r/Futurology • u/UweLang • 1d ago
Energy China's Nuclear Battery Breakthrough: A 50-Year Power Source That Becomes Copper?
https://peakd.com/hive-114308/@gentleshaid/chinas-nuclear-battery-breakthrough-a-50year-power-source-that-becomes-copper-cbv131
u/lmstr 1d ago edited 1d ago
So I did some quick napkin math. A 2032 Lithium coin battery is designed to provide constant 0.5 mA at 3 volts. If the battery is used constantly it will drain in 20 days. The watts required to provide that level of amperage is 0.0015 W.
You would need 15 of these nuclear batteries to provide the same function of a 2032 Lithium coin battery. Of course they would last 50 years instead of 20 days though.
Edit Off by 10 error fixed.
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u/Gentlmans_wash 1d ago
So what’s that mean in real world terms for practicality? My tamagotchi is gonna outlive my grandkids, or that magic wands gonna last longer than an hour camping?
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u/Catdaemon 1d ago
Not very practical for the everyman, but probably useful for satellites and monitoring equipment.
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u/mini-rubber-duck 1d ago
the potential for implants like pacemakers is pretty exciting, and things like smoke detectors on stupidly high ceilings
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u/forestapee 23h ago
Those high smoke detectors are typically wired into the buildings power
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u/sambodia85 22h ago
Which is fine while there’s power, which I assume is one of the first things to cut out when there’s a fire.
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u/Poly_and_RA 17h ago
Yes, but what you do is you wire them into the main power, and then in ADDITION you equip them with a supercap or some other power-storage device that keeps them running for a week or two even after power gets cut.
Doesn't take a lot, they're pretty low power. Keep in mind that regular battery-powered smoke detectors run for like a decade on a good long-term battery, so it really doesn't take a lot to keep them running for a couple weeks.
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u/lmstr 1d ago
I think the larger underlying issue is the cost. I was looking online and 1 gram of this Nickel isotope cost 4k. I don't know how much material of a tiny coin battery is actually the radioactive material, but that price will have to come down a lot, and it's also made in a reactor.
Yes your tamagotchi is gonna last forever, but for now it's gonna be a bit larger lol. You could definitely make an ever lasting light, but it's gonna be the size of a flashlight and as bright as one of those keychain lights.
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u/Fjolsvith 1d ago
That's still a lot cheaper than the plutonium-238 used in spacecraft RTGs though. I don't think there even is a price you can put on that stuff currently given how limited the supply is.
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u/lmstr 1d ago
Yep I saw a video on the rarity of Pu 238, though I think it's mostly on the US' decision not to have feeder reactors, we could definitely make it easily, NASA definitely needs a better supply, it would work great for potential mars missions.
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u/Fjolsvith 1d ago
Yep, we definitely can make it if we decide to do so. There actually was a plan in place to build a production system at one of the nuclear plants in Ontario to fuel rovers, though I'm not sure of the current state of it or any future production plans is (particularly now that cooperation with the US is getting more difficult).
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u/West-Abalone-171 23h ago edited 23h ago
There will be milligrams at most (but more likely micrograms or less).
But the 20carats of 15mmx15mm perfect diamond sheets are going to leave a dent.
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u/therealhairykrishna 11h ago
My instinct was to agree with you. But the specific activity of nickel-63 is 2.1e12 Bq/gram i.e around 57 curies. According to the label each of these has 50Ci inside.
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u/West-Abalone-171 10h ago
Wait wut.
Oh. Totally missed that. I thought they were being ultra-hyped because they'd made some big breakthrough and reached two digit efficiencies or similar, but it's still <0.5% (also the decay is lower energy than I expected, even at middling efficiencies it'd still be 2 digit milligrams)
That's a shitload of nickel-63. It's way shittier than I even thought.
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u/therealhairykrishna 10h ago
They're essentially just standard beta emitter nuclear batteries that we've had since the 1950's. I don't understand the hype at all. Maybe they're just great at press releases and are fishing for investment.
Really poor of th various tech sites reporting on them to be honest. Some quick analysis of the worlds yearly production of nickel-63 and what percentage of it is needed for their 1 watt battery would be nice.
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u/West-Abalone-171 10h ago edited 10h ago
There was some hype around an (alleged) increase in betavoltaic efficiency by using phosphorescence and then the photovoltaic effect, essentially letting you get more than 1 electron per decay. I'd (falsely, it seems) assumed it was based on this.
Afaik nickel 63 all comes from alloying nickel in neutron activated steel. I guess some is probably produced by irradiating it intentionally, but nfi what the cross section is. Would probably take orders of magnitude more uranium to make it on purpose.
