Been done. Look up radioactive boyscout. Kid got himself and his parents in trouble for his pursuit of scientific experimentation. Built a reactor in the backyard shed and when he realized it was running away he dismantled it, shielded all the materials and was loading it into his car to dispose of when someone thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat on him and police overreacted to an already dismantled reactor. He later joined the Navy and was forbidden from going near the reactor which sucks because he was kinda born for that sorta thing.
So if my math is correct, assuming 1mA at 110 mV, it should produce 9.504 Joules of energy over 24 hours. For a red LED operating at a F.V. of 2V with a current draw of 20 mA, the energy if stored with no losses or leakage would be enough to keep it lit for 237.6 seconds or ~4 minutes. This could prove to be extremely useful for supplying enough power to actuate some relays (or beefy transistors) and wake up hibernating electronics in applications where they’ll remain turned off for extended periods of time. 4 of these nuclear batteries could maintain a 1000mAh NiMH battery at 80% state of charge for 156 years. Or maybe you could create an atomic clock utilising the time-averaged regularity of the decays.
@@philip5940 So I deleted my previous comment because I misunderstood you, apologies. I was merely making a calculation for Rob’s little transistor based device. I think the real breakthrough is probably that Diamond doesn’t break down like the semiconductors we use in electronics do when exposed to radiation. Spacecraft have had reduced operating lifetimes in space due to radiation spikes (such as from CMEs, for instance) damaging the solar panels thereby decreasing their output. I’m not sure how the power output differs between Rob’s little experiment and the Chinese company’s product but the lifetime is what really matters (I think). Anyway, thanks for sharing!
I checked your numbers, seems right to me, and it's a good use of variables many may overlook or think they will never need beyond Ohm's Law. I checked using this equation to start with: voltage = joules of energy / coulomb of charge
Wow, this will actualy change the things and move the technology to next level. I am really exited to see the 1W version. Even slowly filling supercaps would solve the high power peak issues.
This man is so enthusiastic, why are there not more educators like him?? Sir, would you mate with my daughter? She has been looking for a husband for years and desperately in need of seed. I would be proud to be your papa.
if this is a genuine use for nuclear waste, thats super exciting! and really adds to the fact that nuclear energy really should be a bigger part of our energy generation spectrum
Americium 241 is an alpha particle emitter. You are not dealing with gamma particles, and therefore do not need the extreme levels of caution that you exhibited in this video, a sheet of paper, or even your skin is more than capable of stuffing, alpha particles as long as you do, not ingest, inhale, or wind up with a particle of it in an open wound, it should not be able to do you any harm a decent face mask, and rub gloves should be more than sufficient protection, otherwise this was a very informative and fascinating video. Thank you for your research.
The US drinking water standard for nickel 63 is 8 Bq per liter. The 100 micro Watt nickel 63 power source has at least 1800 Bq in it. All things being equal than a 1 watt power source would have 18 million Bq. If improperly disposed of, and you assume only 1% of the activity contaminates water it would contaminate 1.8 million liters above the drinking water standard. That's for 1 watt initial output. Luckily there's not enough nickel 63 in the world to make too many kilowatts level power sources. It would be a good use for the 9 graphite block re actors at Hanford that are heavily contaminated with both Nickel 63 and carbon 14. And the 22 graphite block reactors in the UK.
Amazing, I was always puzzled why do we harvest radioactive energy so inefficiently. This is a perfect energy harvesting device and when they make it possible to interchange the isotope with new one, we will be able to power anything :D But probably for big power output radiation would be too high to use in portable devices safetly...
it probably would be used in low power devices in aerospace and military stuff, i don't think they want that many radiation sources floating around in consumer devices, but if the radiation shielding is good it's unlikely there would be any exposure unless people are taking out the radioactive element and touching it or wearing it. i think the bigger applications have the same risk but they are well aware of the radiation and can afford to put heavy or large radiation shielding. i think the biggest hurdle for this technology will be getting enough of the right radioactive material to make enough batteries, and then what are the costs involved in getting that material or making it, but i haven't really looked into how they get the nickel or americium isotopes
I'm not getting too excited Robert. I saw a vid on this yesterday and the one thing we all want is a battery to power our house for say ten thousand bucks (or at least lower our energy bill), but this isn't it and isn't going to be apparently. Perhaps I was expecting a panacea, but I wonder what it'll be used for or if it will take 10 or 20 years to find the perfect application.
for sure but you can step it up and use it to charge other things. you could even run a small motor with a differential to do .. something. you can also hook a couple up in series for more power
Just think of IoT devices that'll last a lifetime (sensors, LoRa, etc) Plus we live on an electric generator (Earth), we just need to "tap" into it (not for silly waste of energy as many westerners/ easterners do right now, but still)
As soon as i saw the magic word 'China' in the title, I could not stop laughing my a$$ off! Tell me folks, what good came out of china except rice, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the keyboard you're typing on, the screen you're looking at, the car you drive, the air you breathe and few billions more..?
People are making a lot of money from the way that things are which is why they need for people to fear the very technology that could change everything for the better.
Damn... I don't have much faith in the safety going forward but I'd love to get my hands on some of those neat little 3v batteries... if they are closer to 3.7 with 4.3 max it'd be perfect for a bunch of stuff I'd put them in. I'd totally show that shot off too... inifinite battery in my PSP. Infinite battery powering my laptop. Obviously not infinite but long enough to forget it's doing it's thing to a degree... 2% battery loss a year roughly. 😂 (on typed theoretical thoughts anyway)
"in a nuclear reactor, we want to keep hot particles and get rid of fast ones" - if I understand correctly, a hot particle means it is fast, so that statement looks contradictory to me. What am I missing?
Slow or "thermal" neutrons are what cause fission. The fast neutrons need to be slowed down by a moderator or else allowed to escape. Like bullets, a slower bullet can be absorbed and do more internal damage while a high-velocity bullet might just punch a clean hole right through.
00:28 It's not 100 milliwatt, it's 100 microwatt. 1000 times less! A 1 W version would have 10.000 times the power of this prototype, it would be more than just a bit huge and, very likely, it would be enormously dangerous.
So here's my question: How do they know it will last for 50 years? Unless this battery was invented at least 51 years ago, they can't possibly know, and calculations never cut it because the long-term effects of new technology upon itself rarely result in tech that is as good as predicted. "50 years" is just a marketing claim that has zero bona fide evidence of being anywhere near correct.
This is the type of Man that was my Physics teacher in the 80's, enthusiastic and loved trying to blow the science room up or blind us all with lasers. We need more people like this educating our Children.
I would’ve done anything for a teacher like him. I love the contagious feeling of wanting to learn. The joy I get from listening to them geeking out about what they’re passionate about is a feeling I can’t find anywhere else
@@l-l I was lucky, our Physics teacher tried to blind us, irradiate us, nearly get arrested by MPs for a radar jamming device one of our classmates designed and our Chemistry teacher tried to blow us up, burn us with acid, fill the room with poison gas and fill the floor with mercury (the room was closed down and did not open for the four years I remained there). I was put on detention for nearly setting fire to my classmate, he told me 'Only he was allowed to kill us, and that I was not insured to do so'. Professional educators that really inspired us with exciting, sometimes harmful tasks for the benefit of leaning or knowing there are real dangers in class/life, real life lessons.
