A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years::A glowing horizon for phones
A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years
Submitted 9 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
DemBoSain@midwest.social 9 months ago
pelya@lemmy.world 9 months ago
At this moment, 1 gram of radioactive Nickel-63 costs around 4,000 USD. Nickel-63 isotope does not occur in nature, it is obtained by irradiating Nickel-62 inside a nuclear reactor.
hglman@lemmy.ml 9 months ago
The world needs breeder reactors anyways, build out a lot of gen 4 plants and make Nickle-63 to boot.
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 9 months ago
What happens when the casing get punctured? When you mass produce these devices these things will happen.
bitwolf@lemmy.one 9 months ago
Surely the battery itself would have sufficient protection on top of the devices chassis offering protection.
I can’t say a Lithium Ion battery leaking in the body would bode very either.
SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Standford?
Kethal@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It’s a a rival of Hardvard.
akwd169@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Most prestigious school in all of milwalkee
Professorozone@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Like a phone would last 50 years.
NickwithaC@lemmy.world 9 months ago
A tiny radioactive battery could keep a piece of e-waste using power for 48 years
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Ya know we keep these things in our pants right?
GoodEye8@lemm.ee 9 months ago
No offense but it’s a “I wasn’t paying attention in high school physics” comment. It being beta decay with a half-life of 100 years should already indicate it’s relatively safe. In fact someone else in this thread already already added the references showing how safe it is. If it’s safe enough to power a pacemaker it’s safe enough to sit in your phone that sits your pocket.
Personally I think that battery would have much bigger issues than safety, such as power requirements which are much harder to control with nuclear decay. Also obviously the device itself deprecating before the battery because tech will definitely advance a lot in 50 years, I imagine after a decade the phone will be useless. And finally the pricing considering Ni-63 doesn’t occur in nature which means you need a specific process to create the materials necessary for the batter.
Isoprenoid@programming.dev 9 months ago
Imgonnatrythis@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
That’s a silly comparison. You’re not dropping your pacemaker down escalators or throwing it the trash when the screen breaks, and middle schoolers aren’t dissambling them with butter knives. You’re not throwing them out every few years. Please teach me more about high school physics though you smug sob.
ZetaLightning94@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Sounds like alot of infertility and ass cancer in the future… lets see how this plays out
RagingRobot@lemmy.world 9 months ago
How long can it power a disposable vape? Lol jk
prole@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
Don’t give them any ideas…
terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
Nuclear power at small scale is already in use in devices. Some medical devices, smoke detectors etc. As long as there is proper shielding, the enclosure is robust enough, and the overall device is made easily serviceable, I’m all for it. I can understand the fear sentiment of anything flagged as radioactive, but radiation is all around us already. Idk, but the less we can ditch super toxic and explosive lithium the better.
Person264@lemmings.world 9 months ago
The radioactive source isn’t used for power in smoke detectors, it’s used to detect smoke. What small scale devices use radioactivity actually for power?
terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
My grampa had a pacemaker that was.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
Here’s the real issue with the bs fluff title and complete fabrication of what these can be used for. It says in the article the battery makes 100 microwatts at 3v. Well that’s an insanely small wattage. Your phone requires like 2 to 10 watts when youre on it. Regular watts.
One single watt is 1,000,000 microwatts. It would take 10,000 of these radioactive 50 year batteries ran together in parallel for just a watt of power. You’d need like 100,000 of them in your phone to cover all power requirements.
terminhell@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 months ago
So, you’re saying there’s a chance :p
The sentiment for me here, is any overall betterment of portable power is good. Yea the article and this specific tech is presented in an overhyped fashion, no doubt.
CucumberFetish@lemm.ee 9 months ago
The issue is not the radioactivity, it’s the power density. Per the article, this is ~24x smaller than an average phone battery, but can supply only 100uW.
I have a relatively conservative phone use, and on average, my phone uses 450mW. That means that you’d need 4500 of those batteries in your phone. But the battery would also need to cover the power usage peaks, which are multiple times higher than the average power consumption.
mvirts@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Finally, Asimov got it right
Siegfried@lemmy.world 9 months ago
He got it right in a lot of aspects, partially because he didnt gave many details about certain stuff, but I remember a pretty good description of a nuclear powered e reader… if I remember it correctly, the nuclear part was a tiny nuclear reactor though
Boozilla@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Remember when folks wore watches with radioactive paint on them? Good times.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 9 months ago
It would’ve been great if they used reasonable safety precautions in making them.
yuriy@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Yeah, unfortunately most of the danger fell on the (usually female) factory workers who painted the radium on. Fun fact, we do absolutely still use radioactive shit to make watches glow today, it’s just much less dangerous and sealed in tiny vials. Also it’s a gas that won’t eventually flake and turn into super fine particulate, like the radium paints of yore.
grayman@lemmy.world 9 months ago
It was more a problem of licking the little brushes than wearing the teeny bit on the wrist.
