'30 Year Laptop Battery' is Unscientific Myth 322
An anonymous reader wrote to mention the wonderful news: "A research group funded by U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory is developing a battery which can provide continuous power to your laptop for 30 years! Betavoltaic power cells are constructed from semiconductors and use radioisotopes as the energy source..." Except, not so much. ZDNet's Mixed Signals blog with Rupert Goodwins explains why (as always) if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is: "The sort of atomic structures that generate power when bombarded with high energy electrons are the sort that tend to fall apart when bombarded with high energy electrons. While solar cells have the same problem, it's to a much lesser extent. There's a lot of research into making materials that don't suffer so much, but it remains a serious issue ... while it's true that a tritium-powered battery will eventually turn into an inert, safe lump of nothing much, and while it's also true that a modest amount of shielding will keep the radioactivity within the the battery the while, there's the small problem that if you break the battery during its life the nasties come out."
not the only nuclear battery (Score:5, Interesting)
A couple things... (Score:4, Interesting)
We already have "dirty" nuclear materials in the hands of consumers: some types of smoke detectors, lead paint detectors, x-ray machines, and some other things.
If someone wanted to make a dirty bomb, a few thousand dollars worth of the right smoke detectors would do perfectly.
Re:30-year-battery unrealistic for another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
The obvious answer is the lifetime of the laptop. For me, that would be about three-four years. A lot less than thirty. Even that is a bit long though. I may use a laptop for three years, but I don't use it away from mains power for three years. Most days, I sleep somewhere with mains power so I could easily charge it overnight. If I sleep 8 hours a day, then 16 hours of battery life would be enough. This doesn't count travelling, however. If I am travelling, I may go for a few days between charges. Two days of the laptop being on all of the time I am awake would be 32 hours, which is less than an order of magnitude more than I get already. As long as it's a battery that can be charged easily, a 32 hour battery would see most of my power needs quite nicely.
Eh. (Score:3, Interesting)
Beta emitters (especially like [32]P) are bad news if consumed, but as long as there is something in between you and it, you're probably fine.
Betavoltaics = pseudoscience (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite years of claims, no one has ever come close to demonstrating a device with the sort of power densities claimed in the article. Furthermore, the biggest proponent of betavoltaic technology is Ruggero Santilli, an infamous pseudoscientist with a litany of nutty claims and bizarre theories of physics.
If you look at the web pages of the companies that are involved in betavoltaics (e.g. betavoltaic.com or nuclearsolutions.com), you'll find that they have no physical facilities outside of a rented post office box or the home of one of the principals. None of them have any product to sell or even demo. I don't expect that will ever change.
Radioactive waste disposal is no problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
They just needed to keep the waste in an onsite holding pool for a few years, and then the government would take over. He explained that the U. S. Government made a firm commitment (he may even have mentioned a contract) to accept the plant's waste starting in 1998, when the Yucca Flats facility would begin operating.
So, what's the problem? All we need to do is make it easy for consumers to mail their dead radioactive batteries to the Yucca Flats facility.
Oh, wait...
(If he were still alive consumers could also mail them to Ronald Reagan, who stated at one point that if properly processed a year's worth of nuclear waste from a nuclear power plant could be stored under a desk...)
OK, time to smack down some mythconceptions. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Cons and wishful thinking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Laptop? (Score:5, Interesting)
Let's go hog wild and do the math! (Score:4, Interesting)
Kinda impractical to stuff your laptop with several million gallons of radioactive waste.
Re:Let's go hog wild and do the math! (Score:3, Interesting)
It might only take one hundredth of Hanford's waste...
Re:Let's go hog wild and do the math! (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Duh! (Score:1, Interesting)
By contrast, the power needs for a car are extremely irregular and bursty (a typical north american sedan needs 130HP to get off the sales lot. For the rest of it's life it needs 0HP 90% of the time, 1-5HP 9.8% of the time and 50HP 0.2% of the time...disclaimer: all quoted figures pulled from my ass and assume a competent driver).
The power density is also quite low. According to my cocktail napkin, a battery the size of a paperback (but quite a bit heavier...let's guess 2lb) might generate 1/4W. Stack 300 of those together and you've got a pile 20' tall and 600lbs producing about 1HP. If we optimistically assume them to be about $100 ea, that stack is worth $30,000. If you add enough regular batteries or supercaps and only use it for commuting, you might be able to get away with just 1 stack(*). However, if you look at the distribution above, it becomes pretty apparent that the motor would be drawing virtually all of its power from the "regular" power system at which point you might want to just leave your 600 lb generator stack at home most days (with the advantage that, once your car is topped up, it can switch over to powering the house). Once you are doing that, you have to ask if whatever is powering your house isn't cheaper.
(*) for long haul applications, you would probably need 5 stacks in addition to the "regular" battery/cap system: figure $150,000, 3000lb and, banker's boxes and a "granny gear" for climbing any sort of hill.
Re:Laptop? (Score:2, Interesting)
Oh yeah. People forget that this technology has been around for-freaking-ever; and just because a few wannabe greenies (which happen to be too stupid for their own good) are completely ignorant about the facts. The big problem is that these people are more vocal, and so, are decreasing the signal to noise ratio with their chicken little--the sky is falling--banter and false-fact slinging, resulting in the negative influence of people even more stupid than they are.
If your CFLs are failing quicker than incandescents, it's probably because they just weren't manufactured well. It's a shame that bad bulbs are disparaging the name of a good and beneficial technology.
Note: I'm all for keeping mercury out of our environment, and that's why I support fluorescent technology--and education. If you educate people not to toss their used up bulbs and save them for recycling, it's going to have a big impact. Put a big green label on the bulb that reminds them to do so. Combined with the lower power consumption of fluorescents, it will help keep coal plants from blowing even more mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and CO2 into the atmosphere, in a naturally uncontrollable fashion--which is, as far as I'm concerned, the worst possible situation.
Lighthouse batteries (Score:2, Interesting)
These batteries can last a very long time with huge power output - they also put off huge amounts of heat, and sometimes ridiculous amounts of radiation, especially when they sit around discarded and rusting out, or are torn open by metal scavengers.