Hi. maths teacher here. Its the curriculum that holds most of us back, particularly science teachers. Yes some are boring, some are fun but I also need someone that cover enough content such that my child can eventually pass exams and go on to A levels and beyond. A lot of newer teachers only see that side of things and not the whole ‘I should be trying to inspire kids’. There’s a fair chance that this fella would struggle in a class of 32 where 20 of them have no interest and mess about accordingly. 50-60% of what we do nowadays is behaviour management, seating plans, admin, reports, managing detentions etc etc. I always find it sad how quickly people speak negatively of my profession without ever done the job themselves or considering a variety of elements.
This part of opening smoke sensors for its nuclear source remembers me a kid years ago that caused a nuclear accident while attempting to build his own home-made miniature nuclear reactor for his college science fair.
he collected all sorts of radioactive stuff, mainly "glow in the dark" stuff from mid 20th century...eventually it "piled" up so much, that he could register the emitting radiation in his room...the stuff was out in the garden iirc...and it didn´t stop there...he "irradiated", me thinks, two or three blocks of the neighborhood
A nuclear battery, etc, of low power can be assisted by a capacitor for when a relatively large amount of power is needed, say a transistor radio or a LED lamp to function when needed.
No, it can't. What you can do is use it to charge a conventional battery during "off-time", for devices that require power only intermittently. And yes, I said "battery" and not "capacitor", because capacitors can only store relatively small amounts of energy. However, a far more efficient way to achieve this is by using a bog standard charger if you live in a first world country and have access to mains voltage Or a dynamo built into the device, like with some torches or radios, if access to mains voltage is problematic (no infrastructure, or during a power outage). Or use solar panels if it's a device in a remote location where you don't have mains and winding the dynamo is impractical. E.g. a LoRa node monitoring some environmental parameters in a remote location in a forest, or what have you. I get it, these batteries are cool. But they're not a solution to every problem that has "power" in the title. There's a place for these things for sure, but powering devices that require more power than they can deliver is not it.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 a problem with most types of capacitor is self discharge or leakage current, they drain pretty quickly when sitting unused. It is highly likely that the self discharge rate of most, if not all capacitors is above the power output of one of these nuclear batteries.
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Its like seeing every experiment from my scientific books brought to life. Always amazed how fast you knock out these videos while still being quality. nuke battery was something i made after reading about the radioactive boy scout which eventually lead to making B.E.A.M robots, fm transmitters, rc airplanes, cnc devices...list goes on.
Contact the suppliers directly and only buy the materials you need. Cutting costs to a few cents a cell. Buy a machine to build the cells and these could end up costing a few cents a cell. Cheap enough to build a 48v battery for the same price as we pay now for lithium batteries, the only difference is the battery does not need recharging for 50 to 100 years.
Nice demonstration. In 1960s, our military developed a portable nuclear plant that operates years providing a local power plant anywhere. There's a military documentary on yt showing this. And just in recent news this concept is being revisited. Thanks for sharing and providing good inspiration.
Many small scale nuclear things were tried including nuclear powered cars (Ford Nucleon). At the time it was envisioned that small scale reactors could also be a home power source. These days with battery energy storage this is truly feasible, but the nuclear dream died long ago.
It got scrapped because the fuel rods would build steam if removed improperly and one of the techs wasnt paying attention when removing it and got pinned to the roof by the rod
One comment. Half-life refers to the halving of the fissile material. This means that after 400+ years you'll get half the current but the battery will continue for hundreds of years more.
@@advaits6427 No atoms do eventually die off and break down atoms are not eternal and Radioactive isotopes have a chance of shooting off and electron, I think Bismuth 209 or something like that is the longest of any isotope. Some faster than others, the elephant's foot - Chernobyl is a great example of radioactivity that is breaking down at a fast rate, original photographer died a week after being exposed to it, now you can spend an hour in a suit in front of it. Nothing is eternal and nothing lasts forever.
@@advaits6427 Before the battery gets half-discharged it must get half of half discharged, and before it gets half of half discharged, if must get half of half of half discharged, etc. It lasts forever.
I watch a lot of science videos along with a science background but Robert MS seems to be the science teacher I never had. To be fair I have a lot of trouble keeping up with his latest project. This one was a mash of all I know about pn junctions and semiconducters together with nuclear physics. I am in awe.
good question, the answer is that we are going to dispose of the radioactive material within the devices long before the half life of the radioactive material, just as many people do now the radioactive material will end up in the landfills. the good news is that many more people will get cancer from the exposure, the medical industry will do well.
Because it is not powering the actual alarm, only triggering the alarm. You need a battery to power the alarm. And the failure point of these alarms is not the radiation source, it is the other parts (random electronics randomly end up going, or dust builds up inside of the radiation chamber, etc). And they are good for longer than 10 years on average, that is just when they recommend getting a new one.
@germanlopez9448 your comment isn't even coherent yet seems to imply conspiracy to poison everyone. I disagree, also the americium is perfectly safe in its containment capsule as americium produces primarily alpha particles which are easily stopped with the outer (dead) layer of skin or a piece of paper. So much work has gone into making it safe that no, smoke detector alpha emitters are not going to be a risk unless you intentionally break open the capsule and then decide to swallow the americium piece inside. Don't say "the answer is" unless you are willing to back up a claim with documentation and evidence.
Fascinating! I wonder why this couldn't be scaled up to power larger items? I also have to wonder if the research and development of cheap, safe energy production and storage isn't restricted by the desire for "planned obsolescence". Companies aren't interested in spending the time and money to develop a power source you only need to by once a century. Looks like it's up to you Robert! 😜
well this is going very fast for what this is. 2018 till 2024 is only 6 years and we defenitly need to know excatly how pure and perfect we can make these batteries as their first use case is powering bios batteries keeping system times things like that
they can be scaled up but you wouldn't be able to power anything like a vehicle with them, they would be best suited for stuff like smart phones, smart watches and small electronic gadgets that don't draw massive amounts of power. i've commented on another tech channel trash talking the nano diamond battery when it first came out as they were poking fun at how little energy it produced... my response was that you'd stack them to get the voltage you need and that's your battery for the device for what would quite literally be a few lifetimes, you could take the battery out of a dead device and put it into a new one and reduce tech waste a significant amount.
A powerful enough version would likely need a low half life isotope, in order to emmit a ton of particles in a short enough time to make a meaningful current without weighing a ton itself, anyway, refueling yoir car each 5 years beats once a week by a factor of 54. Beta and Alpha particles are safe, an aluminium foil can block them with ease, and if you can't afford a piece of your hat, you can always stay atarround 2 meters of the source to be safe.