I can't find anyone estimating a quantity, but I would be surprised if it's >10kg/yr
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u/therealhairykrishna 10h ago
Oak ridge also make it commercially in their high flux reactor. I think the cross section isn't great but they're not short of neutrons. No idea what their yearly production is but not enough is my guess.
I've not heard of that efficiency boosting tech. Sounds interesting though - I'll have a read.
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u/dmk_aus 1d ago
It is a niche product that will be invaluable in very specific use cases. It does not replace normal batteries in 99.999% (made up number, but basically almost all) of cases. But it makes new things possible that used to be impossible without complex custom, often nuclear solutions.
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u/YourOldBuddy 15h ago
We have meters that have a 16 year lifespan running on a lithium batteries. Sure most meters need calibration before that, but I could imagine lots of usecases where they really don't and not having to worry about the battery would be really nice.
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u/Gobbyer 1d ago
Damnit! I tought this battery was going to save me time by not having to change batteries of auto dimming welding mask... But inserting 300 of these in the mask is just breaking my neck.
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u/WazWaz 1d ago
My mask just uses a solar panel. Indeed, the "auto" needs to detect bright light, so it makes sense for the sensor to be the power source.
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u/WazWaz 1d ago
You're maths is wrong. 0.5mA@3V is 1.5mW, 0.0015W.
In reality no-one uses a 2032 in applications where it would only last 20 days. I don't know where you got that figure so I don't know if it should be 200 days due to your error.
In any case, the OP battery is 100μW (0.0001W), so 15, not 150, presumably the same error. But this means a duty cycle of 6%, which is more than adequate for any practical watch battery application (i.e. one where you're not changing the battery every 20 days).
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u/BitOBear 1d ago
Okay. But if it's a completely solid state arrangement how many layers can you fit in the thickness of say A D cell battery or a classic coin cell.
Once the technology work what are the actual size and requirements necessary to come up with those 15 layers or 15 times surface area (depending on whether you're talking sereal or parallel arrangements)?
Like what would the matrix of this material actually look like in an optimal real-world configuration?
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u/West-Abalone-171 23h ago
It's closer to the size and use case of a 2450 which would produce 100µW for a bit over 2 years.
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u/itsmebtbamthony 1d ago
Everyone here missing the point. This is how humanity progresses. We can’t just jump from nothing to everything. This is a weak model, but it’s likely taught us a lot. And it will only get better.
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u/PinkNinjaMan 1d ago
I think the big thing about this is how it's nuclear and emits no radiation, and has seemingly no waste when done.
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u/itsmebtbamthony 18h ago
Exactly! Those are all great features. Now we just have to figure out how to expand on those ideas.
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u/Earthfall10 14h ago
The efficiency could go up a bit, and the cost might come down quite a bit if more reactors producing Nickel 63 come online, but there isn't much room for improvement though in terms of its low power output. Its tiny power to weight ratio is a fundamental limit from it using the slow decay of a radiative isotope. There are isotopes that have shorter half lives and so release their energy faster, but they also run down faster. If you want a battery that lasts 50 or a hundred years, its going to have very little power for its weight. It still has use cases, like pacemakers, but the article breathlessly saying you could use it to have a phone that never runs out for 50 years is overselling it a lot.
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u/yorangey 1d ago
New microcontrollers could be powered by this, between sleeps. Use a capacitor for higher levels of burst power for Bluetooth...
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u/OverSoft 1d ago
100 microwatts x 24 x 365 x 50 = 43.8 watt hours of energy.
It’s impressive for a small battery, but it’s in no way earth shattering.
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u/OhFuuuccckkkkk 9h ago
it sounds like the application for this is more space exploration and having a longer-duration low power source, or acting as a redundancy. Shut down only to essential systems and have this thing powering it.
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u/Bicentennial_Douche 1d ago
It’s easy to have a long-lasting battery if it outputs a minuscule amount of power. And this battery outputs a minuscule amount of power. You might be able to light up a LED with the output, and that’s about it.
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u/thisisredlitre 1d ago
Honestly the idea of a 50 year seiko watch sounds pretty great
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u/Nosemyfart 1d ago
My solar powered Casio edifice should last more than 50 years and has a calendar till 2099. Been using it for 12 years now.
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u/Soepoelse123 1d ago
But thats like saying that a rechargeable battery will outlive a non chargable battery - like obviously it will...
