Energy firm says its nuclear-waste fueled diamond batteries could last thousands of years

originally posted by: Guyfriday
Hold up, so I can have an electric car that would never need to be recharged? EVER! I think this could be a great thing, but then again It would probably cost too much for any normal person to buy.

These figures from the thunderf00t video were for a mobile phone using 1/5 of a watt:



So for a device that uses 1 watt, you need to multiply those by 5, which I can do, it comes to
$5,000,000,000,000 cost
3000 kg (6600 lbs) weight

The Tesla electric car is said to use 15,583 watts when driving 55 mph. So just multiply the 1 watt figures by 15583:

15583 x $5,000,000,000,000 = many times more than the global economy of 80 trillion USD or so, so there's not enough money in the entire world at those prices, to buy a battery that would power a car.

15583 x 3000 kg = 46,749,000 kg (or 46,749 tons). This is a problem because the Tesla suspension can't handle that, and with all that extra weight you would need more power to go 55 mph. Another problem: There is probably not enough nuclear waste in the world to supply that much carbon-14. I couldn't find precise figures for the total amount of graphite nuclear waste in the world, but let's estimate that at 300,000 tons. I also couldn't find a figure for how much C-14 is vaporized when that is heated, to form the radioactive diamonds, but let's guess 1% of the total mass (let me know if you have a better figure)

So if processing 300,000 tons of the Earth's existing graphite waste yields 1% or 3,000 tons of C-14, that's only 6% of the 46,749 tons of C-14 you would need to power your car. There's not nearly enough of that type of nuclear waste in the world, if those estimates are correct. Even if the 300,000 tons of graphite waste was pure C-14 (which it most definitely is not) that could only make 6 batteries in the entire world with the ~50,000 tons needed to power a car. You could probably be adequately shielded from the radiation as long as you weren't in an accident, but if you got in an accident and the car caught fire, can you imagine the disaster of releasing that much C-14? Diamonds will burn, thunderf00t demonstrates that in his video, and vehicle fires can get very hot.

a reply to: Arbitrageur

thanks for posting important parts of the video, I was far to lazy when I just posted the link, my apologies

I do like Thunderf00t and his approach as he tries to make it simple enough that a numpty like me can understand and also enjoy watching his videos.

thanks again

I’m a little unclear on one point here (well, more than one probably)...

So would this actually reduce the amount of total nuclear waste in a big way?

Said another way, would the refinement of the graphite/the general processing procedure leave you with “leftover” material and would that material still require standard “nuclear waste disposal” protocols?

I ask this as, if this worked, it’s pretty damned cool. Cut down on or eliminate nuclear waste, build a case for more nuke power in general as we now have a need for the waste, reduce the strain on the power grid as millions of phones/tablets/laptops/desktops don’t need electricity any longer, cut down people’s utility bills, zero to little carbon impact, etc. lots of good stuff.

Heck, my mind goes to using this stuff to power basically all household electronics from TVs to your fridge to your instapot or whatever else. That would be huge savings in aggregate and allow people to use that money on other things.

Things like this battery concept are pretty cool - and the living example of why capitalism works, btw.

originally posted by: EnigmaChaser
I’m a little unclear on one point here (well, more than one probably)...

So would this actually reduce the amount of total nuclear waste in a big way?

Processing descriptions are vague but say something like heat up the graphite and then collect the C-14 by vapor deposition process which makes C-14 diamonds.

Graphite waste exists at all three waste level classifications, high level, intermediate level, and low level waste. I would expect there's not enough C-14 in the low level waste to make it worth processing, so I think the low level waste would stay low level waste. Whether the processing of the intermediate level and high level graphite waste allowed it to be reclassified to a lower level after the processing, depends on the processing details, which we don't have. If reduced they would likely still be considered at least low-level waste since processes to make it completely safe are probably not economically viable.

I ask this as, if this worked, it’s pretty damned cool. Cut down on or eliminate nuclear waste

If there are 300,000 tons of graphite waste before making the batteries, there will still be 300,000 tons of graphite waste after making batteries. The level of the waste may or may not be reduced but it will still be nuclear waste.

But now in addition to that 300,000 tons, you would have all these radioactive batteries everywhere, which may break down in 200 years and release their radiation which will still be toxic for over 10,000 years if they are made with C-14. That seems to be making the waste problem worse, not better, unless there's some way to ensure the C-14 batteries won't break down in a few centuries. I think you're better off using Nickel-63 radioactive batteries if you need long life high cost batteries, since the half life is only 100 years so the risk is more manageable than the 5700 year half-life of C-14.

This is a promo and they NDB are saying what type of batteries and what uses are planned. If the goals can be reached and they seem confident they can I hope I am still alive to see this stuff. youtu.be...

originally posted by: 727Sky
This is a promo and they NDB are saying what type of batteries and what uses are planned. If the goals can be reached

They can't.

and they seem confident they can I hope I am still alive to see this stuff.