_sideffect@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Some of the people here don’t realize that our smoke detectors have radioactive elements inside it
Aganim@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Depends, in my country ionization detectors have been banned over 20 years ago, you’ll mostly find optical / photoelectric detectors here.
_sideffect@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I wonder if its because of a valid reason, or just a precaution
cooopsspace@infosec.pub 9 months ago
Flight safe, or nah?
What if it gets caught or crushed in the seat or luggage?
hark@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’ve heard of these kinds of batteries before and it’d be cool to have long-running electronics, but would these produce enough power?
CucumberFetish@lemm.ee 9 months ago
They do, if you give them enough room. And if you are born into an oil family.
The power density is about 0.01125m³ per watt. A high end smartphone (11w of peak power) with a display size similar to Galaxy s23 ultra, would be almost 10 meters thick.
xthexder@l.sw0.com 9 months ago
To be fair, it only needs to cover the phone’s average power draw if you put in a supercapacitor or small conventional battery.
But there’s another problem… if I understand how this works correctly, for a 1W battery, the radioactive element must be outputting AT LEAST 1W of radiation energy at all times, whether it’s being consumed as electricity or not. Ideally that’s all trapped inside as heat in a best case scenario, but having to cool your battery while it’s not in use is kind of a deal breaker for anything more than milliwatts (or it will have to have a heatsink as big as the battery)
roofuskit@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Not last I saw. They produce way too little power at that scale.
indigomirage@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
What could possibly go wrong…?
aviationeast@lemmy.world 9 months ago
AskSamsunga about phones in checked bags… And now the whole airplane is getting cancer.
Rooskie91@discuss.online 9 months ago
On the news tonight, will your uraniuam cellphone give you cancer? The answer might NOT surprise you, it’s yes; it’s uranium.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 9 months ago
Mine what? Don’t threaten me with a good time.
roofuskit@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Polonium 210 typically in these devices. We’ve mostly sent them hurdling into space so far.
YurkshireLad@lemmy.ca 9 months ago
Can it be safely recycled or disposed of when finished? Or is it more landfill waste?
chemicalwonka@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
super safe, health first ALWAYS
Mammal@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I see no downside whatsoever.
Atelopus-zeteki@kbin.run 9 months ago
"A glowing horizon for phones", and their users.
ricecooker@sh.itjust.works 9 months ago
No need for flashlights anymore!
Pringles@lemm.ee 9 months ago
This comment is cancer.
bappity@lemmy.world 9 months ago
life steal battery because of the radiation! /j
Papanca@lemmy.world 9 months ago
And now for 50 years worth of security updates for a phone like that. Not to mention what people might do with throwing a phone in the trash or something
andrew@lemmy.stuart.fun 9 months ago
I’d take it if it was a reasonable price, like 1k, and if I could just swap it into new phones every time I upgraded.
The problem is, power requirements tend to increase as computation power increases. And no doubt battery tech will improve in those 50 years. It’s not like we’re sending phones to the outer solar system and need them to just keep generating power forever.
Toes@ani.social 9 months ago
They already sell phones over 1k that are expected to last ~4 years. You’ll need to tag another zero or two to that price to incentivize manufacturers.
AbidanYre@lemmy.world 9 months ago
So what if power requirements increase. It could quadruple and now my battery will only last twelve years? The are plenty of other things that will start failing before then.
obinice@lemmy.world 9 months ago
The EU are going to mandate removable batteries in phones, so I don’t see any reason you can’t take a standardised battery that lasts decades and swap it into your next phone, if they’re all designed properly with compatibility with this miracle battery in mind :-D
shasta@lemm.ee 9 months ago
Perfect. Then they’ll sell the battery separately and it’ll cost $5000
Papanca@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Exactly; if Usually, it takes years, if not decades, before laws and regulations are actually in place
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
The isotope degrades into copper.
Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world 9 months ago
I’m not so optimistic.
When ever we discover a new, much better power source, the cartel who is going to lose a shitton of business go on a smear campaign. Look at solar power. Look at electric cars. Hell, look at hemp.
Companies would bury this so fast, and this tech would be a niche thing.
smileyhead@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
No. Document the device for PC-like lifetime software support from first and third party. Long security update support for phones, great, but we still have a stupid thing when people buy whole new phone for little software feature.