Nuclear Diamond Batteries

[TuFun 426]

This maybe the answer to EV's to unlimited travel?!

 

[martin-w 3,234]

I read about this a while ago. Currently only useful for very small devices.  In terms of a car battery that's a lot of nuclear material in one place, even though its encased in diamond. To be honest I'm dubious that the idea will work for something the size of a car battery. I think it will probably remain for small devices. 

 

[birdguy 3,943]

How about molten salt?  We can get plenty of that.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/molten-salt-reactor-ship-thor-breaks-the-norm-with-incredible-capabilities-187654.html

Noel

[Fielder 3,643]

Back in the 1950's Disney made a documentary cartoon "Our Friend the Atom". The idea was unlimited power to cure a multitude of problems, poverty, squalor from low industrialization, etc.

But nuclear fell out of favor. I'm all for bringing it back. I wish Walt was still running that company too.

[martin-w 3,234]

9 hours ago, birdguy said:

How about molten salt

 

This is about batteries for devices and cars... nothing to do with nuclear power

[stans 702]

I'd say this is definitely a step forward in battery technology.

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, stans said:

I'd say this is definitely a step forward in battery technology.

 

Potentially. Too early to say for sure. There's something a bit troubling about walking around with a battery in a device containing radio active material, but if it is a truly safe technology, I guess we will get used to it.

Something the size of a car battery though, with al that radioactive material... hmm. 

[birdguy 3,943]

5 hours ago, martin-w said:

This is about batteries for devices and cars... nothing to do with nuclear power

Sorry.  I sit here duly admonished since I'm a second class forum citizen anyway.

Noel

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, birdguy said:

Sorry.  I sit here duly admonished since I'm a second class forum citizen anyway.

Noel

 

😁 Not in my eyes.

But while you're here... how do you feel about having a little canister or chip in your phone, laptop and so on, that contains radioactive material? Is it just me that feels a tad nervous about it? 

The developers say the inside of the battery, the radioactive bit, is hardly radioactive at all, so safe and that when its discharged all radioactivity is gone. 

I guess that's okay if true, and if its impossible to gain access to the dodgy bit inside. 

It seems the video linked to here is misleading, in that there's no way this tech could power an electric car. This is for sensors and small low power devices only. 

 

Quote

“Can we power an electric vehicle? The answer is no,” says Morgan Boardman, Arkenlight’s CEO. To power something that energy hungry, he says, means “the mass of the battery would be significantly greater than the mass of the vehicle.” Instead, the company is looking at applications where it is either impossible or impractical to regularly change a battery, such as sensors in remote or hazardous locations at nuclear waste repositories or on satellites.

 

Edited May 2, 2022 by martin-w

[TuFun 426]

Sulfur batteries...

 

[charliearon 3,017]

Hey, Martin!  Did you have your teeth whitened or are you glowing in the dark from your radioactive battery?? 🤪  I think I remember people were worried about radium dials on their watches back in the old days.

 

[dmwalker 601]

On 5/1/2022 at 10:04 AM, TuFun said:

This maybe the answer to EV's to unlimited travel?

Here is an excerpt from the comments section for that video:

"Arkenlight patented the entire concept back when the physics was discovered.

Nano-Diamond-Battery, Incorporated , aka NDB, Inc., has not produced a working model. They claim to have demonstrated two proof-of-concept devices at Livermore, but Livermore has not confirmed that that actually happened to my knowledge. NDB originally claimed that their batteries would be able to power everything from phones to planes to EVs and would last for tens of thousands of years. However, they have never released a datasheet proving these claims. Not only that, but they actually recanted their claims not long after they made headline news, stating that they'd been misquoted when they said their batteries would power cars. 

Arkenlight, when they were asked what they thought about NDB, said, very specifically, that there is no way NDB is getting the power output they claim and that, if NDB is telling the truth about their battery physics, they're in clear violation of patent law. Since then, NDB seems to have modified their design enough to satisfy international patent law, but regardless they have yet to provide any actual data backing up their claims. Not too long ago, they sent out an email informing people signed up for their newsletter (which includes me) that they had been granted 3 patents by the US government, but, again, they have not provided any data."