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u/D-inventa 1d ago
I suppose so. That's a good point. I think we'd probably all love to see this kind of technology available for wider application. Definitely think even as a CMOS battery backup it's a really cool piece of tech, but we're all looking for replacements to our phone batteries, and remote control batteries, and tablets and laptops and all that. Considering how expensive copper is, I'm also wondering how A)Affordable and B)Scalable this kind of battery tech actually is. Would love to see this being applied
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u/Soepoelse123 21h ago
Yeah, but we gotta remember that 1) this tech is brand new and has room for improvement and 2) not every tech needs to be applied to every situation.
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u/West-Abalone-171 12h ago
The point is a 1cm2 pv cell getting 1% of outdoor sunlight during daylight hours will gather more energy.
Anything which is exposed to even indoor lighting sporadically has a much better power source available without having to deal with nickel 63 and 15mm wide slices of diamond
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u/BatMeatTacos 1d ago
You can get a Seiko automatic winding mechanical watch that will last basically forever if you keep it properly lubricated.
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u/Poly_and_RA 17h ago
How much extra are you willing to pay for a watch with a 50-year battery instead of one with a 10 year battery though?
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u/otoko_no_hito 1d ago
Wait, an LED? that's huge, like game changer on a bunch of industries, sure, you won't be powering a phone, but you can power basically 99% of all low powered sensors on the market, creating a mesh for an automated home will be a breeze now, also creating implanted medical devices would be the easiest thing in the world, the applications where solar panels are not factible to use are countless.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
Yeah this sub is annoying..
People are hypercritical of any tech that comes out of China, like "oh hey guys this isn't that cool it's just able to power LEDs for 50 years with no toxic chemicals or dangerous byproducts"
Wow sounds totally useless, I guess
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u/mrizzerdly 1d ago
Hahaha true, this sub is full of: "it's not 100pct efficient" and "why would we do this when we could just use cheap, plentiful, oil to do the same thing"
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u/taqwalawaal 1d ago
This is the reply I was looking for. Someone had to say it out. After all, it is China.
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u/Hobbit1996 1d ago
I agree with you but not on the last point
There is no toxic byproducts after 50 years, but if damaged or mishandled early it's not that safe (not that litium is tbf) but still i wouldn't consider it safe
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u/danceswithtree 1d ago
According the other articles, the power delivery is only 100 microwatts. You aren't going to be powering LEDs with that. I guess you can charge a cap and blink an LED but very low duty cycle.
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u/Ok-Party-3033 1d ago
For perspective, a 100uW drain will discharge a 1.5v AA-battery (alkaline) in 4-5 years.
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u/ChoMar05 1d ago
Yeah, but if you couple a battery with solar cells, it will last very long with good battery management. In those scales, even a piezoelectric element and capacitors will work. It's not without uses, though. Imagine a sensor that only has to report weekly over a short distance, and solar or piezo is not possible. Here, such a battery with caps could be very useful. It's not going to see widespread use in mass applications, though.
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u/cornonthekopp 1d ago
I was under the impression that you could stack them to form something the size of a watch battery with more power?
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u/lminer123 1d ago
I was under the impression that this battery is already a stacked device. Not sure though, I read that in an article about a year ago
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u/Sandslinger_Eve 1d ago
As far as I understand the battery is for niche usages like inside chip systems.
It's just silly even trying to compare it to regular batteri usage.
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u/sambes06 1d ago
Not necessarily the limitation you think. These can be put into series or parallel to increase the power and to adapt to more applications.
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u/zippopopamus 1d ago
If its so easy then why are we just thought of it now, seriously?
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u/CavemanSlevy 1d ago
We’ve been using variations of this technology for decades. Radioactive decay batteries are what powered the Voyager probe in launched in 1977.
Still it’s cool to see the tech advancing.
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u/UnifiedQuantumField 1d ago
Radioactive decay batteries
I was wondering about the "radioactive" part, so I checked it out. It turns out this type of decay involves a neutron turning into a Proton and emitting an electron in the process.
Also wondering if an isotope with a shorter half-life would have a higher output because greater rate of electron emission. Something like Strontium 90 perhaps? The half-life is 30 years and the decay product is Yttrium 90 (which then decays to stable Zirconium 90). So the rate of electron emission ought to be 3x higher than Nickel 63. A battery with a similar design ought to produce 300 microwatts for, say, 15 years.
That's not as good as 50 years, but 3x power output ought to be good for a greater range of apps.
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u/KamikazeArchon 1d ago
We didn't just think of it now. We've had this for many decades.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 1d ago
That’s the point of Chinese “innovation”. It’s all about making something that’s been done before. Along time ago. Seem like they just did it for the first time. Then blast it all over the internet to prey on the easily deceived. Pure CCP propaganda.
