Technology

921 readers

17 users here now

A tech news sub for communists

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml

Chinese Firm developed Nuclear Battery that can Produce Power for 50 years (slguardian.org)

submitted 8 months ago by yogthos@lemmygrad.ml to c/technology@lemmygrad.ml

35 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] GrayBackgroundMusic@lemm.ee 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

First thought: Is this just another RTG model? I've worked in that field. They've been around a long time. They power satellites, etc. They're expensive, heavy and inefficient.

Second though: Oh, they're going with direct electron capture. That's neat. I don't know much about those. Carbon/diamond as a capture material is good and cheap.

FTA:

The nuclear battery generates power every second and minute, producing 8.64 joules of energy per day and 3,153 joules of energy per year.

That's not how radioactive decay works. I mean, yeah, the half life is 100 years, so this is pretty stable, but it's gonna go down. (Incidentally, daughter products are Cu63 (stable) and an electron.)

Also, you do NOT want radio isotopes floating out in the wild. Watch any of Plainly Difficult's videos on nuclear incidents and it's not good.

[–] Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml 8 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's a betavoltaic, it's an established technology but not yet commercialized. There was a scam/grift nuclear battery startup that used a similar system except they were making wildly extravagant claims, going as far as to literally lie about the output right next to the example picture which showcased the actual power output printed on the side of the device. It's a really cool concept but of course they had to fuck it up by being blatant charlatans. Oh well, at least China is here once again to pick up the slack from America's failings.