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A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

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Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#51

Post by nolok »

flappyeagle wrote: post #48
nolok wrote: post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

They use these in pacemakers.

I'm not saying they're unsafe (I don't know that, but I do trust my national agency if they certify it). I'm saying convincing people who need a peacemaker to not die about a magic device that keep their heart beating is much easier than convincing any random person to have a radioactive phone.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#52

Post by legulere »

peteradio wrote: post #19
bxparks wrote: post #8

But the screen cracked 49 years ago. It stopped getting OS updates 48 years ago. And the 5G towers got deprecated 40 years ago.

And I got brain cancer 2 years ago.

Nickel 63 decays to stable copper 63 under beta radiation with 66.9 keV energy. Some centimetres are already enough to stop that, with aluminum a millimeter should probably already be enough.

As long as you don't ingest the battery you will be fine.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#54

Post by legulere »

nolok wrote: post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

Nickel 63 decays to stable copper 63 under beta radiation with 66.9 keV energy. Some centimetres are already enough to stop that, with aluminum a millimeter should probably already be enough.

The real safety issues is if people pry it open and ingest or inhale the radionuclides.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#56

Post by mint2 »

nolok wrote: post #51
flappyeagle wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They use these in pacemakers.

I'm not saying they're unsafe (I don't know that, but I do trust my national agency if they certify it). I'm saying convincing people who need a peacemaker to not die about a magic device that keep their heart beating is much easier than convincing any random person to have a radioactive phone.

Ni-63 is a pure low energy beta emitter - what that means is your skin is enough to block it penetrating if it were outside the phone. While used as intended it would be safe but it’s a horrible idea for consumer electronics for disposal issues.

Overall it sounds like a terrible idea though due to what happens when the phone reaches end of life or is smashed. Phone can’t be shredded and materials reclaimed without manually removing the battery. Phone releases free radioactive material into the environment if smashed. Terrible terrible idea for consumer electronic.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#57

Post by z_ack »

jvanderbot wrote: post #47
z_ack wrote: post #40

"The compact battery uses 63 nuclear isotopes to generate 100 microwatts and a voltage of 3V of electricity through the process of radioactive decay" So the battery produce 0.1 mW or 0.0001 W: what "phone or drone" works with this microscopic power ? It isn't sufficient to power a sigle LED. IMHO this article is a sum of: clickbait + incompetence and, if the translation from Chinese is accurate, scam. The phrase "use…

It's more helpful to think of it as a power generator that produces that level of power. Then you use it or store it. Having an onboard power source coupled with storage is an amazing win. And these power generators (not batteries really) are very small. So, when phone is "off" it pulls some mW from each of the many such power cells onboard to charge battery, then when phone is "on" it works like normal.

No really, no. It's the same to declare that you have a box of matches and burning them it gives you a substantial help to warm up your house in the middle of winter. "which measure less than a coin at 15 x 15 x 5mm" , if you stack a large amount of that component still the power generated is ridicule, in fact they tell us: "Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025", aka, 3V 0.33A and you are using volume employed by the lithium battery, reducing further the phone operability. This pretended to be innovation will go nowhere, like all "miracle battery" seen before, solar panel covered street, e-cat, etc, etc, etc. Nowadays , the high demand of clean energy makes flourish nonsense startups, scam, pseudoscience, etc. That is very sad.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#58

Post by mint2 »

gbrits wrote: post #26
nolok wrote: post #6

90% of the people I know keep their near their head, near the genitals or near their heart when not actively using it. I read the part about them asserting that it's safe, but if they want this to actually sell without a major stigma, especially in the era of social media, they will need to go out of their way to prove it.

Imagine iPhones with Geiger counters. Nicely aggregated in bite sized daily stats through Apple health

Geiger counters don’t work on Ni-63. It’s a pain to detect, needing liquid scintillation.

Re: A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

#60

Post by fastneutron »

The idea of this making it into any consumer product is science fiction, and articles like this can be safely ignored.

Some back of the envelope math to illustrate why:

- The decay energy of Ni-63 is 66 keV, but since the energy is split with an irrecoverable neutrino, the average recoverable energy per decay is more like 17 keV.

- The typical power consumption of an iPhone is about 10 watts, give or take.

- Converting (1eV = 1.6e-19 J, 1W = 1J/s), we get 2.72e-15 Watts per decay.

- Assuming 10 Watts for your phone, we get 3.68e15 decays/second, 3.68e15 Bq, or *99364 CURIES* of activity

- The US NRC exempt quantity for Ni-63 is currently 1e-5 Curies (10 micro-Curies) (10CFR30.71, Sched. B)

For reference, the activity of the Am-241 in a typical smoke detector is on the order of 0.1 MICRO Curies. A betavoltaic battery for a smartphone would need a full 20 orders of more activity per unit, 18 orders of magnitude higher than the current regulatory limits, and we're talking about a product that nearly every person in the country owns. The item would be physically warm to the touch, could never be turned off, and would need piles of paperwork to track the origin, transfer of custody, and proper disposal.

Maybe this makes sense for remotely-deployed military equipment and other niche applications where the user would go thorough the necessary licensing steps, but for consumer products, forget it. Absolute fiction.

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