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u/aa-b 1d ago
Putting existing technology together in a new way is a kind of innovation. Like, none of the tech in an iPhone was actually new when it launched, but it was still revolutionary.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 1d ago
Exactly. Putting existing technology together. Chinese innovation. That was my point too. I agree that Apple didn’t invent the smartphone. That was also done in the U.S. in 1994 by IBM. Apple just refined it using existing technology. An innovation. Not an invention. I never said they don’t innovate using existing technologies. I said they don’t invent new ones. That’s what the U.S. does.
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u/aa-b 1d ago
Well, your point is apparently that innovation is somehow bad, and only invention is good. I wasn't really making a distinction at all, because IMO there is no real difference, and all inventions are based on earlier discoveries
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u/Smooth_Expression501 1d ago
No. My point is that it’s much easier to innovate with something that already exists. Then to create something new. China only does what’s been done before. The U.S. does what no one else has ever done. Which is why China is a joke compared to the U.S.
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u/KamikazeArchon 1d ago
That may or may not be true in this instance - knowing about a thing and being able to implement it efficiently & at scale are different. Further and more generally, it's inaccurate and xenophobic to label that as a "Chinese" thing, or to label all Chinese innovation that way. Chinese individuals and groups put out plenty of real innovation; and plenty of non-Chinese people and groups take credit for "inventing" something that already existed.
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u/Smooth_Expression501 1d ago
It’s not xenophobic. It an observation. There isn’t a day that goes by where I don’t read about some ”breakthrough” or “first” article about something that happened in China. Or how they are “leading” in this or that.
Then I do some research on the topic and find out that the claims were false. Every time. It’s not “xenophobic” to point that out. It’s reality.
You sound like one of those crazies that said that saying the virus came from china was also racist and xenophobic. Which is nonsensical at best.
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u/Imthewienerdog 1d ago
Or a watch? How much power does an Apple watch take? Could we power that for 50 years?
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u/ArenjiTheLootGod 1d ago
That still has some useful applications. It could ensure that things like LED flashlights are more or less always reliably available for emergency situations or in remote areas where supplies aren't immediately available. Maybe it could even support low power things you always want running like smoke/carbon monoxide detectors. Or pacemakers for people's hearts.
It's nascent tech with room to improve but potential applications are there.
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u/fredandlunchbox 1d ago
They say they're dropping a 1w version later this year. It's small, but it's a start.
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u/Glittering_Cow945 1d ago
not a normal led, but you might make it give a detectable flash every second or so.
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u/Captain_Vlad 13h ago
Could you combine them with a conventional battery as sort of a constant, low-level charge source?
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u/ZachTheCommie 1d ago
They might be good for powering a pacemaker...Oh wait! Plutonium-powered pacemakers were a thing decades ago, and then got they were phased out. So I guess this Chinese battery isn't even new technology?
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u/illarionds 1d ago
This. It's cool, and there are certainly applications for it - but the average news article about it makes the most wildly hyperbolic claims.
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u/smokefoot8 6h ago
I remember reading an old Scientific American from the 1960s that had an ad for nuclear batteries that lasted decades. So this is very old technology. Ending up with copper is an advance over the old type that produced a mix, some of which were still radioactive.
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u/Goukaruma 1d ago
Wouldn't the power output go down over time? I assume less radioactive material > less power.
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u/callardo 21h ago
Why are people impressed about these batteries we have them already it’s not a new thing
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u/epSos-DE 7h ago
They are going to stack it to 5kw and we get a 50.year car without the need to refuel !
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u/KuramaKitsune 3h ago
Betavoltaics have been around since the '70s this is literally just capturing beta radiation from a decaying nickel isotope
It's the same idea as a tritium glow scope
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u/UweLang 1d ago
In a world where battery life is a daily headache and recharging gadgets has become routine, a recent claim making waves is nothing short of science fiction turned science fact. China has reportedly begun mass production of nuclear batteries with a declared lifespan of 50 years, zero need for recharging, no emitted radiation, and a transformation into ordinary copper at the end of its life. These so-called Betavolt nuclear batteries could be a game-changer for the global energy landscape.
But how real is this? Something for our future?
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u/fixminer 1d ago edited 1d ago
The claimed peak output is around 0.1 mW
That is still impressive and very useful for certain applications, but it cannot replace chemical batteries for most consumer devices.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
This might blow some people's minds, but you can actually put multiple batteries into something
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u/fixminer 1d ago
You can, but there are usually weight and/or volume constraints.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
100 microwatts at 3 volts with a size of 15mm x 15mm
The lowest energy "phone" uses 3.5 microwatts
So it might not replace the batteries in consumer smart phones, imagine how useful it would be to have a bare minimum backup phone that has a lifespan of 50 years? Or an emergency radio? It's kind of baffling that people don't see how incredibly useful this is just because it's not going to power their smart phone or laptop.
