Battery with NUCLEAR WASTE good for 1000+ years
A US company will introduce a battery made of recycled radioactive waste. It will be self-charging and can allegedly be used for thousands of years.
American company NDB (Nano Diamond Battery) is developing a prototype battery technology that could revolutionise global energy systems. The battery uses radioactive waste to generate power, so it does not need charging.
The battery’s cells are made of graphite recycled from nuclear power plants. Graphite is used for temperature regulation in reactors, and over years of use it absorbs so much radiation that the material becomes radioactive itself. Graphite includes high levels of the radioactive isotope carbon-14. When the carbon-14 decays, it is converted into harmless nitrogen, giving off antineutrinos and high-energy electrons. The latter generate the electric current which can be harvested.
Before the scientists can harvest the electricity from the radioactive graphite, they must convert it into small carbon-14 diamonds, made in a mould under extreme pressure and high temperatures. The resulting diamond structure functions as a semiconductor in which the free electrons can travel until they strike a supercapacitor that can store the electricity.
While the energy benefits are potentially high, clearly a key question will be how to protect users from the potential ill-effects of exposure to radioactivity. To achieve this protection, the company aims to encapsulate each radioactive carbon-14 diamond in an impenetrable layer of lab-made carbon-12 diamonds that are not radioactive. As diamond is one of the world’s hardest materials, such a shell would prevent the radiation escaping, no matter how roughly the battery is treated. The result is a battery that can constantly recharge itself until the radioactive material becomes inactive. And carbon-14 has a half-life period of 5730 years.
The technology behind the diamond battery is not a new one. The principle has been propounded since the 1970s, and in 2016 a team of scientists from the University of Bristol managed to demonstrate the idea in practice. Now, the US company NDB aims to mass-produce the technology. The company suggests that the concept could be used in anything from smartphones to car batteries, delivering a power source which can both recharge itself and have a longer life than the product it powers.