http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/ Engadget Comments for 30-year battery may be too good to be true http://www.engadget.com/media/feedlogo.gif http://www.engadget.com en-us Copyright 2012 Weblogs, Inc. The contents of this feed are available for non-commercial use only. Blogsmith http://www.blogsmith.com/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:05PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:08PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:09PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:12PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:19PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
Atomic batteries would make excellent power sources for sensor motes. They need ultra low power over a long, long time.

For laptops it's a non-starter. But for a distributed network of dust-sized sensors that are mixed into a bridge's concrete and monitor for stress and fractures for 50 years, they would be perfect.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:24PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 5:49PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 6:54PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:18PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/.>

And, ZDNet mainly deals with consumer electronics and computers, not high-tech US military research projects.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:50PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 5:55PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:30PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
1. It is true that after years this battery becomes completely inert.

2. Beta-rays are not penetrating the skin, and are not dangerous if you don't eat or inhale the radioactive substance.

3. Your current Li-Ion battery remain dangerous forever, while this battery will eventually become harmless.

4. Even if its too dangerous for consumers, the military will still be able to use it.

5. Since the idea of "atomic batteries" was popping up from time to time with no results, this particular idea might be fake, so wait until they have a prototype.

I am not a specialist in physics, I just summarized what people think on other forums.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:41PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:37PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:36PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
I'd like to know what element/isotope they're using.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-powered_lighting]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:42PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
(Just because it says radioactive doesn't imply plutonium. Heck theres a chunk of radioactive americium (or similar element) in stuff as common as a smoke dectector.


Now the technology is far from mature, but the potential is certainly there for "30 year" batteries. (or really really long relative to present batteries.) The main problem afaik is just in making the "battery" sufficiently efficient to use a less radioactive source than say Pu. ]]>Oct 3rd 2007 2:00AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 5th 2007 3:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
What exactly does this mean? All radiation (other than reemission of a photon from say, the relaxation of an electron to a lower energy state) is from some kind of nuclear process.

I assume you mean 'non-fission' form such as beta-decay?

The problem is that even beta emitters can be dangerous and the notion that after the battery has completely decayed it's safe is not actually sound. It would depend on what the original materials and the decay products were.

I remember there were proposals for rolled layers of uranium and selenium foils to be placed in lead cases about the size of a D cell that would essentially give off electricity forever (well, 4.5 billion+ years). That's an alpha and neutron emitter, so it turned out to be too dangerous.

I'm not sure a beta emitter can generate enough power to be small enough to be useful though.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 4:43PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 4:48PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 5:22PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 5:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
And who knows -- in 10 years we might have solar powered laptops that can run off of typical office lighting and carry a battery that can get you through the dark times.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 5:33PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Lithium ion is the best material so far and the most appropriate if you look at the periodic table. (besides led which is unacceptable for the obvious reasons)
Until we move on to the next levels of nano tubes and some very crazy chemicals delivery and integration battery life is going to suck.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 5:53PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 3rd 2007 1:34AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 6:39PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 6:40PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 3rd 2007 9:32AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://community.zdnet.co.uk/i/z5/gl/ava/default/big/rupert.jpg
This guy (just guy... not expert of anything) is obviously just lashing out at anything that will improve the world because it won't do anything to help people that underwent human/louie anderson/pig genetic experiments at birth.]]>Oct 2nd 2007 6:45PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
The "battery" referred to has been described in "Technology Review" and the "Economist". It uses particles given off by the decay of Tritium. The breakthrough (from experimenters @ Univ. of Pennsylvania?)is using a "nano" material (analogous to a sponge as opposed to a flat plate) which greatly increases the ability to capture particles. The initial uses that appear practical are in implanted medical devices such as pacemakers or deep brain stimulation. The radioactive tritium is regarded as realtively safe; the particle it emits are very easy to stop.

The articles I read were devoid of data that would allow one to calculate power density for a battery the size of a laptop battery or the lifetime of such a battery.

On a similar note if you drop into the DARPA website you can find references to a project to create a "battery" to replace standard AA and similar cells used by the soldier in the field with a small radioactive core that would continually recharge the battery. It actually is a hybrid of a battery, capacitor and a radioactive core. The trick which they are trying to develop is the way to very compactly convert the radioactive energy to electricity. DARPA appears to be agnostic as to which method would work, baryonic, MEMS, or something else.





]]>Oct 2nd 2007 8:10PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
Karim Baz]]>Oct 2nd 2007 8:29PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 2nd 2007 11:26PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 3rd 2007 1:40AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/Oct 3rd 2007 9:19AMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Beta_voltaic]]>Oct 4th 2007 4:52PMhttp://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/http://www.engadget.com/2007/10/02/30-year-battery-may-be-too-good-to-be-true/
That being said, 1) the isotope is tritium and as such the penetration energy of the beta-radiation is the lowest of all beta emitters. It won't even make it past the dead layer of cells that our skin is surrounded by. 2) the breakdown product of tritium is helium. So when all the relatively benign tritium is gone you are left with helium. And it likely already escaped. BTW there are methods of keeping the tritium in solid form so it won't escape. 3) because the energy level of the beta rays is so low (and methods are available for putting the tritium in solid form) it won't damage the semiconductor "collector." Remember this is much like a conventional solar cell, and silicon versions of those last for 25 years or more.

One last thing to consider - those faintly green glowing exist signs? Those are stuffed with lots of tritium. Watches made by Luminox, Uzi, Swiss Military, Smith and Wesson, etc....have sealed tritium vials on the face which provide the energy for the phosophorescent glow we all know and love.

30 years? No, not unless you really front-load these batteries with a huge extra helping of tritium (on top of the million bucks worth of tritium you would need to get more than a tenth of a watt), since the half life of the isotope is only a bit over 12 years.

But we can keep on hoping for the day some of those pesky low-power battery applications are replaced by batteries such as this!]]>Oct 8th 2007 2:11PM