diamond batteries

https://youtu.be/IgGVt4sUnnw?si=wMk__i_Ftol7opOY

More info:-

• https://www.gov.uk/government/news/diamonds-are-forever-world-first-carbon-14-diamond-battery-made
• https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/diamonds-are-forever-worlds-first-carbon-14-diamond-battery-produced/

Unfortunately, it has some fairly severe limitations too - especially its very low current output:-

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_battery

Nevertheless, it could prove a useful way to redeploy nuclear waste:-

• https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2v48003l8o

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs, have been around for a long time. This sounds like a variation on these.

They are good when you need a long lived, low maintenance but low power supply. They are common on unmanned spacecraft such as the two Voyagers. They are sometimes used to power remote, unmanned installations.

I can't imagine that it would be practical to scale them up to power the grid. To boost the power, at the cost of reducing the lifetime, you could use isotopes with a lower half-life. However, I would not want to live near one of these.

If safety was not a concern, one in the house to power emergency lights and low power stuff such as telephones and routers would be good.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator

Edited by bad john

There are 2 stable isotopes of Carbon, 11 and 12, which are better choices for an engagement*** ring.

This is Carbon 13 which is usually formed in the atmosphere**. Living organisms, trees, people, etc, take it up while alive and cease to take it up afterwards.

By looking at the proportion of C13 in the lintel of a doorway in an ancient hut, or piece of material from a very old coat* you can estimate how long ago it stopped living, the door was built and whoever wore the coat stopped being eg a Bear and became a person. In a way. Carbon Dating.

* Perhaps no longer fashionable - "dated", indeed, "carbon-dated" ;) #Buffy

** Cosmic rays knocking bits off Nitrogen, from memory. Latterly some has been made by smashing other atoms together - 2 heavier ones leaving assorted fragments. The electricity bill needs scientific notation.

*** Your septo-digital bride would be annoyed. The electrons come off fast, as beta particles.

bad john said

Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, or RTGs, have been around for a long time. This sounds like a variation on these.

...

RTGs are thermal, as the name indicates. If you read/watch The Martian, one of his problems is keeping warm in his EV on a very long drive, another is the absence of recharging stations aka "the infrastructure isn't there".

He recovers the mission's RTG and installs it. The thermocouples provide a kilowatt of electricity which usefully extends the vehicles range, and the heat which would be twice or more that, keeps him warm.

That would be one of the non-bomb Pu isotopes, it doesn't matter what the decay modes are, as all you want is heat. Polonium is very powerful, but rare, too short-lived for most purposes, Russian State terror Act of war assassinations being an exception, and indeed it emits alpha particles (+2) of such energy that it rips the surface off and makes tiny dangerous fragments bounce around. 

The other sort of nuclear battery has a specific emitter, either electrons (-1) or alpha particles, (or I suppose notionally positrons (-1) ) which are caught in a shell, and two wires on the + and - terminals. With a very long-lived source they provide a little current directly - no moving parts or tricky wiring - which falls of gradually - halves after one half-life or so (although clever selection for decay pathway might alter that curve).

MidgePhoto Carbon 11 is very unstable, a half-life of just over 20 minutes. You would not want to be near that for long (or at all).

Carbon 12 is stable and the most common about 99%.

Carbon 13 is also stable but rare about 1%.

Carbon 14 has the moderate half-life of about 5700 years. It is very rare about 1 part in a trillion. It would not exist naturally at all except that it is created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation hitting nitrogen 14. This is the one used for carbon dating.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_carbon

Edited by bad john

MidgePhoto Agreed. Not identical but it shares the properties of being long lived, low maintenance but low power.

One of those article mentioned by waist it says a microwatt. So a million batteries to get 1W and power your TV on standby. A megawatt, which is still a small power station, would require a trillion of them.

Edited by bad john

bad john said

MidgePhoto Carbon 11 is very unstable, a half-life of just over 20 minutes. You would not want to be near that for long (or at all).

Carbon 12 is stable and the most common about 99%.

Carbon 13 is also stable but rare about 1%.

Carbon 14 has the moderate half-life of about 5700 years. It is very rare about 1 part in a trillion. It would not exist naturally at all except that it is created in the upper atmosphere by cosmic radiation hitting nitrogen 14. This is the one used for carbon dating.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isotopes_of_carbon

Edited by bad john

Oops! 

Out by one error from memory.

Interestingly the source proposed here is a third mechanism of production, with a neutron being absorbed by a carbon nucleus in the moderator or support block in the reactor, a material which is chosen for not doing much of that!

There might be more than 1% of C13 in those blocks if C12 does it as well.

My conception, in a story fragment from a few days before this news, was of an actual jewel of C14, foot and entirely different purpose, but it sounds as though they are just encapsulating it, and doing something complicated rather than just wrapping it in thin foil.

Memory Diamond is a thought experiment this far, involving writing data using combinations of C12 and QE, as bits, 0 and zero, for remarkable density of storage. Reading and the supply of 13 would be non-trivial. And writing, difficult.

Edited by MidgePhoto

MidgePhoto Carbon 11 would have fewer neutrons than protons. Such nuclides are very unstable with two exceptions.

Hydrogen 1 (1 proton 0 neutrons) which is not only stable but the most common normal matter in the universe (by far).

Helium 3 (2 protons 1 neutron). Stable but much rarer than Helium 4.

bad john said

MidgePhoto Carbon 11 would have fewer neutrons than protons. Such nuclides are very unstable with two exceptions.

Hydrogen 1 (1 proton 0 neutrons) which is not only stable but the most common normal matter in the universe (by far).

Helium 3 (2 protons 1 neutron). Stable but much rarer than Helium 4.

He3 is interestingly weird. 

Saw that, but although they’ve been developing it for a decade, they’ve barely scratched the surface. Another company is making nuclear batteries to power mobile phones and create drones that can fly forever.

https://www.independent.co.uk/tech/nuclear-battery-betavolt-atomic-china-b2476979.html

The most interesting one I saw, though, was the liquid battery built inside a mountain in the Alps.

https://edition.cnn.com/2022/08/01/world/water-battery-switzerland-renewable-energy-climate-scn-hnk-spc-intl/index.html

There's been one of those so-called liquid batteries in Wales for years. I remember seeing an Open University programme on it presented by a young engineering graduate called Carol Vordeman.  :-)

bad john

RTGs powered over 1,000 Russian lighthouses in the Artic Ocean.

I seem to recall that Baltimore Harbour had an RTG lighthouse for a while too.

Dinorwig is 9 GWh which is big.

The Chinese electrical batteries - flow batteries - supporting their Grid are on the close order of 2 GWh 

So you'd need 5 of those. I think they only have one and a bit at present.

Thing is, very large stacks of containers and tanks are uncomplicated to multiply.

But mountains with a top lake and a bottom lake are somewhat limited, and digging caverns and pipeways through them is a bit of an effort.

https://www.energy-storage.news/first-phase-of-800mwh-world-biggest-flow-battery-commissioned-in-china/

Stu H said

bad john

RTGs powered over 1,000 Russian lighthouses in the Artic Ocean.

I seem to recall that Baltimore Harbour had an RTG lighthouse for a while too.

I was alluding to that with: They are sometimes used to power remote, unmanned installations.