They may be confident they can fool technically challenged people who still don't seem to realize this is a hoax despite all the information presented in this thread that it is. The claims in that video should have been registering this on your BS meter if you paid any attention at all to Thunderf00t's video or my post of highlights from it.



To summarize once again, betavoltaic batteries are real devices with very low power and very low current, very high cost, and potentially very long life, and they do have practical uses in specialized niche applications.

CityLabs is a real company founded in 2005 which has been making betavoltaic batteries for niche applications, but they are all low power. One "trick" they can use to get higher power is to couple the betavoltaic as a charger for another type of battery with higher output, like Lithium Ion, and then you can temporarily get higher output from the Lithium battery, until it's depleted, at which point it can be recharged by the betavoltaic. But the betavoltaic output is so low, recharging takes a very long time.

NDB mentions a similar scheme except using their betavoltaic to charge capacitors instead of a lithium battery. That's certainly plausible as capacitors can store energy. But Dave on the EEVblog youtube channel made a new video a few days ago debunking NDB and estimated that recharging an AA battery with NDB's capacitors, using two of their 100 microwatt modules, would take 22,000 hours:

EEVblog #1333 - Nano Diamond Self-Charging Battery DEBUNKED!
The first thing he recommends is watching Thunderf00t's video, already posted earlier in this thread and I explained some key points from that earlier. Then he shows this image of a 100 microwatt NDB chip, though he can't say where he got it except he knows NDB is the source:



Later in the video, he shows a screen from NDB's page claiming their batavoltaic is 16 times more efficient than other betavoltaics. How they can know this is a mystery since Dave's research shows they have never made a prototype, or that he can find nothing about it if they have. But let's assume it's 16 times more efficient than this 5.6 microwatt model from City Labs:


Betavoltaic_Batteries_From_CityLabs-2015- presentation


So if you take that highest power unit on that page from CityLabs, 5.6 microwatts, and multiply that by 16 to get a battery that's 16 times as efficient, 5.6 x 16 = 90 microwatts, close to the 100 microwatts label on the NDB graphic, so let's assume NDB can get 100 microwatts out because of their 16x efficiency advantage.

First, we can look at their claim of powering a car with these batteries. Using the real City Labs chips with 5.6 microwatt output, we would need 2.8 billion of them to generate the 16kW needed to drive a Tesla car at 55 mph.

The CityLabs also has a pricing page but it doesn't get up to the 5.6 microwatts models, but let's use their pricing chart here to extrapolate a $5000 price for the 5.6 microwatt model:



So 2.8 billion of their 5.6 microwatts chips at $5000 each would cost $13.9 trillion, which happens to be the entirety of the US M2 money supply as of March, 2018.


But wait, the NDB chips are 16 times more efficient, so you only need 1/16 as many, so at $5000 each, the cost of batteries to power a Tesla would only be 1/16 of the entire US money supply in March 2018. You can get the cost down further by adding more batteries, and more weight to the car, so let's say you use buy a Tesla car "as is" with all its batteries, and use the betavoltaics to charge the regular Tesla batteries. Weight of the betavoltaic will be a huge problem as explained in my earlier post, but setting that aside, say you only need 1/3 as many if you only use the betavoltaics as chargers and not to power the car at highway speeds. In that case you only need 1/3 of 1/16 of the US money supply, so now the cost of the betavoltaics to charge the batteries in a Tesla would only be $289 billion, or $289,000,000,000 to remove any short scale ambiguity.

I tend to agree with these remarks under the EEVblog video:

WizardTim-6 days ago: "Yea looks like the main two founders aren’t complete idiots but interestingly it also looks like most of the staff on NDB’s LinkedIn are students and interns.
Also after digging deeper I can’t help but think the real product they’re selling is company shares with the suggestion the company will soon be worth billions.
youtu.be...
Starting to think it’s more of an elaborate scam than a misguided ‘inventor’."

I'm not saying all betavoltaics are a scam, there are legitimate niche applications with low power requirements where replacing batteries is difficult or impossible, where betavoltaics low power and high cost will make sense.



As that shows you can also couple them with other technologies like chemical batteries or capacitors to store the small amount of energy the betavoltaics produce, but the trickle charge is so small that it could take a very long time to store up enough energy for more practical use, 22,000 hours to charge an AA battery per Dave's calculations and he was being generous assuming NDB could deliver 100 microwatts despite them having no prototype. It would take a lot longer than that with CityLabs' 5.6 microwatt betavoltaics.

a reply to: 727Sky

First, my flashlight might work for 28,000 years, but I'll probably have to pay $150.00 a month for the rest of my life for the 2 AA's I need.

