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doggle ,

Yeah. Sure.

phoenixz ,

Battery scam

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.

cooopsspace ,

Flight safe, or nah?

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

Imgonnatrythis ,

Ya know we keep these things in our pants right?

GoodEye8 ,

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.

Isoprenoid ,

I imagine after a decade the phone will be useless.

https://programming.dev/pictrs/image/8d87af5c-536f-467f-8637-1178f4ea48a0.jpeg

GoodEye8 ,

I'll concede, useless was a bit harsh. Let's say "no longer fit for the average user" considering the average lifespan of a mobile phone is 2-4 years and a company doing software and security updates for a decade is very rare.

You are very much the exception here.

Imgonnatrythis ,

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.

GoodEye8 ,

Most current phones use lithium ion batteries that can combust or explode in your pocket if tampered or damaged, but you don't seem to be worried about that. You only seem to be worried about the battery in the article because the only thing you remember about radiation from your high school physics is "radiation bad". Had you paid more attention in school you wouldn't need my smug ass correcting you.

DrRatso ,

You are just moving goalposts here. None of these scenarios are particularly relevant anyway. Even if the phone shell cracked, the battery casing would be enough to shield from the radiation. And what does throwing the phone in the trash have to do with keeping it in your pocket.

terminhell ,

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.

Person264 ,

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?

terminhell ,

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.

CucumberFetish ,

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.

ColeSloth ,

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.

DemBoSain ,
@DemBoSain@midwest.social avatar

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.

LibertyLizard ,
@LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net avatar

What happens when the casing get punctured? When you mass produce these devices these things will happen.

bitwolf ,

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.

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