Diamond-age of power generation as nuclear batteries developed

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2016/november/diamond-power.html

[font face=Serif][font size=5]‘Diamond-age’ of power generation as nuclear batteries developed[/font]

Press release issued: 25 November 2016

[font size=4]New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current.[/font]

[font size=3]The development could solve some of the problems of nuclear waste, clean electricity generation and battery life.

This innovative method for radioactive energy was presented at the Cabot Institute’s sold-out annual lecture - ‘Ideas to change the world’- on Friday, 25 November.

Unlike the majority of electricity-generation technologies, which use energy to move a magnet through a coil of wire to generate a current, the man-made diamond is able to produce a charge simply by being placed in close proximity to a radioactive source.

Tom Scott, Professor in Materials in the University’s Interface Analysis Centre and a member of the Cabot Institute, said: “There are no moving parts involved, no emissions generated and no maintenance required, just direct electricity generation. By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy.”

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[NNadir]

1. Portable nuclear batteries have been in service since the 1950's.

There are still people who have plutonium-238 powered pacemakers in their chests, and of course there are the manifold space missions.

All of these devices at thermoelectric devices.

The use of fission products was widely explored in the 1950's and 1960's; the Soviets utilized some batteries of this type (powered by Sr-90) to power lighthouses in Arctic regions. Regrettably these kinds of projects were abandoned when the world became incredibly stupid, and because, ironically, there weren't enough fission products to make the processes economic.

The general approach to fission products is to throw them away; which is obviously throwing energy away.

I have long argued that there are no constituents of used nuclear fuel that are not valuable; many of them can do things that no other material can, for instance remove things like persistent organohalide pollutants, which are a problem of immense magnitude that is being addressed with vast indifference.

Radioactive fission products cannot accumulate indefinitely, since they are subject to the Bateman equation: The more radioactive they are, the less that can be accumulated; the total value asymptotically approaches a fixed maximum which is a function of the power of nuclear reactors utilized.

Thus there is a maximum the amount of energy they can provide.

Pu-238 has a broader possible use, which is to render all of the world's plutonium unusable in nuclear weapons.

I covered this elsewhere: On Plutonium, Nuclear War, and Nuclear Peace

Regrettably about 200 MT of weapons grade plutonium is now in the hands of two mentally unstable autocrats, Putin and Trump.

We should have denatured this plutonium when we had a chance.

Regrettably, stupid people with irrational fears have poisoned nuclear science with their ignorance to the detriment of the world at large.

Nothing will come of the work in the OP, since appeals to ignorance and fear obviously have enormous and frightening power and it's not like stupid people will abandon their fear of all things radioactive, except possibly, bananas.