The current Betavolt does 100 MICRO watts, not milliwatts as you stated in the beginning of the video.(yes, you stated it correctly later but just in case someone doesn't watch that far maybe they'll read this and know the truth)
sounds about right, but they're still talking about prototypes (edit: video says they are in pilot production, so i guess they are already making them) and they say they are stackable in layers and very thin so they could probably make a stack of 1000 and wire them in parallel or series, if they want to increase the current or voltage
I'm sure betavoltaics and other nuclear batteries hit the news every year now. Usually it's some article claiming you'll be able to power an EV with a stack of them, then followed by some "Busted" video showing how this isn't even remotely feasible. I think my favourite was Nurdrage taking the low-efficiency approach of sandwiching a bunch of tritium-filled phosphor-coated vials between two solar panels and getting a few microwatts. Would be kind of fun to see how many americium pellets and transistor cores it would take to do something simple like drive a wristwatch or a calculator though, if it can be done without significant risk. Even alpha and beta emitters can be dangerous if you swallow or breath them!
If you are willing to carry a phone that is the size of an early 1990s handphone,,, you definately can make a nuclear powered handphone. Phone, exercise weight and self defense instrument all in one.
@@nickl5658Honestly that doesn’t bother me at all the size, as long as it never dies I could also just use the battery as a battery charger as well which would be amazing.
Thanks Robert. There is also some low energy Gamma radiation from the decay of Americium-241, so it's worth remembering. The smoke detector works by generating a voltage between two plates at each side of an air cavity. Smoke particles enter the cavity and disrupt (absorb) the Alpha particles, causing a drop in voltage, and triggering the alarm. So the detector is also essentially a low power battery.
@user-up1id5rv2m indeed. You'd imagine you could charge a capacitor with the americium that could power the buzzer for 10 minutes or so. Assuming it had sufficient hours to charge before needing to go off.
I honestly think we could power our world off of small atomic reactors. There is no need for oil. But imagine something that lasts ages and doesn't break - small profits.
@@adamstewarton no sure thats true, im thinking of things like phones and laptops though, most people tend to replace them long before the battery goes wonky. it'd be a gamechanger for cars though i suppose, but they could just do what the tech industry and many car manufacturers already do and engineer them to fail after so many years, as well as make them impossible to maintain without ten million specialized tools and put in software to make it harder to get off brand spare parts etc etc. There are always shady ways to maintain profits lol. I get your point though, its definitely an incentive for companies to want these things away from the market.
And to think I had hundreds of 2N3055s once, another opportunity missed. How would a darlington transistor fare with the two base junctions effectively in series? Would a plastic bodied transistor be a better choice?
I saw the product announcement yesterday and hoped you'd review your battery. Thanks. Wouldn't ɑ/ɓ radiant voltaic battery continue to produce electricity after its half-life, but at a reduced rate? Only half of the mass would have decayed into its new stable element -- the rest would still be active? WOuld love to see this or a karpen cell as a charger for the fractal capacitor array. One cell per capacitor.
Yust look at the voyager probes. They passive energy source decayed more and more over the decades and now only a few of the instruments have enough power to stay online. Theoretically it's never out of energy but practically it all depends on the half life.
If this gets cheap enough for consumer products, one of the first applications I thought of was for smoke detectors, some of which use a radioactivity source (an isotope of Americium, I believe) to detect smoke. Perhaps they could use the same radiation source to power AND operate a smoke detector?
Add a supercapacitor, charged by the source. By the time the alarm is needed, it will have stored enough charge to provide the power required for the alarm.
@@tcmtech7515 Sure, at the moment, but if you consider that a computer as powerful as your phone is would cost $100,000,000 thirty years ago (and draw tens of kilowatts to operate) it’s a fairly safe assumption that not too long from now this nascent technology will become affordable.
Awesome video!...made my day. Can we increase the voltage out put in the two ways? 1) make a hole above the N and not cut off the top when aiming the Nuclear material at it, which would allow the alpha particles to be concentrated and the ones who are not going straight down would bounce around in the can and eventually hit the the N. 2) Would sorting the two Ns together increase the voltage. Also this may make a great mil volt reference standard.
If this really works we could get consumers to pay to slowly move all the nuclear waste from it's expensive storage facilities into domestic landfill, via gadgets... That'd be great. :)
i am sure this is the intended outcome the academic community was aiming to achieve. what genius is lurking withing the halls of academic institutions.
One tenth of a milli-Ampère at a tenth of a Volt, then I should at least harvest 30 smoke detectors to vaguely light up a few LED's or an old LCD wrist watch. Must be fun to walk around with, you don't have to wait in the line at the supermarket.
Idk how to explain the dopamine rush i felt when it all clicked how it worked. Incredibly clever engineering, and i applaud you for taking a stab at one in your garage. Thank you, im subscribed now
I was watching your backlog of members videos on hemp batteries, and it got me thinking about all of the ashes I've accumulated from my wood burning fire. I know you can add water to ashes to make lye.. since I have such an excess of ashes to be used, is there any way I can use them in making a battery? Maybe as the anode? I love your videos and would love to hear your ideas on this idea, even if it's just a simple "no, that wouldn't be worth it."
@@LittleXtracaustic soda you get hydrogen, so many fun times had as a kid .. hydrogen balloons , and a wick.. well you can take it from here....🤔😂😎🇦🇺👌
@@LittleXtra I figured it could be put to use somehow. What anode and cathode would you recommend to use for a battery using a Sodium Hydroxide electrolyte?
I get worried about making the most interesting content because of danger that surrounds it. Not that it can't be done safely but that it would get my channel in trouble. You give me the confidence to move forward on certain videos I want to unleash.
Nuclear batteries have been contracted to the US military from an Oregon manufacturing firm long ago. They were used in those sky beam search light units.
its very entertaining but you are just seeing light leakage. If you perform the experiment in a slightly more scientific way (ie really remove ambient light) you will not see any difference if the Am-241 source is present of not. The semiconductor die is passivated with layer of silicon dioxide (quartz glass) and the alpha particles will not be able to pass that and reach the semiconductor layers below. Even if they could pass through the passivization layer, they certainly could not pass though the first layer of N-type material to reach the N-P junction where the charge carriers are produced. Light is a photon and behaves differently in this semiconductor and can generate hole-electron pairs on the surface layers. Betavolt uses BETA radiation, not alpha as you are getting from the Am-241 source. In a BetaVoltiac or AlphaVoltiac device, the source of the electrons (beta) or holes (alpha) needs to be one of the contacts, the semiconductor is the other contact.
I just wanted to say I love your energy and your way of explaining. I got the idea of how this works now with little pre knowledge which makes you an excellent teacher
Very interesting. It didn't occur to me until now that alpha radiations, being near the UV wavelengths, could cause photovoltaic cells or semiconductors to generate a voltage. I guess the same is true of x-rays too since they're the next step up from UV. Not that I know of any material which puts out x-rays while decaying. With the Americium, it looks like quite a few pieces would be needed in series to get 3.3V. I suppose each pellet could produce twice the output if it's extracted from its casing, to expose the underside and to sandwich ir between two transistors. My smoke detector with Americium is definitely putting out Beta radiations too as I get an increase of over 500 CPMs when pointing my Geiger counter towards the plastic case and Alpha radiation wouldn't make it through the plastic and thin metal cage surrounding the ionization chamber. I don't think it puts out Gamma though because the readings drop when I insert a 1mm steel plate between the smoke detector and the Geiger counter. It's still bad though if it can ionize floating dust which might end up being inhaled.
