… literally

[@AmanNama-wv5dt]

doesnt the radion get absorbed by the solar cell ?

[@yoface938]

It’s seems like product placement is taking more and more percentage of the actual video length which leads me to believe the main initial motive of the video was in fact a bonafide infomercial.

[@lnwolf41]

A fairly good video, but just like everyone else there are only two products that people talk about with batteries "The phone" and "The car". There are hundreds of applications for a nuclear battery, that have nothing to do with human interaction, as you finally stated at the end of your video 😖. All of the space probes we have sent out have one, though they are thermal-electric batteries.

[@Gorkilein]

It's just a question of sales numbers before it gets cheap.

[@gsestream]

dont use the photovoltaic alpha/beta cells, use TEG alpha beta RTGs. you should get millions times more energy density instead of just 10x. if you dont get the millions times more you are wasting the potential. yes TEG with 500W/kg of the alpha/beta bulk material. it will always generate the heat. say use a steam power plant turbine system. the less you have the protective casing, comparative ratio, the more active material you will have, even in the photovoltaic alpha-beta cell. ie you can use many large area layers in a big battery. not needing much outer surface cover shielding.

[@tw1356]

Good presentation, thank you

[@USNUSA]

Why do nuclear reactors on US Navy ships only need refilled every 20-25 years.

[@FirstNumber1]

I need this in my phone!!!!! And head phones!!! Maybe it will be cost effective in 10 years

[@anthonysimpson6738]

I think this could be do able if scaled up manufacturing and could miniaturise the components for greater efficiency and safety. Ideally if the battery was closer to 100% efficiency there would not be any radiation all of the beta particles were absorbed to produce electricity. I wonder if could be designed as a spiral sphere. For 100% adoption the safety concerns need to be addressed and obviously our devices would go back to be removable batteries. I would definitely love to have devices that didn’t require recharging it be game changing. If it was possible to have a home system as backup source of electricity. I can see this in the distant future, 100 or 200 years. They look back at us with complete confusion why we put up with recharging chemical batteries.

[@arranf]

You could make a video on micro reactors, they're like nuclear batteries, like Nano Nuclear Energy Inc is making a micro reactor the size of a freight container.