Introduction
A
California-based company NDB has made a self-charging battery by trapping
carbon-14 (C14) nuclear waste in artificial diamond-case. The company claims
the battery can run for 28,000 years on a single charge.
And
just for perspective, before this ridiculous battery runs out of juice, an
average Indian would’ve died 400 times over (geez!); more than a thousand
generations would’ve passed by; and Jaegers might have finally sliced the last
of Kaijus--who knows, those monstrous machines would be powered by one of these
things.
The US-based
company says that the battery can be used in electric vehicles, mobile phones,
laptops, tablets, drones, watches, cameras, health monitors and even sensors.
It is also said to be extremely safe and tamper proof as it is coated with
non-radioactive diamond which prevents radiation leaks.
NDB
estimates 34 million cubic meters of global nuclear waste will cost over $100
billion to manage and dispose. And a lot of this waste is graphite that is one
of the higher risk radioactive wastes and one of the most expensive and
problematic waste to store.
Nuclear Power: A Clean
Energy?
Nuclear power is considered a clean energy source because it has
zero carbon dioxide emissions; yet, at the same time, it produces massive
amounts of hazardous, radioactive waste that pile up as more and more reactors are built around the world.
Experts have proposed different solutions for this issue to take
better care of the environment and people’s health. With insufficient safe
storage space for nuclear waste disposal, the focal point of these ideas is
the reutilization of the materials.
Radioactive diamond batteries were
first developed in 2016 and were immediately acclaimed because they promised a
new, cost-effective way of recycling nuclear waste. In this context, it’s
unavoidable to deliberate whether they’re the ultimate solution to these toxic, lethal residues.
Nano
Diamond Radioactive Batteries
The origins of nuclear batteries can be traced back to 1913,
when English physicist Henry Moseley found out that particle radiation could
generate an electric current. In the 1950s and 1960s, the aerospace industry
was very interested in Moseley’s discovery, as it could potentially power
spacecraft for long-duration missions. The RCA Corporation also researched an
application for nuclear batteries in radio receivers and hearing aids.
But other technologies were needed to develop and sustain the
invention. In this regard, the usage of synthetic diamonds is seen as
revolutionary, as it provides safety and conductivity to the radioactive
battery. With the addition of nanotechnology, an American company built a
high-power nano-diamond battery
The technology behind diamond battery
The
battery is powered by radioactive waste graphite--used in graphite-cooled
nuclear reactors--which is encased in layers of nano-thin, single crystalline
diamond, which act both as a semiconductor and heat sink.
Each
unit will contain a single crystalline diamond that absorbs energy from the
isotopes. Now diamonds are rare and have the highest energy-conductivity,
meaning it quickly transfers heat from the radioactive graphite--and the
transaction is so quick that it generates electricity.
The diamond
layers not only collect charge, but also prevent radiation leakage. NDB even
claims that the radiation levels emitted by the cells will be less than those
emitted by the human body. The firm hasn’t produced the batteries yet but has a
proof-of-concept design, called “Diamond Nuclear Voltaic,” which was presented
in 2016 by scientists from the University of Bristol using waste graphite
blocks.
What Are Radioactive
Diamond Batteries?
Radioactive
diamond batteries were first developed by a team of physicists and chemists
from the Cabot Institute for the Environment of the University of Bristol. The
invention was presented as a beta voltaic device, which means that it’s powered
by the beta decay of nuclear waste.
Beta decay is a type of radioactive decay that occurs when an
atom’s nucleus has an excess of particles and releases some of them to obtain a
more stable ratio of protons to neutrons. This produces a kind of ionizing
radiation called beta radiation, which involves a lot of high-speed and
high-energy electrons or positrons known as beta particles. Beta
particles contain nuclear energy that can be converted into electric energy
through a semiconductor.
A typical beta voltaic cell consists of thin layers of
radioactive material placed between semiconductors. As the nuclear material
decays, it emits beta particles that knock electrons loose in the
semiconductor, creating an electric current.
However, the power density of the radioactive source is lower
the further it is from the semiconductor. On top of this, because beta
particles are randomly emitted in all directions, only a small number of them
will hit the semiconductor, and only a small number of those will be converted
into electricity. This means that nuclear batteries are much less efficient
than other types of batteries. This is where the polycrystalline diamond
(PCD) comes in.