That could be a concern , but I remember another vid where a person went into a mine and the air was very radioactive from all the uranium decay. I could be misrepresenting but the main issue was the charged particle radiation attracting and sticking to the clothing which came out pretty radioactive, however it decayed quickly and putting the clothes into a bag away from the camp overnight dropped the radiation to background levels, perhaps simply an airtight unit would suffice.
@@terrysobkowich2084 If you meant airtight batteries then yes, I'd expect them to be both airtight and shielded sufficiently to block beta radiations, as someone will inevitably end up carrying one in their pants pocket. If you meant airtight smoke detector, that wouldn't work of course as the smoke needs to get in 🙂
*In theory,* a 1-watt continuous output battery that can run for 50 years would have a~438,000 amp-hours capacity. At 3 volts that's a ~ 1.3 MWH battery! 😋 However, in realistic terms, in order to use a set of such batteries to do anything large like power an average home or electric vehicle. Each application would need many thousands of them. Likely about 10,000 of them to power an average house like mine and about 70,000 to 100,000 to make an EV that could be driven like a normal vehicle. 🤡 Oh ya, and current pricing estimates put them at about $ $4500 - 5000 US dollars each if you buy in bulk! 😂
You don't use these batteries to run things directly, you use them to charge super capacitors which will charge traditional larger capacity batteries continuously for 50-100 years.
Calculating watts per dollar might be more accurate. I am very bad at electricity math, so giving that the price of electricity is 16 cents per kwh; In theory, can this method produce cheaper electricity?
I love it! This is the most expensive power source in the world at almost $100 000 per W. Compared to solar, which is currently at $0.1 per W, the price would need to drop a million times. The first solar panels cost about $115.3 per watt, the price dropped 1000 times in fifty years.
Have you lost your mind the first thing you want to do when you grow up is stop being bothered by the stupid phone brainwashed and programmed by a plastic glowing box
Philip Brody already found this out. By having a lead-lantheum matrix, encasing a radioactive element (Which we'll use radium as an example), you'll be able to effectively cause an ionization event giving a DC output. Depending on the purity of the lead-lantheum, it can go up to ~1500 volts/cm with a 30 nano-amp flow. See Patent US 4,041,465
While it would work in principle, it would only work placed right next to a hot source. The threshold of background radiation needed to set this off would be immediately dangerous to a human being(I presume), but if that’s all that your goal is, I don’t see why you couldn’t give it a shot!
Radioactive materials should not be made easily publicly available. Our society as it stands in 2024 is not conducive to peaceful responsible and non-destructive use of radioactive products.
Great video Rob! I wonder if you have heard of the LTC3108 chip? It takes voltages as low as 20mv and can push them upto 5v with usable current! check it out and if you still have the bits from this nuclear battery, maybe you can get some usable voltage out of it?!
This kind of voltage/ current would be useful for offsetting parasitic drains on circuits where there is always something that slowly depletes a battery even when you are not using it
Next episode is how to diy a small thorium reactor to power your whole house.😊
Please!?
I’m in ….😊
I’d buy that for a dollar!!
Been done. Look up radioactive boyscout. Kid got himself and his parents in trouble for his pursuit of scientific experimentation. Built a reactor in the backyard shed and when he realized it was running away he dismantled it, shielded all the materials and was loading it into his car to dispose of when someone thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat on him and police overreacted to an already dismantled reactor. He later joined the Navy and was forbidden from going near the reactor which sucks because he was kinda born for that sorta thing.
I want one!
So if my math is correct, assuming 1mA at 110 mV, it should produce 9.504 Joules of energy over 24 hours. For a red LED operating at a F.V. of 2V with a current draw of 20 mA, the energy if stored with no losses or leakage would be enough to keep it lit for 237.6 seconds or ~4 minutes. This could prove to be extremely useful for supplying enough power to actuate some relays (or beefy transistors) and wake up hibernating electronics in applications where they’ll remain turned off for extended periods of time. 4 of these nuclear batteries could maintain a 1000mAh NiMH battery at 80% state of charge for 156 years. Or maybe you could create an atomic clock utilising the time-averaged regularity of the decays.
So I'll just mention it's pointed out in a comment or two that the output is 100 microwatts instead of milliwatts. Rob states microwatts later .
@@philip5940 So I deleted my previous comment because I misunderstood you, apologies. I was merely making a calculation for Rob’s little transistor based device. I think the real breakthrough is probably that Diamond doesn’t break down like the semiconductors we use in electronics do when exposed to radiation. Spacecraft have had reduced operating lifetimes in space due to radiation spikes (such as from CMEs, for instance) damaging the solar panels thereby decreasing their output. I’m not sure how the power output differs between Rob’s little experiment and the Chinese company’s product but the lifetime is what really matters (I think). Anyway, thanks for sharing!
It doesn't look like that comment got relayed through
I checked your numbers, seems right to me, and it's a good use of variables many may overlook or think they will never need beyond Ohm's Law. I checked using this equation to start with:
voltage = joules of energy / coulomb of charge
@@e100vids2 Thank you
Good to see you revisited your nuclear battery, one of my favs
Wow, this will actualy change the things and move the technology to next level. I am really exited to see the 1W version. Even slowly filling supercaps would solve the high power peak issues.
My thoughts exactly a bunch of these with a capacitor array would be amazing
China numba 1 huh?
It would be great to have something portable sized to charge battery packs on the go.
This man is so enthusiastic, why are there not more educators like him?? Sir, would you mate with my daughter? She has been looking for a husband for years and desperately in need of seed. I would be proud to be your papa.
I like how YT ads operate. I am watching a video about making a nuclear battery and the AD for this video is Hero Wars: Fight incredible bosses.
This in combination with a traditional battery that gets constantly trickle charged could be a game changer
I remember cutting open those transistors back in the 70's. 😂👍
Glad to see you're still going strong, Robert!
Protect this man at all cost
"Don't order smoke alarms in bulk" - Sheldon Cooper
if this is a genuine use for nuclear waste, thats super exciting! and really adds to the fact that nuclear energy really should be a bigger part of our energy generation spectrum
WE GETTIN OUT THE MOJAVE WITH THIS ONE BOYS ☢️☢️
Americium 241 is an alpha particle emitter. You are not dealing with gamma particles, and therefore do not need the extreme levels of caution that you exhibited in this video, a sheet of paper, or even your skin is more than capable of stuffing, alpha particles as long as you do, not ingest, inhale, or wind up with a particle of it in an open wound, it should not be able to do you any harm a decent face mask, and rub gloves should be more than sufficient protection, otherwise this was a very informative and fascinating video. Thank you for your research.
