8 mo. ago • 85%

A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

www.techradar.com A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

A glowing horizon for phones

A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years::A glowing horizon for phones

Technology @lemmy.world A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

Hacker News @derp.foo A tiny radioactive battery could keep your future phone running for 50 years

91 comments

And now for 50 years worth of security updates for a phone like that. Not to mention what people might do with throwing a phone in the trash or something

87
- I'd take it if it was a reasonable price, like 1k, and if I could just swap it into new phones every time I upgraded.
  
  The problem is, power requirements tend to increase as computation power increases. And no doubt battery tech will improve in those 50 years.
  
  30
  
  They already sell phones over 1k that are expected to last ~4 years. You'll need to tag another zero or two to that price to incentivize manufacturers.
  
  12
  
  So what if power requirements increase. It could quadruple and now my battery will only last twelve years? There are plenty of other things that will start failing before then.
  
  -2
- The EU are going to mandate removable batteries in phones, so I don't see any reason you can't take a standardised battery that lasts decades and swap it into your next phone, if they're all designed properly with compatibility with this miracle battery in mind :-D
  
  17
  
  Perfect. Then they'll sell the battery separately and it'll cost $5000
  
  6
  
  Exactly; if Usually, it takes years, if not decades, before laws and regulations are actually in place
  
  1
- I'm not so optimistic.
  
  When ever we discover a new, much better power source, the cartel who is going to lose a shitton of business go on a smear campaign. Look at solar power. Look at electric cars. Hell, look at hemp.
  
  Companies would bury this so fast, and this tech would be a niche thing.
  
  2
- The isotope degrades into copper.
  
  1
- No. Document the device for PC-like lifetime software support from first and third party. Long security update support for phones, great, but we still have a stupid thing when people buy whole new phone for little software feature.
  
  1
Nickel-63 is pretty safe as radioactive elements go. It's proposed as an energy source for pacemakers.

Standford says 0.1mm of plastic will absorb all emissions.

75
- At this moment, 1 gram of radioactive Nickel-63 costs around 4,000 USD. Nickel-63 isotope does not occur in nature, it is obtained by irradiating Nickel-62 inside a nuclear reactor.
  
  49
  
  The world needs breeder reactors anyways, build out a lot of gen 4 plants and make Nickle-63 to boot.
  
  7
- What happens when the casing get punctured? When you mass produce these devices these things will happen.
  
  24
  
  Probably the same as with tritium lumes. Only dangerous if you swallow the unshielded nickel.
  
  16
  
  Surely the battery itself would have sufficient protection on top of the devices chassis offering protection.
  
  I can't say a Lithium Ion battery leaking in the body would bode very either.
  
  9
- Standford?
  
  8
  
  It's a a rival of Hardvard.
  
  10
  
  Most prestigious school in all of milwalkee
  
  6
Like a phone would last 50 years.

62
- A tiny radioactive battery could keep a piece of e-waste using power for 48 years
  
  67
  
  Generating power...
  
  10
- With the EU requireing replaceable batteries, I could imagine buying a battery and changing the phone for it.
  
  4
  
  I could go for that.
  
  3
How long can it power a disposable vape? Lol jk

35
- Don't give them any ideas...
  
  9
Sounds like alot of infertility and ass cancer in the future... lets see how this plays out

31
Nuclear power at small scale is already in use in devices. Some medical devices, smoke detectors etc. As long as there is proper shielding, the enclosure is robust enough, and the overall device is made easily serviceable, I'm all for it. I can understand the fear sentiment of anything flagged as radioactive, but radiation is all around us already. Idk, but the less we can ditch super toxic and explosive lithium the better.

27
- The radioactive source isn't used for power in smoke detectors, it's used to detect smoke. What small scale devices use radioactivity actually for power?
  
  19
  
  My grampa had a pacemaker that was.
  
  Edit: Source - https://osrp.lanl.gov/pacemakers.shtml
  
  Edit2: For the smoke detectors, i know its not what powers it per se, as far as the electronics that sound the alarm and such. More pointing out it contains radioactive material, and is something in every (hopefully) house, and you likely walk by it often.
  
  9
- Here's the real issue with the bs fluff title and complete fabrication of what these can be used for. It says in the article the battery makes 100 microwatts at 3v. Well that's an insanely small wattage. Your phone requires like 2 to 10 watts when youre on it. Regular watts.
  
  One single watt is 1,000,000 microwatts. It would take 10,000 of these radioactive 50 year batteries ran together in parallel for just a watt of power. You'd need like 100,000 of them in your phone to cover all power requirements.
  
  10
  
  So, you're saying there's a chance :p
  
  The sentiment for me here, is any overall betterment of portable power is good. Yea the article and this specific tech is presented in an overhyped fashion, no doubt.
  
  2
- The issue is not the radioactivity, it's the power density. Per the article, this is ~24x smaller than an average phone battery, but can supply only 100uW.
  
  I have a relatively conservative phone use, and on average, my phone uses 450mW. That means that you'd need 4500 of those batteries in your phone. But the battery would also need to cover the power usage peaks, which are multiple times higher than the average power consumption.
  
