Tiny 'nuclear batteries' unveiled

reply to post by mizzu



Batteries... and other things.

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/42b021c9e449.png[/atsimg]

Its a shame the human race is divided and consumed by hate otherwise think of the things we could be doing with this technology. Is a sad state of affairs that the military has technology that would change they way we live but is held back.

reply to post by On the level


Held back? NUCLEAR batteries? Anything with a NUCLEAR moniker is verboten in the US.

The Media Tells us So.

It's bad for the environment.

People worry about the RF radiation from cell phones.

Would you want a tiny nuclear battery in a hearing aid stuck in your ear.

Or maybe a tiny nuclear battery in your pocket cell phone near your family jewels.

Why do I have the feeling that somewhere, at sometime, someone will make this convenient technology just- disappear from the public view.

Unfortunately oil still reigns supreme

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if the half-life is only ~87 days then it would be OK to dispose of them in the trash right? They wouldn't be radioactive for long once they were thrown away.

Originally posted by Quantum_Squirrel


Wow a battery that holds a million times more power than its standard counterpart.

Why didn't I think of using radioactive decay before?

I read once somewhere that all the technology basicaly exists to make anything ... the problem is speed of communication between devices ( hopefully solved with quantum computer)

You better figure out where you read it because I'm interested in reading it.

Nice find, s&f for you.

I wonder if they will use that battery technology to power the exoskeleton "power armor" the US military is developing... or maybe they already are using similar, more developed technology. Now where did I read that phrase that says US military technology is decades ahead from what we currently have now... cool, but at the same time, creepy.

Originally posted by zetamafia911

Unfortunately oil still reigns supreme

Yes it does, but it's days are numbered. Simply by virtue of the fact that we're running out of easy to get oil.

The next ten to twenty years are going to be make or break for the US. Either they get their storage and green technology act together, or they're finished.

[edit on 8-10-2009 by mckyle]

reply to post by mckyle


I don't know much about these batteries, but we have enough recoverable oil and natural gas within our borders to last hundreds of years. The pollution is the problem.

Just the oil shale in the Morrison Formation would last us 300 years and the technology has been in place to recover it since the pilot plants were built in the late seventies or so. I worked in that field in that area then. The process worked then they idled the plant and let it rot.

The reserves of natural gas under the Wyoming high desert also represents about a 300 year supply.

The oil already located under the over-thrust belt in the Wyoming, Idaho, Utah area is huge. More than the Saudi pools. The crew who first hit the pool and proved it was there was in my living room shortly after. They said black helicopters full of men in Italian Suits descended on them, told them this never happened and filled their pockets with hundred dollar bills.

They showed me the money because they knew me from other rigs and wanted me to go party with them, which I did

Two weeks later I drove to the Farmers field in Wyoming where they hit the first gusher and it was restored like it was never there. It was surrounded with a high fence with signs with the same warning you see around weapons facilities and nuclear sites. They even replanted the foliage. Then they produced a small amount of oil as cover and the real pool is sitting there untapped.

We don't have cheap plentiful energy because they don't want us to have it. Nobody will ever believe those of us who worked to find it and many were shut up with bribes and threats.

Believe what you will but there is plenty of oil in the US. The Saudi's don't even compare to what we have under our soil and coastlines.

I've said too much but it really pisses me off when people fall for the lies or propagate them.

Originally posted by Quantum_Squirrel
And Power source was always sighted as the primary stumbling block.... this battery is penny sized i wonder what one the size of a car battery could power?

You mean, you wonder what it already powers, right?

Think about nuclear submarines, I bet they can last forever with technology like this already in use.

reply to post by Blaine91555


I am surprised by your revelation.

Could you be kind enough to give me some EROEI's on the various basins you've mentioned?

Also, what throughput are you using to calculate the "300 year" reserves.

As well, could you tell me the extraction method being proposed?

Cheers,

Matt


[edit on 9-10-2009 by mckyle]

Nasa used some of these in a probe a few decades ago (one of the mars ones I think). They are not rechargeable, once they have expended the charge they are done for. So I do not think they will make a good "green" source for cars.