The US drinking water standard for nickel 63 is 8 Bq per liter. The 100 micro Watt nickel 63 power source has at least 1800 Bq in it. All things being equal than a 1 watt power source would have 18 million Bq. If improperly disposed of, and you assume only 1% of the activity contaminates water it would contaminate 1.8 million liters above the drinking water standard. That's for 1 watt initial output. Luckily there's not enough nickel 63 in the world to make too many kilowatts level power sources. It would be a good use for the 9 graphite block re actors at Hanford that are heavily contaminated with both Nickel 63 and carbon 14. And the 22 graphite block reactors in the UK.
Wouldn’t t be possible to connect few hundred of these in series to make a usable lifelong energy source for your house?
I'm just asking quietly, isn't the possession of radioactive nuclear material by a private person a crime worldwide?
Amazing, I was always puzzled why do we harvest radioactive energy so inefficiently.
This is a perfect energy harvesting device and when they make it possible to interchange the isotope with new one, we will be able to power anything :D
But probably for big power output radiation would be too high to use in portable devices safetly...
it probably would be used in low power devices in aerospace and military stuff, i don't think they want that many radiation sources floating around in consumer devices, but if the radiation shielding is good it's unlikely there would be any exposure unless people are taking out the radioactive element and touching it or wearing it. i think the bigger applications have the same risk but they are well aware of the radiation and can afford to put heavy or large radiation shielding.
i think the biggest hurdle for this technology will be getting enough of the right radioactive material to make enough batteries, and then what are the costs involved in getting that material or making it, but i haven't really looked into how they get the nickel or americium isotopes
So during the apocalopse I need to go to all of the abandon houses and collect the smoke detectors? LOL
You jest but having 1000 of these set up in series can power a decent life lmao 🌟😎🤙
I'm not getting too excited Robert. I saw a vid on this yesterday and the one thing we all want is a battery to power our house for say ten thousand bucks (or at least lower our energy bill), but this isn't it and isn't going to be apparently.
Perhaps I was expecting a panacea, but I wonder what it'll be used for or if it will take 10 or 20 years to find the perfect application.
you do right mate - It is fascinating but like all these things there are issues for sure
for sure but you can step it up and use it to charge other things. you could even run a small motor with a differential to do .. something. you can also hook a couple up in series for more power
Just think of IoT devices that'll last a lifetime (sensors, LoRa, etc)
Plus we live on an electric generator (Earth), we just need to "tap" into it (not for silly waste of energy as many westerners/ easterners do right now, but still)
Now this in electric cars would make sense!
As soon as i saw the magic word 'China' in the title, I could not stop laughing my a$$ off!
Tell me folks, what good came out of china except rice, the clothes you wear, the food you eat, the keyboard you're typing on, the screen you're looking at, the car you drive, the air you breathe and few billions more..?
This would be great if it was invented 50 years ago. We probley only have another 5 years left
People are making a lot of money from the way that things are which is why they need for people to fear the very technology that could change everything for the better.
Could a solar panel be used instead of a transistor?
interesting question - i may well try it
@@ThinkingandTinkering please, we would love to see !
And put more in series upto 5v 😊
How about covering photovoltaic panels in radioactive material?
this guy. is actually mental i think, I like it hahaha
Pure Brilliance! 😃👍
Imagine one day getting one to power a house or car for 50 years!
He reminds me of the guy from that RunDmc
Video Rock box.. 😁😁
All nuclear reactors eventually become safe. It’s just a matter of time.
Damn... I don't have much faith in the safety going forward but I'd love to get my hands on some of those neat little 3v batteries... if they are closer to 3.7 with 4.3 max it'd be perfect for a bunch of stuff I'd put them in. I'd totally show that shot off too... inifinite battery in my PSP. Infinite battery powering my laptop.
Obviously not infinite but long enough to forget it's doing it's thing to a degree... 2% battery loss a year roughly. 😂 (on typed theoretical thoughts anyway)
"in a nuclear reactor, we want to keep hot particles and get rid of fast ones" - if I understand correctly, a hot particle means it is fast, so that statement looks contradictory to me. What am I missing?
Slow or "thermal" neutrons are what cause fission. The fast neutrons need to be slowed down by a moderator or else allowed to escape. Like bullets, a slower bullet can be absorbed and do more internal damage while a high-velocity bullet might just punch a clean hole right through.
This would go in the category of things that sound nice but will never be. Kinda like flying cars and all that kind of stuff.
Seems like they could put a USB port on people with pacemakers so that they could charge their cell phone without an outlet? 🤔
00:28 It's not 100 milliwatt, it's 100 microwatt. 1000 times less! A 1 W version would have 10.000 times the power of this prototype, it would be more than just a bit huge and, very likely, it would be enormously dangerous.
This is, call of duty black ops 2. Do you guys remember the campaign?
I have been looking up nuclear batteries for years not finding anything thank you for making this possible
So here's my question: How do they know it will last for 50 years? Unless this battery was invented at least 51 years ago, they can't possibly know, and calculations never cut it because the long-term effects of new technology upon itself rarely result in tech that is as good as predicted. "50 years" is just a marketing claim that has zero bona fide evidence of being anywhere near correct.
DIY thermonuclear reactors from Dicks sporting goods next?
wow! subscribed. :)
This dude has the energy of that uncle you were always extremely excited to go see as a child.
I am that Uncle.
True
Lol
yes
Nowadays, these uncles usually get locked up😂
This is the type of Man that was my Physics teacher in the 80's, enthusiastic and loved trying to blow the science room up or blind us all with lasers. We need more people like this educating our Children.
Impossible with Gove's reforms, because believe me, these teachers are still in the classroom
Yup, had a teacher like that. We need some visuals too you know. Not just some soundwaves from your teach's mouth.
I would’ve done anything for a teacher like him. I love the contagious feeling of wanting to learn. The joy I get from listening to them geeking out about what they’re passionate about is a feeling I can’t find anywhere else
@@l-l I was lucky, our Physics teacher tried to blind us, irradiate us, nearly get arrested by MPs for a radar jamming device one of our classmates designed and our Chemistry teacher tried to blow us up, burn us with acid, fill the room with poison gas and fill the floor with mercury (the room was closed down and did not open for the four years I remained there). I was put on detention for nearly setting fire to my classmate, he told me 'Only he was allowed to kill us, and that I was not insured to do so'.
Professional educators that really inspired us with exciting, sometimes harmful tasks for the benefit of leaning or knowing there are real dangers in class/life, real life lessons.
Hi. maths teacher here. Its the curriculum that holds most of us back, particularly science teachers. Yes some are boring, some are fun but I also need someone that cover enough content such that my child can eventually pass exams and go on to A levels and beyond. A lot of newer teachers only see that side of things and not the whole ‘I should be trying to inspire kids’. There’s a fair chance that this fella would struggle in a class of 32 where 20 of them have no interest and mess about accordingly. 50-60% of what we do nowadays is behaviour management, seating plans, admin, reports, managing detentions etc etc. I always find it sad how quickly people speak negatively of my profession without ever done the job themselves or considering a variety of elements.
It's so exciting learning new ways go get onto watch-lists. Keep it coming!
HAHAHAHA so true!