  8
Ya know we keep these things in our pants right?

23
- No offense but it's a "I wasn't paying attention in high school physics" comment. It being beta decay with a half-life of 100 years should already indicate it's relatively safe. In fact someone else in this thread already already added the references showing how safe it is. If it's safe enough to power a pacemaker it's safe enough to sit in your phone that sits your pocket.
  
  Personally I think that battery would have much bigger issues than safety, such as power requirements which are much harder to control with nuclear decay. Also obviously the device itself deprecating before the battery because tech will definitely advance a lot in 50 years, I imagine after a decade the phone will be useless. And finally the pricing considering Ni-63 doesn't occur in nature which means you need a specific process to create the materials necessary for the batter.
  
  56
  
  I imagine after a decade the phone will be useless.
  
  27
  
  That's a silly comparison. You're not dropping your pacemaker down escalators or throwing it the trash when the screen breaks, and middle schoolers aren't dissambling them with butter knives. You're not throwing them out every few years. Please teach me more about high school physics though you smug sob.
  
  -11
Finally, Asimov got it right

22
- He got it right in a lot of aspects, partially because he didnt gave many details about certain stuff, but I remember a pretty good description of a nuclear powered e reader... if I remember it correctly, the nuclear part was a tiny nuclear reactor though
  
  9
  
  Seemed like all the writing of that era was under the spell of nuclear power. I remember thinking "wtf?" to a nuclear-powered desk side trash incinerator in one of Asimov's books. Maybe Foundation.
  
  3
Some of the people here don't realize that our smoke detectors have radioactive elements inside it

18
- Some people havent read the article where it states they use radioactive batteries like this in pacemakers and that there is no external radiation from the battery.
  
  7
- Depends, in my country ionization detectors have been banned over 20 years ago, you'll mostly find optical / photoelectric detectors here.
  
  7
  
  I wonder if its because of a valid reason, or just a precaution
  
  1
- I don't put smoke detector next to my head for every night.
  
  5
  
  Or right next to my balls for like 10 hours a day.
  
  7
Battery scam #364256373

I'm seeing at least 5 of these per week now, can we PLEASE stop this bullshit?

Also, batteries from radioactive elements is one of the stupider ideas that has been floated around, sounds about at the same level as the thorium powered car.

It would be so nice if tech sites could write about actual tech and not CGI bullshit dreamed up by a guy who really isn't going to scam you, he just needs a little bit of start up capital for his Ferrari.

17
Remember when folks wore watches with radioactive paint on them? Good times.

17
- It would've been great if they used reasonable safety precautions in making them.
  
  16
  
  Yeah, unfortunately most of the danger fell on the (usually female) factory workers who painted the radium on. Fun fact, we do absolutely still use radioactive shit to make watches glow today, it’s just much less dangerous and sealed in tiny vials. Also it’s a gas that won’t eventually flake and turn into super fine particulate, like the radium paints of yore.
  
  17
- It was more a problem of licking the little brushes than wearing the teeny bit on the wrist.
  
  8
I've heard of these kinds of batteries before and it'd be cool to have long-running electronics, but would these produce enough power?

12
- They do, if you give them enough room. And if you are born into an oil family.
  
  The power density is about 0.01125m³ per watt. A high end smartphone (11w of peak power) with a body size similar to Galaxy s23 ultra, would be almost 10 meters thick.
  
  10
  
  To be fair, it only needs to cover the phone's average power draw if you put in a supercapacitor or small conventional battery.
  
  But there's another problem.... if I understand how this works correctly, for a 1W battery, the radioactive element must be outputting AT LEAST 1W of radiation energy at all times, whether it's being consumed as electricity or not. Ideally that's all trapped inside as heat in a best case scenario, but having to cool your battery while it's not in use is kind of a deal breaker for anything more than milliwatts (or it will have to have a heatsink as big as the battery)
  
  3
- Not last I saw. They produce way too little power at that scale.
  
  5
Flight safe, or nah?

What if it gets caught or crushed in the seat or luggage?

11
Yeah. Sure.

8
What could possibly go wrong...?

(FWIW - I am referring to the potential for misuse at scale)

4
- AskSamsunga about phones in checked bags.... And now the whole airplane is getting cancer.
  
  1
  
  Is that their new virtual assistant, AskSamsunga?
  
  8
I see no downside whatsoever.

2
- "A glowing horizon for phones", and their users.
  
  3
- No need for flashlights anymore!
  
  1
Can it be safely recycled or disposed of when finished? Or is it more landfill waste?

2
Whatever, there will be no more radioactive fuel on earth by 2120

1
super safe, health first ALWAYS

1
This comment is cancer.

1
life steal battery because of the radiation! /j

1
On the news tonight, will your uraniuam cellphone give you cancer? The answer might NOT surprise you, it's yes; it's uranium.

-5
- Mine what? Don't threaten me with a good time.
  
  2
- Polonium 210 typically in these devices. We've mostly sent them hurdling into space so far.
  
  1

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