Friday, October 9, 2009

Penny-Sized Nuclear Batteries Developed

Posted by kdawson on Friday October 09, @09:32AM
from the is-that-a-nuke-in-your-pocket dept.
pickens writes"Nuclear batteries that produce energy from the decay of radioisotopes are an attractive proposition for many applications because the isotopes that power them can provide a useful amount of current for hundreds of years at power densities a million times as high as standard batteries. Nuclear batteries have been used for military and aerospace applications for years, their large size has limited their general usage. But now a research team at the University of Missouri has developed a nuclear battery the size of a penny that could be used to power micro- and nano-electromechanical systems. The researchers' innovation is not only in the battery's size, but also that the batteries use a liquid semiconductor rather than a solid semiconductor. 'The critical part of using a radioactive battery is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,' says Jae Wan Kwon. 'By using a liquid semiconductor, we believe we can minimize that problem.' The batteries are safe under normal operating conditions. 'People hear the word "nuclear" and think of something very dangerous,' says Kwon. 'However, nuclear power sources have already been safely powering a variety of devices, such as pacemakers, space satellites, and underwater systems.'"

1 comment:

Dell Laptop Batteries said...

I think that Nuclear Batteries are going to be the future of cars and and mobile electronics. Just because people immediately think of a nuclear bomb whenever they hear the word "nuclear", I don't see any reason not to educate people on the subject. this can be highly beneficial and if they are going to deny us the use of Nikola Tesla's technology, I think we are at least owed this advancement. Maybe now batteries in a Mac Notebook will last longer than 1 hour.