This part of opening smoke sensors for its nuclear source remembers me a kid years ago that caused a nuclear accident while attempting to build his own home-made miniature nuclear reactor for his college science fair.
Wrong it was an eagle scout project
To be fair, this feels a LOT less dangerous than a reactor XD
You mean the one that build a defunct reactor in his mom's pottery shed, and somehow was able to buy a neutron gun.
he collected all sorts of radioactive stuff, mainly "glow in the dark" stuff from mid 20th century...eventually it "piled" up so much, that he could register the emitting radiation in his room...the stuff was out in the garden iirc...and it didn´t stop there...he "irradiated", me thinks, two or three blocks of the neighborhood
A nuclear battery, etc, of low power can be assisted by a capacitor for when a relatively large amount of power is needed, say a transistor radio or a LED lamp to function when needed.
joule thief
No, it can't. What you can do is use it to charge a conventional battery during "off-time", for devices that require power only intermittently. And yes, I said "battery" and not "capacitor", because capacitors can only store relatively small amounts of energy.
However, a far more efficient way to achieve this is by using a bog standard charger if you live in a first world country and have access to mains voltage Or a dynamo built into the device, like with some torches or radios, if access to mains voltage is problematic (no infrastructure, or during a power outage). Or use solar panels if it's a device in a remote location where you don't have mains and winding the dynamo is impractical. E.g. a LoRa node monitoring some environmental parameters in a remote location in a forest, or what have you.
I get it, these batteries are cool. But they're not a solution to every problem that has "power" in the title. There's a place for these things for sure, but powering devices that require more power than they can deliver is not it.
@@EvenTheDogAgrees I agree, but I'm in also agree with Robert basic concepts , I was hesitant to find practical or efficient use.
@@EvenTheDogAgreessupercapacitors can hold a decent amount of energy now, there are disposable vapes that use them instead of batteries.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 a problem with most types of capacitor is self discharge or leakage current, they drain pretty quickly when sitting unused. It is highly likely that the self discharge rate of most, if not all capacitors is above the power output of one of these nuclear batteries.
Its like seeing every experiment from my scientific books brought to life. Always amazed how fast you knock out these videos while still being quality. nuke battery was something i made after reading about the radioactive boy scout which eventually lead to making B.E.A.M robots, fm transmitters, rc airplanes, cnc devices...list goes on.
I mean sounds interesting is it a book?
@@erikmaguina1
BEAM robots...there's a blast from the past!
So 1000 smoke detectors will get you a 12v power source that lasts over 400 years....hmm tempting
You then would have to worry about what to do with that 3rd nut...lol
The stores will be wondering why you’re buying up so many smoke detectors 😂
Contact the suppliers directly and only buy the materials you need. Cutting costs to a few cents a cell. Buy a machine to build the cells and these could end up costing a few cents a cell. Cheap enough to build a 48v battery for the same price as we pay now for lithium batteries, the only difference is the battery does not need recharging for 50 to 100 years.
Thank you, Sir Anthony Hopkins, for this fascinating information.
This is such a cool video. Love the extra detail on the history of the battery as well as the practical demonstration. Look forward to the next one!!!
Nice demonstration. In 1960s, our military developed a portable nuclear plant that operates years providing a local power plant anywhere. There's a military documentary on yt showing this. And just in recent news this concept is being revisited.
Thanks for sharing and providing good inspiration.
Ah but that would make it difficult to take money off us for energy, no wonder this sort of thing is kept low key
Many small scale nuclear things were tried including nuclear powered cars (Ford Nucleon). At the time it was envisioned that small scale reactors could also be a home power source. These days with battery energy storage this is truly feasible, but the nuclear dream died long ago.
See also: nuclear powered submarines, and ships(mainly aircraft carriers).
naquadah generator?
It got scrapped because the fuel rods would build steam if removed improperly and one of the techs wasnt paying attention when removing it and got pinned to the roof by the rod
One comment. Half-life refers to the halving of the fissile material. This means that after 400+ years you'll get half the current but the battery will continue for hundreds of years more.
Well, technically the battery will continue forever, it's just that the current will keep dropping as per the decay.
@@advaits6427 No atoms do eventually die off and break down atoms are not eternal and Radioactive isotopes have a chance of shooting off and electron, I think Bismuth 209 or something like that is the longest of any isotope. Some faster than others, the elephant's foot - Chernobyl is a great example of radioactivity that is breaking down at a fast rate, original photographer died a week after being exposed to it, now you can spend an hour in a suit in front of it.
Nothing is eternal and nothing lasts forever.
@@advaits6427 Before the battery gets half-discharged it must get half of half discharged, and before it gets half of half discharged, if must get half of half of half discharged, etc. It lasts forever.
I watch a lot of science videos along with a science background but Robert MS seems to be the science teacher I never had.
To be fair I have a lot of trouble keeping up with his latest project. This one was a mash of all I know about pn junctions and semiconducters together with nuclear physics.
I am in awe.
Sir , you are funny, brilliant, and supremely entertaining. Always interesting! Thank you.
If Americium 241 has a half life of 432 years, why is my smoke detector only good for 10 years?
good question, the answer is that we are going to dispose of the radioactive material within the devices long before the half life of the radioactive material, just as many people do now the radioactive material will end up in the landfills. the good news is that many more people will get cancer from the exposure, the medical industry will do well.
Because it is not powering the actual alarm, only triggering the alarm. You need a battery to power the alarm. And the failure point of these alarms is not the radiation source, it is the other parts (random electronics randomly end up going, or dust builds up inside of the radiation chamber, etc). And they are good for longer than 10 years on average, that is just when they recommend getting a new one.
Text it, if it works it works, if it does not, it’s probably the failure of components.
@germanlopez9448 your comment isn't even coherent yet seems to imply conspiracy to poison everyone. I disagree, also the americium is perfectly safe in its containment capsule as americium produces primarily alpha particles which are easily stopped with the outer (dead) layer of skin or a piece of paper. So much work has gone into making it safe that no, smoke detector alpha emitters are not going to be a risk unless you intentionally break open the capsule and then decide to swallow the americium piece inside.
Don't say "the answer is" unless you are willing to back up a claim with documentation and evidence.
Capacitors, especially the older electrolytic ones get leaky and make the system unreliable.
Fascinating! I wonder why this couldn't be scaled up to power larger items?
I also have to wonder if the research and development of cheap, safe energy production and storage isn't restricted by the desire for "planned obsolescence". Companies aren't interested in spending the time and money to develop a power source you only need to by once a century.
Looks like it's up to you Robert! 😜
well this is going very fast for what this is. 2018 till 2024 is only 6 years and we defenitly need to know excatly how pure and perfect we can make these batteries as their first use case is powering bios batteries keeping system times things like that
they can be scaled up but you wouldn't be able to power anything like a vehicle with them, they would be best suited for stuff like smart phones, smart watches and small electronic gadgets that don't draw massive amounts of power. i've commented on another tech channel trash talking the nano diamond battery when it first came out as they were poking fun at how little energy it produced... my response was that you'd stack them to get the voltage you need and that's your battery for the device for what would quite literally be a few lifetimes, you could take the battery out of a dead device and put it into a new one and reduce tech waste a significant amount.