They have been using nuclear batteries for years in pacemakers and on satalites, mostly polonium 210 in pacemakers and plutonium or polonium in the satalites. The americium used in smoke detectors really isn't anything, unless you consume it. It doesn't act as a battery it just creates an ionized field around it so that when the smoke particles interupt it it beeps. The type of nuclear fuel used for batteries cannot be used to make nuclear bombs, it is not the right stuff, only neutron emitters can be made into nuclear bombs. Even if, for some crazy reason, they decided to use plutonium or uranium in the batteries it would definately not be weapons grade probably closer 20-25 percent enriched, there is no possible way that any civilian could enrich enough to obtain critical mass/radius. Somebody said something about the beta emissions being bad, they are only really harmful if you consume a nuclear source in which case you would die anyways because of how poisonous the stuff is, but betas are generally stopped by the dead layer of skin on you or by your clothes, its the gamma and neutron radation that will get ya. Anywho thats about it, a buddy of mine and myself did a presentation on nuclear batteries about a year and a half ago so let me know if ya'll have questions.

reply to post by Quantum_Squirrel

Also they have been used by the military for
a while now and its just being 'unvieled'

No. This is old news. This type of power source was publicly known to be used on the Voyager crafts, over 30 years ago. It's likely there's been some refinements in size and power, but the technology itself has been publicly known at least since 1977.

reply to post by emsed1

Iran and North Korea have used thousands of centrifuges
for years at a time and can't make enough material for a bomb

This is a popular misconception that doesn't pass the common sense test. The process for refining uranium to Uranium-235 is so simple that it's silly to think that even small corporations, let alone major governments wouldn't be able to do it. Essentially, all you need to do is mailorder some uranium ore, and heat it to liquid in a centrifuge. The heavier isotopes will be pulled to the outside of the centifuge, while lighter isotopes move to the center.

I wonder what would happen if you touched both ends of this battery with a paper clip... then touched the paper clip...

hmmm...

[edit on 10/8/09 by MoothyKnight]

Some kinds of radioisotopes simply cannot be made into Nuclear weapons. It is unclear what isotope these batteries use, but it is possible that these simply cannot be made into weapons under any circumstances, even if you had hundreds of kilos of it.


edit: These use Sulfur‐35. Impossible to create a nuclear weapon out of that...

No. This is old news. This type of power source was publicly known to be used on the Voyager crafts, over 30 years ago.

You are wrong. Look at the size of the Voyager RTGs. This is about the miniaturization of them, which is very much new. Also, these batteries use Sulfur‐35, which is somewhat different to the Voyager probes (that use cherry red plutonium).

Batteries such as these, with a much higher energy storage capacity, might make storage of large amounts of energy easier for practical home-use alternative energy applications. Certainly it will require less space to store a comparable amount of energy; setting aside a whole room in your house or a large shed on your property to hold gigantic battery banks for storage solar/wind energy might no longer be necessary.

These are not exactly electrical batteries. They cannot be charged, but instead rely on the decay of nuclear material.

[edit on 8/10/2009 by C0bzz]

Originally posted by LordBucket
reply to post by emsed1

 

Iran and North Korea have used thousands of centrifuges
for years at a time and can't make enough material for a bomb

This is a popular misconception that doesn't pass the common sense test. The process for refining uranium to Uranium-235 is so simple that it's silly to think that even small corporations, let alone major governments wouldn't be able to do it. Essentially, all you need to do is mailorder some uranium ore, and heat it to liquid in a centrifuge. The heavier isotopes will be pulled to the outside of the centifuge, while lighter isotopes move to the center.

Yeah thats basically it, if you live in america it is pretty easy to find uranium, moab, Ut has tons of it, it unfortunately only naturally occurs at like 2-3%, i don't see why more countries don't just use laser sepration, that seems like the easiest. A buddy of mine is doing his phd on using distillation columns to enrich as well as reprocess nuclear fuel. There are a few obstacles with centrifuging, first is the huge power requirements necessary for a process that large, also the tubes used during the process are very specific, just aluminum but the spefications are not really used in any other processes. Also, i'm thinking now a days they are seperating by gasifying the stuff, then mixing it with flourine gas to obtain UF6 uranium hexaflouride. Funny story, there used to be a professor that worked up in our nuclear lab, he was of mid-eastern decent, anywho he had orded a bunch of those centrifuge tubes like a thousand or so. One day he just disappeared, not sure if he got the tubes, and then like a week later the feds showed up asking a bunch of questions about him. Good times.

[edit on 8-10-2009 by nuker123]

reply to post by Rikhart

if I understand it, this kind of battery cannot be recharged, right?

So far as I know, radioactive decay batteries are not usually made to be rechargable. I'm sure you could design some that were...but why? The half lives of radioactive materials is often extremely long. The half life of Uranium-283, for example, is 4.47 BILLION years. That means that a battery of this type would still have the potential to still be producing half its original power output after 4.47 billion years. There may be reasons to not use this particular material in these batteries, however...

eliminating its potencial usage as electric car power source, for example, am I correct?

...the batteries that were used in the Voyager probe were built in 1977, and are expected to continue to generate usable power until at least the year 2025

Why is rechargability a concern?