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u/fixminer 1d ago
I literally said that it’s impressive and very useful for certain applications. Sensors, medical devices, microcontrollers, RTCs, IOT, etc.
The way the original comment was worded just makes it seem like it is much more universally applicable than it actually is.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
I think the reality is somewhere in the middle. The article paints it like it's useful for everything, many comments here (loosely including yours) are saying it's not useful for most things. It seems like it will be useful for many consumer devices, just not very specific high demand devices. But please give me a flashlight that doesn't require batteries for 50 years.
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u/fixminer 1d ago
Fair enough.
But a typical flashlight consumes at least one Watt, so you’d need 10,000 of these to power that.
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u/Cautemoc 1d ago
The first battery that the company plans to launch is the BV100, which it claims will be the world's first nuclear battery to be mass-produced. Measuring 15mm by 15mm and 5 mm thick, the battery can generate 100 microwatts, with a voltage of 3V. The company plans to launch a 1-watt battery in 2025.
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/nuclear-battery-chinese-firm-aiming-for-mass-mark
Guess we'll have to see whether the 1-watt version comes out.
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u/fixminer 1d ago
Yeah. Although I really don't know how they plan to increase their power output by a factor of 10,000.
Either their current design is incredibly inefficient or they have to make it much larger or much more radioactive, both of which could be problematic.
We'll see.
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u/CrimsonBolt33 1d ago
Cool propaganda repost...Seen this story a bunch of times over the last year, I live in China...No such batteries to be found (on top of the fact that these produce almost no energy)
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u/ZachTheCommie 1d ago
They're safe, if contained. What happens when someone cracks one open, either by accident or on purpose? And could the nuclear material be extracted and collected with nefarious intentions?
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u/ntwiles 1d ago edited 1d ago
The article says that the radiation emitted, even without shielding, is too weak to penetrate human skin. There definitely will be safety considerations, but we’ve dealt with useful devices containing toxic substances for over a century.
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u/ZachTheCommie 1d ago
We've had lots of toxic substances, and then we mostly stopped using them, precisely because they were toxic. Asbestos is an amazing insulator. Leaded fuel is better than unleaded. Mercury thermometers used be common. Smoke detectors used to use a small amount of Americium.
All it takes is one dumbass to eat one of these nuclear batteries before it becomes a public health controversy. Never underestimate the publics ability to do things they're not supposed to.
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u/It_Just_Might_Work 1d ago
We haven't mostly stopped using them. Half of the off the shelf household cleaners are toxic.
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u/grundar 1d ago
All it takes is one dumbass to eat one of these nuclear batteries before it becomes a public health controversy.
Eating button batteries has already killed 70 kids, but they're still all over the place.
Based on that historical evidence, and how expensive and embedded these batteries are likely to be, it's highly likely that you're catastrophizing.
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u/ntwiles 1d ago
Bro like you’re looking at this all wrong. Skepticism is great. Cynicism is just obnoxious.
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u/ZachTheCommie 1d ago
You're right. We shouldn't consider possible dangers to new technology. We should just accept the risks and be mindless guinea pigs for societys endeavors. Very smart. Very positive.
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u/ntwiles 1d ago
I’m not saying we should ignore risks. Your original comment implied an outright dismissal.
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u/ZachTheCommie 1d ago
I literally just asked a few questions voicing concerns. If you read into that, that's on you. I'm all for the technology, but people tend to ruin things like this. It's not cynicism, it's foresight. There are more than enough videos on the internet of people causing fires from cutting into lithium batteries, for no good reason, to illustrate that it's a real possibility. You can't just give a bunch of mildly radioactive objects to the public and expect everything to be fine.
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u/FuturologyBot 1d ago
The following submission statement was provided by /u/UweLang:
In a world where battery life is a daily headache and recharging gadgets has become routine, a recent claim making waves is nothing short of science fiction turned science fact. China has reportedly begun mass production of nuclear batteries with a declared lifespan of 50 years, zero need for recharging, no emitted radiation, and a transformation into ordinary copper at the end of its life. These so-called Betavolt nuclear batteries could be a game-changer for the global energy landscape.
But how real is this? Something for our future?
Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1js946q/chinas_nuclear_battery_breakthrough_a_50year/mlkma1h/