A powerful enough version would likely need a low half life isotope, in order to emmit a ton of particles in a short enough time to make a meaningful current without weighing a ton itself, anyway, refueling yoir car each 5 years beats once a week by a factor of 54.
Beta and Alpha particles are safe, an aluminium foil can block them with ease, and if you can't afford a piece of your hat, you can always stay atarround 2 meters of the source to be safe.
@fluffy_unicorn859 apple products are garbage anyways so whatever gets people to stop using them i guess lol.
Even smart phones are well beyond the capability of this. Although the energy density is quite high the power density is very low.@@ToeCutter454
Very nice. I wonder if it would work better with a Solar cell
me too!
Actually it would. The power density is very low.@@ThinkingandTinkering
The current Betavolt does 100 MICRO watts, not milliwatts as you stated in the beginning of the video.(yes, you stated it correctly later but just in case someone doesn't watch that far maybe they'll read this and know the truth)
So you think they'll skip the rest of the video and go right to your comment that's pretty narcissus of you
@@jasonlogan5765 hehe don't be that way. He's just trying to help. We are all learning and sharing here.
@jasonlogan5765 "narcissistic"*
sounds about right, but they're still talking about prototypes (edit: video says they are in pilot production, so i guess they are already making them) and they say they are stackable in layers and very thin so they could probably make a stack of 1000 and wire them in parallel or series, if they want to increase the current or voltage
I was wondering about that actually😂
I'm sure betavoltaics and other nuclear batteries hit the news every year now. Usually it's some article claiming you'll be able to power an EV with a stack of them, then followed by some "Busted" video showing how this isn't even remotely feasible. I think my favourite was Nurdrage taking the low-efficiency approach of sandwiching a bunch of tritium-filled phosphor-coated vials between two solar panels and getting a few microwatts.
Would be kind of fun to see how many americium pellets and transistor cores it would take to do something simple like drive a wristwatch or a calculator though, if it can be done without significant risk. Even alpha and beta emitters can be dangerous if you swallow or breath them!
If you are willing to carry a phone that is the size of an early 1990s handphone,,, you definately can make a nuclear powered handphone. Phone, exercise weight and self defense instrument all in one.
@@nickl5658Honestly that doesn’t bother me at all the size, as long as it never dies I could also just use the battery as a battery charger as well which would be amazing.
EEVblog 1595 - 50 Year Chinese Nuclear Diamond Battery!
You make all this so much fun, Robert!
Thanks Robert. There is also some low energy Gamma radiation from the decay of Americium-241, so it's worth remembering. The smoke detector works by generating a voltage between two plates at each side of an air cavity. Smoke particles enter the cavity and disrupt (absorb) the Alpha particles, causing a drop in voltage, and triggering the alarm. So the detector is also essentially a low power battery.
@user-up1id5rv2m indeed. You'd imagine you could charge a capacitor with the americium that could power the buzzer for 10 minutes or so. Assuming it had sufficient hours to charge before needing to go off.
*Radioactive Boyscout Intensifies*
(Rip)
@user-up1id5rv2mModern fire detectors are photo-electric (smoke particles deflect/absorb the photons) and don't use a radioactive source.
I honestly think we could power our world off of small atomic reactors. There is no need for oil. But imagine something that lasts ages and doesn't break - small profits.
Well idk, its not usually the batteries that break first in most battery powered products, is it?
Energy companies are gonna be mad though lol.
@@svinkuk2652 they may not break first but surely they don't last ages.
@@adamstewarton no sure thats true, im thinking of things like phones and laptops though, most people tend to replace them long before the battery goes wonky.
it'd be a gamechanger for cars though i suppose, but they could just do what the tech industry and many car manufacturers already do and engineer them to fail after so many years, as well as make them impossible to maintain without ten million specialized tools and put in software to make it harder to get off brand spare parts etc etc.
There are always shady ways to maintain profits lol.
I get your point though, its definitely an incentive for companies to want these things away from the market.
No they are not. The power output of these things isn't even enough to run a very dim LED torch.@@svinkuk2652
Honestly making a simple LED that never runs out of power is a good start for these things. Especially if you’re using it as a grow light for plants.
Can it power a T-60 suit?
And to think I had hundreds of 2N3055s once, another opportunity missed. How would a darlington transistor fare with the two base junctions effectively in series? Would a plastic bodied transistor be a better choice?
I saw the product announcement yesterday and hoped you'd review your battery. Thanks.
Wouldn't ɑ/ɓ radiant voltaic battery continue to produce electricity after its half-life, but at a reduced rate? Only half of the mass would have decayed into its new stable element -- the rest would still be active?
WOuld love to see this or a karpen cell as a charger for the fractal capacitor array. One cell per capacitor.
Yust look at the voyager probes.
They passive energy source decayed more and more over the decades and now only a few of the instruments have enough power to stay online.
Theoretically it's never out of energy but practically it all depends on the half life.
So what you're saying is that there is no reason for the fire alarms to beep?
If this gets cheap enough for consumer products, one of the first applications I thought of was for smoke detectors, some of which use a radioactivity source (an isotope of Americium, I believe) to detect smoke. Perhaps they could use the same radiation source to power AND operate a smoke detector?
I wrote my comment too soon. I had no idea you were going to use a smoke detector for your project!
The power density would be insufficient to operate any sort of audible alarm.
Add a supercapacitor, charged by the source. By the time the alarm is needed, it will have stored enough charge to provide the power required for the alarm.
Online estimates already say they will cost around $5000 each.
@@tcmtech7515 Sure, at the moment, but if you consider that a computer as powerful as your phone is would cost $100,000,000 thirty years ago (and draw tens of kilowatts to operate) it’s a fairly safe assumption that not too long from now this nascent technology will become affordable.
Awesome video!...made my day. Can we increase the voltage out put in the two ways? 1) make a hole above the N and not cut off the top when aiming the Nuclear material at it, which would allow the alpha particles to be concentrated and the ones who are not going straight down would bounce around in the can and eventually hit the the N. 2) Would sorting the two Ns together increase the voltage.
Also this may make a great mil volt reference standard.
Great idea, it also keeps it sealed
If you use an electric photo cell, won't it produce higher voltage?
What about the receptor of an IR sensor?
That cackle at 10:00 is why I adore you...... You are my favorite mad, funny, lovable, not-at-all-evil scientist!
Also came here to comment about the "I knew this -should- work, but here it is working!" cackle. Love it
If this really works we could get consumers to pay to slowly move all the nuclear waste from it's expensive storage facilities into domestic landfill, via gadgets...
That'd be great.
:)
i am sure this is the intended outcome the academic community was aiming to achieve. what genius is lurking withing the halls of academic institutions.
One tenth of a milli-Ampère at a tenth of a Volt, then I should at least harvest 30 smoke detectors to vaguely light up a few LED's or an old LCD wrist watch. Must be fun to walk around with, you don't have to wait in the line at the supermarket.