Second, where's the proof that one of these batteries can last 28,000 years and where can I get the time machine they used? I might invest my money into that instead of the two nuclear waste diamond batchries.

a reply to: 727Sky

Im thinking man portable beam weaponry is on the horizon if these things do what they say on the tin.

originally posted by: Zaphod58
a reply to: dragonridr

One gram of unprocessed nuclear waste. They aren't using straight nuclear waste. They're purifying graphite, and turning it into carbon-14 diamonds that are then coated in a layer of carbon-12 diamond. The carbon-12 coating contains the radioactive material, and shields it.

This is the kind of talk that gets me excited......about what kind of resources could be mined from other planets/moons and used here. But then I remember that we don't even try to go to our own damn moon. Real hoverboards and real flying cars could be as real as they looked in BttF II.

originally posted by: lakenheath24
I drove a Pinto in High School. NOTHING scares me.




a reply to: dragonridr

That reminds me of the words we made up in the early 90's when Ice Ice Baby came on...

Rolling, in my green Pinto
Hole in the top so my hair can blow
The girlies all stand by waiting just to say bye
(did you stop?)
Yeah, my car died

You're definitely a brave lad.

originally posted by: Arbitrageur

originally posted by: Guyfriday
Hold up, so I can have an electric car that would never need to be recharged? EVER! I think this could be a great thing, but then again It would probably cost too much for any normal person to buy.

These figures from the thunderf00t video were for a mobile phone using 1/5 of a watt:

So for a device that uses 1 watt, you need to multiply those by 5, which I can do, it comes to
$5,000,000,000,000 cost
3000 kg (6600 lbs) weight

The Tesla electric car is said to use 15,583 watts when driving 55 mph. So just multiply the 1 watt figures by 15583:

15583 x $5,000,000,000,000 = many times more than the global economy of 80 trillion USD or so, so there's not enough money in the entire world at those prices, to buy a battery that would power a car.

15583 x 3000 kg = 46,749,000 kg (or 46,749 tons). This is a problem because the Tesla suspension can't handle that, and with all that extra weight you would need more power to go 55 mph. Another problem: There is probably not enough nuclear waste in the world to supply that much carbon-14. I couldn't find precise figures for the total amount of graphite nuclear waste in the world, but let's estimate that at 300,000 tons. I also couldn't find a figure for how much C-14 is vaporized when that is heated, to form the radioactive diamonds, but let's guess 1% of the total mass (let me know if you have a better figure)

So if processing 300,000 tons of the Earth's existing graphite waste yields 1% or 3,000 tons of C-14, that's only 6% of the 46,749 tons of C-14 you would need to power your car. There's not nearly enough of that type of nuclear waste in the world, if those estimates are correct. Even if the 300,000 tons of graphite waste was pure C-14 (which it most definitely is not) that could only make 6 batteries in the entire world with the ~50,000 tons needed to power a car. You could probably be adequately shielded from the radiation as long as you weren't in an accident, but if you got in an accident and the car caught fire, can you imagine the disaster of releasing that much C-14? Diamonds will burn, thunderf00t demonstrates that in his video, and vehicle fires can get very hot.

OK, you are right if it stays 1/5 watt. Absolutely no doubt. Surely, this is the beginning of the research and not the end. THIS just suggests we can do it. Practicality comes later or we won't get any for personal use or otherwise at 1/5 watt.

We may not be on the exact right path still but an attempt to improve that power output might lead to something big somewhere else if this is the best we can expect from this method. Crystal lattice is how you describe the physical structure of solids and Carbon atoms together are the perfect lattice. Diamonds are very interesting. We know other gems have unique property's and some believe metaphysical. Not me, but some people at least. I do know lasers use gems for wavelength precision.

No proof available ever since we won't live long enough to find out and that sounds like maybe possible but pure SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess). Truly, this is a SWAG. Theoretical only and subject to actual scientific scrutiny unlike the CO2 is a pollutant scam. Just because it is possible they put it out there.

originally posted by: LSU2018
a reply to: 727Sky

First, my flashlight might work for 28,000 years, but I'll probably have to pay $150.00 a month for the rest of my life for the 2 AA's I need.

Second, where's the proof that one of these batteries can last 28,000 years and where can I get the time machine they used? I might invest my money into that instead of the two nuclear waste diamond batchries.

ETA

LSU I had the Pinto Sq Station wagon and drove it to my Newspaper route after Football practice in HS.... I had a huge morning and afternoon route I squeezed in between sports and study. Well, study came easy for me and I didn't have to study after school. We had a small school with a core of smarty pants that we all fed off of each other during the day mentally challenging each other like the football players do on the field. I also sang in the choir and had to choose between moving to a new school to sing in a awesome travelling choir or stay on the wrestling team that won the city in our division.. I wrestled then and in college but it was tough saying no to a black HS choir when I was a white guy who loved singing with all my heart...