EEVblog 1595 - 50 Year Chinese Nuclear Diamond Battery!

A Chinese startup has developed a tiny 50 year life diamond nuclear battery that's going to change the world! Yeah, nah. Same old betavoltaic, same old limitations, and same old startup marketing hype.

Beijing Betavolt New Energy Technology Co., Ltd.

Or with crypto:
BTC: 33BsprBQNBtHuVzVwDmqWkpDjYnCouwASM
ETH: 0x68114e40ff4dcdd384750500501e20acf3875f8c
BCH: 35n9KBPw9T7M3NGzpS3t4nUYEf9HbRmkm4
USDC: 0x68114e40ff4dcdd384750500501e20acf3875f8c
LTC: MJfK57ujxy55su4XicVGQc9wcEJf6mAoXF

Other channels:

#ElectronicsCreators #Nuclear #Battery

[ThinkingBetter]

No, this topic is not about energy density. It's about POWER DENSITY. You can actually easily calculate the theoretical maximum power for a particular isotope. For example, Carbon 14 has an isotopic POWER DENSITY (due to the natural radioactive decay) of 0.001305 Watts per gram. If you want to produce 1 Watt with this isotope and you can capture 20% of the radioactive power into electricity, your battery will have a weight of 1/(20%x0.001305) = approx. 4kg of carbon 14. But you need additional material to capture the beta radiation into electricity, so the weight is factors more and you will need to hire someone to carry your mobile phone battery hahaha.
Unfortunately for this entire idea you need to use a highly radioactive isotope to get better power density. For example, the Voyager battery is using Plutonium 238 (power density of 0.57 Watts per gram) but you end up with an extremely expensive battery costing millions of Dollars and also being extremely dangerous. The Voyager battery MHW-RTG outputs 160 Watts of electricity out of 2400 Watts of PU238 generated heat with a weight of approx. 60kg. 160 Watts is same as 160/746=0.2 Horse Power. So for millions of Dollars and 60kg of weight, you get 0.2 Horse Power. So how many do you need of these to power an EV? You could consider using it for charging a standard EV battery of 100kWh. In such case you will need 100, 000/160 = 625 hours (26 days) to charge the battery. And the car would be a total nightmare of nuclear radiation risks besides costing millions of Dollars in radioactive isotopes. I'll keep my Tesla 🙂

[GeorgeFoot]

"Don't believe it unless you can buy it on Digikey or Mouser" - words to live by at 14:00

[Colaholiker]

"AI is the wank-word of the decade" - Dave, you seriously made my day! I want that printed on a shirt! 🤣🤣🤣

[BenjaminGoose]

Wow this is amazing! With just 30, 000 of these you could power a smartphone!

[jeremiahthegreat]

I just saw you get a shout out from The China Show! Several live commentators gave this channel good support.

[chronobot]

I hear "Mr Fusion" makes a portable reactor that makes in excess of 1.21 gigawatts.

It's enough to easily drive a flux capacitor.

[martijnb]

Microwatts and powering a drone forever😂 With spinning blades with the speed of a clock 😊

[formbi]

I loved it when thay said "it's betavoltin time" and betavolted all over the place. Truly an energy moment of all time.

[AsthmaQueen]

I was waiting for your video on this, more just to hear you rip on all journalists pushing out articles without any thought, I am not disappointed

[Goonygoon]

For anyone wondering, the City Labs batteries START at $4-5, 000 USD/battery. For a 12y tritium battery. Now, lets boost that by 10, 000 times for a useful amount of consumer energy. Yeah. This tech has a ways to go, if they can even develop something that comes near a useful consumer product.

The best thing I could see for this kind of technology, would be for medical devices. If the interference didn't reek havoc with a pacemaker (or the surrounding tissue) I can see the use for a 50-year batter. The technology is cool, but like Dave said, it ain't consumer grade and has a long way to go to get there (if it ever can).

[agranero]

There were nuclear batteries used to power pacemakers in the 70s (AFAIK they were not beta cells they were thermoelectric), including using Plutonium 238, this Plutonium is not fissile so can't be used in a reactor or bomb (for real more than 6 USA companies produced those devices). A few companies though produced pacemakers powered by Promethium 147 using beta cells. But they were a logistic nightmare: people dies the battery needed to be removed from the body, if family remembered to warn for this need in a moment of pain. The risk of a person being cremated without removing one of those was particularly fearsome. After the 80s Lithium batteries mostly put those out of use, but there are still people with those working in their chests.
Those old materials were much more radioactive then Tritium and Nickel 63.

[peterbustin]

This attitude of 'fake it until you make it' is getting beyond a joke, now!

[WibovanNoort]

It is a compelling idea. However, 50 years is hard to do because the radiation will degrade the diodes much more quickly.

[akiko]

If it sounds too good to be true, it pretty much certainly is. Especially if it's from China.

[martinda]

I have one cell and a miniature 15V battery in my AVO MK8. The 15V battery is the original battery. It is over 50 years old. Seriously it still can be dialled to zero ohms and works perfectly. (Edit: Admittedly, I hardly use it, I just love looking at the thing..Said the vicar to the nun or vice versa).

[TheGFS]

haha I just saw an ad for this on Insta tonight and thought to myself "humm.. wonder if there is a video on these on EEVblog", couple of hours later, here is a video ! This is like VOD service ! Excellent timing ;D

[francisvaughan]

Nickel-63 has a half-life of 100 years. So their 50 year lifetime is likely a mix of radiation fall off, and radiation damage to the semiconductor. Which kicks in first would be interesting to know. Power from RTGs in space probes is limited by damage more than the half life of the plutonium used.

[bertblankenstein]

My HP-15C is due for its second set of batteries. I got it in 1989 I believe. It really does run on the sniff of an oily rag.

[PatrickBaptist-vvbg]

I couldn't last quiet a minute, new viewer and last time viewer, I just got up your so pumped up like you have snorted some dope I can't really relax listening to this channel.

[helgew]

Remember that size scales in all three dimensions. So, 10, 000 times bigger than 15 mm is actually only about 300 mm. We are, of course assuming that everything else scales linearly, which is probably not the case.