Idk how to explain the dopamine rush i felt when it all clicked how it worked. Incredibly clever engineering, and i applaud you for taking a stab at one in your garage. Thank you, im subscribed now
If it's from china I wouldn't put it past them to put an internal capability to detonate it at a given time.....
I was watching your backlog of members videos on hemp batteries, and it got me thinking about all of the ashes I've accumulated from my wood burning fire. I know you can add water to ashes to make lye.. since I have such an excess of ashes to be used, is there any way I can use them in making a battery? Maybe as the anode? I love your videos and would love to hear your ideas on this idea, even if it's just a simple "no, that wouldn't be worth it."
Sodium Hydroxide is a wonderful electrolyte, just don't mix with aluminum, zinc, and a few other metals or bad things happen.
@@LittleXtracaustic soda you get hydrogen, so many fun times had as a kid .. hydrogen balloons , and a wick.. well you can take it from here....🤔😂😎🇦🇺👌
@@LittleXtra I figured it could be put to use somehow. What anode and cathode would you recommend to use for a battery using a Sodium Hydroxide electrolyte?
I get worried about making the most interesting content because of danger that surrounds it. Not that it can't be done safely but that it would get my channel in trouble. You give me the confidence to move forward on certain videos I want to unleash.
Nuclear batteries have been contracted to the US military from an Oregon manufacturing firm long ago. They were used in those sky beam search light units.
Would this work better on a solar cell rather than single transistor?
its very entertaining but you are just seeing light leakage. If you perform the experiment in a slightly more scientific way (ie really remove ambient light) you will not see any difference if the Am-241 source is present of not.
The semiconductor die is passivated with layer of silicon dioxide (quartz glass) and the alpha particles will not be able to pass that and reach the semiconductor layers below. Even if they could pass through the passivization layer, they certainly could not pass though the first layer of N-type material to reach the N-P junction where the charge carriers are produced. Light is a photon and behaves differently in this semiconductor and can generate hole-electron pairs on the surface layers. Betavolt uses BETA radiation, not alpha as you are getting from the Am-241 source. In a BetaVoltiac or AlphaVoltiac device, the source of the electrons (beta) or holes (alpha) needs to be one of the contacts, the semiconductor is the other contact.
I just wanted to say I love your energy and your way of explaining. I got the idea of how this works now with little pre knowledge which makes you an excellent teacher
I have no intention of making this but my lord was it interesting to watch. The way you deliver information is fantastic!
xbox controller drained one of these batteries in two weeks
Very interesting. It didn't occur to me until now that alpha radiations, being near the UV wavelengths, could cause photovoltaic cells or semiconductors to generate a voltage. I guess the same is true of x-rays too since they're the next step up from UV. Not that I know of any material which puts out x-rays while decaying.
With the Americium, it looks like quite a few pieces would be needed in series to get 3.3V. I suppose each pellet could produce twice the output if it's extracted from its casing, to expose the underside and to sandwich ir between two transistors.
My smoke detector with Americium is definitely putting out Beta radiations too as I get an increase of over 500 CPMs when pointing my Geiger counter towards the plastic case and Alpha radiation wouldn't make it through the plastic and thin metal cage surrounding the ionization chamber. I don't think it puts out Gamma though because the readings drop when I insert a 1mm steel plate between the smoke detector and the Geiger counter. It's still bad though if it can ionize floating dust which might end up being inhaled.
That could be a concern , but I remember another vid where a person went into a mine and the air was very radioactive from all the uranium decay. I could be misrepresenting but the main issue was the charged particle radiation attracting and sticking to the clothing which came out pretty radioactive, however it decayed quickly and putting the clothes into a bag away from the camp overnight dropped the radiation to background levels, perhaps simply an airtight unit would suffice.
@@terrysobkowich2084 If you meant airtight batteries then yes, I'd expect them to be both airtight and shielded sufficiently to block beta radiations, as someone will inevitably end up carrying one in their pants pocket.
If you meant airtight smoke detector, that wouldn't work of course as the smoke needs to get in 🙂
*In theory,* a 1-watt continuous output battery that can run for 50 years would have a~438,000 amp-hours capacity. At 3 volts that's a ~ 1.3 MWH battery! 😋
However, in realistic terms, in order to use a set of such batteries to do anything large like power an average home or electric vehicle. Each application would need many thousands of them. Likely about 10,000 of them to power an average house like mine and about 70,000 to 100,000 to make an EV that could be driven like a normal vehicle. 🤡
Oh ya, and current pricing estimates put them at about $ $4500 - 5000 US dollars each if you buy in bulk! 😂
You don't use these batteries to run things directly, you use them to charge super capacitors which will charge traditional larger capacity batteries continuously for 50-100 years.
Calculating watts per dollar might be more accurate. I am very bad at electricity math, so giving that the price of electricity is 16 cents per kwh; In theory, can this method produce cheaper electricity?
@@lordofthechimie 1300 x .16 = $208
6:29 You'll be fine. You'll just be putting a phone with Nuclear power by your head. What can go wrong?.☢️😃
Wow ... this .. is why i love this channel
Sabine Hossenfelder also covered this recently. She also has a great sense of humour.
This one is way more informative though
I never correctly remember her surname . But I'm not going editing my other recent commitment though.
oh, definitely @@paulperegud6000
I love it! This is the most expensive power source in the world at almost $100 000 per W. Compared to solar, which is currently at $0.1 per W, the price would need to drop a million times. The first solar panels cost about $115.3 per watt, the price dropped 1000 times in fifty years.
The idea of a phone that doesn't need charging is very appealing.
it is indeed
Have you lost your mind the first thing you want to do when you grow up is stop being bothered by the stupid phone brainwashed and programmed by a plastic glowing box
All we need now is a 50-year phone...
Apple disagrees!
An iPhone with this amazing battery life will still find the performance throttled after one year.
Philip Brody already found this out. By having a lead-lantheum matrix, encasing a radioactive element (Which we'll use radium as an example), you'll be able to effectively cause an ionization event giving a DC output.
Depending on the purity of the lead-lantheum, it can go up to ~1500 volts/cm with a 30 nano-amp flow.
See Patent US 4,041,465
Combine it with a joule thief to drive an led.
Also a novel way of creating a radiation detector if you omit the source... just read the output with a multimeter.
While it would work in principle, it would only work placed right next to a hot source. The threshold of background radiation needed to set this off would be immediately dangerous to a human being(I presume), but if that’s all that your goal is, I don’t see why you couldn’t give it a shot!
Radioactive materials should not be made easily publicly available. Our society as it stands in 2024 is not conducive to peaceful responsible and non-destructive use of radioactive products.
Great video Rob! I wonder if you have heard of the LTC3108 chip? It takes voltages as low as 20mv and can push them upto 5v with usable current! check it out and if you still have the bits from this nuclear battery, maybe you can get some usable voltage out of it?!
This kind of voltage/ current would be useful for offsetting parasitic drains on circuits where there is always something that slowly depletes a battery even when you are not using it
Was very interesting with a good solid explanation, thanks!! 😊
You sir, have made me mentally wealthy! The way you explain things is amazing! Now subbed and locked in!