How Radioactive
Diamond Batteries are made?
The radioactive diamond batteries are made using a process
called chemical vapor deposition, which is widely used for artificial diamond
manufacture. It uses a mixture of hydrogen and methane plasma to grow diamond
films at very high temperatures. Researchers have modified the CVD process
to grow radioactive diamonds by using a radioactive methane containing the
radioactive isotope Carbon-14, which is found on irradiated reactor graphite
blocks.
Diamond is one of the hardest materials that humanity knows
— it’s even harder than silicon carbide. And it can act as both a
radioactive source and a semiconductor. Expose it to beta radiation
and you’ll get a long-duration battery that doesn’t need to be recharged. The
nuclear waste in its interior fuels it repeatedly, allowing it to self-charge
for ages.
However, the Bristol team warned that their radioactive diamond
batteries wouldn’t be suitable for laptops or smartphones because they contain
only 1g of carbon-14, meaning that they provide very low power —only a few
microwatts, which is less than a typical AA battery. Therefore, their application
so far is limited to small devices that must stay unattended for a long time,
such as sensors and pacemakers.
Nano-diamond batteries
features
Nano-diamond batteries
from NDB are described as alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic batteries and have
several new features.
- Durability. The firm calculates that the batteries could last up to 28,000 years, which means that they could reliably power space vehicles in long-duration missions, space stations, and satellites. Drones, electric cars, and aircraft on Earth would never need to make stops to be recharged.
- Safety. Diamond is not only one of the hardest substances, but also one of the most thermally conductive materials in the world, which helps protect against the heat produced by the radioisotopes that the battery is built with, turning it into electric current very quickly.
- Market-friendliness. Thin-film layers of PCD
in these allow the battery to allow for different shapes and forms.
Therefore nano-diamond batteries can be multipurpose and enter different
markets, from the space applications to consumer electronics. The
consumer version would not last more than a decade, though.
Nano-diamond batteries
are scheduled to come onto the market in 2023.
Arkenlight, the
English firm commercializing Bristol’s radioactive diamond battery, plans on
releasing their first product, a micro battery, to the market in the latter
part of 2023.
The
Future of Radioactive Diamond-Based Batteries
The portability of modern electronic devices, the increasing
popularity of electric vehicles, and the 21st Century race to take
humanity on long space missions to Mars have triggered a growing interest in
battery technology research in the last few years.
Some types of batteries are more appropriate for certain
applications and not as useful for others. But we can say that the conventional
lithium-ion batteries that we are familiar with won't be replaced with
radioactive diamond batteries any time soon.
Conventional batteries last a shorter time, but they are also
much cheaper to manufacture. However, at the same time, the fact that they do
not last that long (they have a lifespan of about five years) is problematic,
because they also produce a great deal of electronic waste, which is not easy
to recycle.
Radioactive diamond batteries are more convenient because they
have a much longer lifespan than conventional batteries. If they can be
developed into a universal battery, like NDB Inc. proposes, we could end up
with smartphone batteries that last much longer than the life of the
smartphone, and we could simply change the battery from one phone to the next,
much as we now transfer the SIM card.
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA)
calculated that 100 pounds (approximately 45 kg) of carbon-14 could allow the
fabrication of millions of long-duration diamonds-based batteries. These
batteries could also reduce the costs of nuclear waste storage.
Don’t all these features make them one of the best options for
the sustainable future that we need? We’ll have to wait and see if the
manufacturers can find a way of dealing with production costs and low energy
output and get their diamond-based batteries onto the market cost-effectively
and accessibly.
Sources
“Nuclear Batteries” Offer a New
Approach to Carbon-Free Energy (scitechdaily.com)
Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries a
Cure for Nuclear Waste? | WIRED
New Diamond Battery Will Last 28,000
Years, Powered By Nuclear Waste (indiatimes.com)
A battery made from nuclear waste
that can last 28,000 years - The Hindu
Radioactive Diamond Battery Will Run
For 28,000 Years: NDB Facts (popularmechanics.com)
Are Radioactive Diamond Batteries the
Solution to Nuclear Waste? (interestingengineering.com)
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