Edited May 2, 2022 by dmwalker

[martin-w 3,234]

1 hour ago, charliearon said:

Hey, Martin!  Did you have your teeth whitened or are you glowing in the dark from your radioactive battery?? 🤪 

 

I know you are lying because your eyesight isn't good enough to see that many thousands of miles. And I need them cleaning so they aren't that bright. 

[birdguy 3,943]

2 hours ago, martin-w said:

But while you're here... how do you feel about having a little canister or chip in your phone, laptop and so on, that contains radioactive material? Is it just me that feels a tad nervous about it?

For a month or so at an unnamed air force base I helped out when they had to refurbish all the nuclear bombs in their arsenal.    Now the cap wasn't in them but the shell was intact.  We wore radiation badges while working and they measured the amount of radiation we received.  It was pretty low level but I don't know how that would translate today.

Plus all dental and chest X-Rays I've had.

But I often wonder about all the emf one absorbs while standing on the street corner of any modern city today.  Television and GPS signals from satellites.  Police and aviation radio signals.  FM radio signals, Cell phone transmissions.  And a plethora of other things we know about, or don't know about. Then there are cosmic rays from space and radon gas from the ground ion our homes.

Not to mention environmental hazards like exhaust gasses from trucks, busses and automobiles.  Dust and pollen in the air.  Insecticides and herbicides.  My yard guy sprays for weeds once a month and our pest control guy sprays the baseboards and outside of the house once a quarter.  Plus glow in the dark watch dials ever since I was 6 or 7 years old. 

For 8 decades I have not worried about it and I don't intend to start now.  Ignorance is bliss they say and may be more comfortable to live with that than being a worry-wart.

So to answer your question I say bring it on.  What's one more thing added to what's already out there.

Noel

35 minutes ago, martin-w said:

And I need them cleaning so they aren't that bright. 

Neither are mine Martin.  They're pretty dingy as a matter of fact.  But I am terrified of dentists.  I won't go to one unless I have a tooth that is hurting me more than the dentist is going to hurt me.  I haven't visited a dentist in over a decade.  I am missing three teeth but all the rest are still original equipment.

Noel

[Mike A 337]

5 hours ago, charliearon said:

Hey, Martin!  Did you have your teeth whitened or are you glowing in the dark from your radioactive battery?? 🤪  I think I remember people were worried about radium dials on their watches back in the old days.

I've read about this before, about what the workers who first started making them went through:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radium_Girls

"After being told that the paint was harmless, the women in each facility ingested deadly amounts of radium after being instructed to "point" their brushes on their lips in order to give them a fine tip;^[1] some also painted their fingernails, face and teeth with the glowing substance. The women were instructed to point their brushes in this way because using rags or a water rinse caused them to use more time and material, as the paint was made from powdered radium, gum arabic and water."

"

U.S. Radium Corporation (USRC) hired approximately 70 women to perform various tasks including handling radium, while the owners and the scientists familiar with the effects of radium carefully avoided any exposure to it themselves; chemists at the plant used lead screens, masks and tongs.^[6] USRC had distributed literature to the medical community describing the "injurious effects" of radium. In spite of this knowledge, a number of similar deaths had occurred by 1925, including the company's chief chemist, Dr. Edwin E. Leman,^[7] and several female workers. The similar circumstances of their deaths prompted investigations by Dr. Harrison Martland, County Physician of Newark.^[8]

"An estimated 4,000 workers were hired by corporations in the U.S. and Canada to paint watch faces with radium. At USRC, each of the painters mixed her own paint in a small crucible, and then used camel hair brushes to apply the glowing paint onto dials. The rate of pay, for painting 250 dials a day, was about a penny and a half per dial (equivalent to $0.317 in 2021) or about $75 per day. The brushes would lose shape after a few strokes, so the USRC supervisors encouraged their workers to point the brushes with their lips ("lip, dip, paint"), or use their tongues to keep them sharp. Because the true nature of the radium had been kept from them, the Radium Girls painted their nails, teeth, and faces for fun with the deadly paint produced at the factory.^[9] Many of the workers became sick; it is unknown how many died from exposure to radiation."

Gruesome deaths would occur after this exposure.

Edited May 2, 2022 by Mike A