Experts in nuclear physics at the University of Surrey have helped develop research towards a 'nuclear battery', which could revolutionize the concept of portable power by packing in up to a million times more energy compared to a conventional battery.
http://phys.org/news/2013-03-revolution ... loser.html
(Although a million times the power stored in the same volume sounds a lot like a catastrophe waiting to happen, to me).
'Nuclear battery' a step closer
Re: 'Nuclear battery' a step closer
The idea of using a nuclear isomer as a source of energy is well used. It is basically a method of harvesting the energy of radioactive decay, a commonly used "nuclear battery". With a few isotopes (Ur235, Pu 239, etc.) you can have not just a heat source (or potentially a Beta voltaic source) that decays at well behaved rates, but you can have a reactor driven by neutron mediated fission, which can greatly increase the energy yield over relatively shorter time frames, and it is adjustable.
A few years ago this was discussed with the idea that an energetic isomer could be induced to have a controllable and shorter half life, thus being much more useful. The problem is that changing the half life of the radioactive decay seems to be impossible. It is different from neutron mediated fission. Having said that there have been some claims of adjusting an isomer half life with energetic x-rays or some other means.
This would be a battery as you have to build the energetic isomer in the first place, there are no naturally available excited isomers that can be utilized * even if the half life could be manipulated.
There are naturally aviable isotopes/ isomers but not in useful concentrations. Carbon 14 may be a good example, but it's concentration is too low. You put more energy into producing/ harvesting the isomer than the energy retrieved. That us why the term battery is used. It might provide a dense and portable energy source but not a net energy producing resource.
The radio isotope thermal power sources in satellites and space probes come close to fitting the bill, but they would be much more versatile if they could be throttled- there have been proposals to use fission reactors in satellites, but I don't know if any have been fielded and hard radiation concerns are a problem (gamma ray or neutron radiation). The harvesting of the decay radiation heat is perhaps a more fruitful area of research. Current thermoelectric converters are convenient but have low conversion efficiency (perhaps only 1-3% of the heat from radiation is converted to electricity. the rest is waste heat. Proposals to use Sterling engines is one possability to improve the conversion efficiency considerably. Beta voltaics with eg:tritium is another endeavor.
Dan Tibbets
A few years ago this was discussed with the idea that an energetic isomer could be induced to have a controllable and shorter half life, thus being much more useful. The problem is that changing the half life of the radioactive decay seems to be impossible. It is different from neutron mediated fission. Having said that there have been some claims of adjusting an isomer half life with energetic x-rays or some other means.
This would be a battery as you have to build the energetic isomer in the first place, there are no naturally available excited isomers that can be utilized * even if the half life could be manipulated.
There are naturally aviable isotopes/ isomers but not in useful concentrations. Carbon 14 may be a good example, but it's concentration is too low. You put more energy into producing/ harvesting the isomer than the energy retrieved. That us why the term battery is used. It might provide a dense and portable energy source but not a net energy producing resource.
The radio isotope thermal power sources in satellites and space probes come close to fitting the bill, but they would be much more versatile if they could be throttled- there have been proposals to use fission reactors in satellites, but I don't know if any have been fielded and hard radiation concerns are a problem (gamma ray or neutron radiation). The harvesting of the decay radiation heat is perhaps a more fruitful area of research. Current thermoelectric converters are convenient but have low conversion efficiency (perhaps only 1-3% of the heat from radiation is converted to electricity. the rest is waste heat. Proposals to use Sterling engines is one possability to improve the conversion efficiency considerably. Beta voltaics with eg:tritium is another endeavor.
Dan Tibbets
To error is human... and I'm very human.