Been done. Look up radioactive boyscout. Kid got himself and his parents in trouble for his pursuit of scientific experimentation. Built a reactor in the backyard shed and when he realized it was running away he dismantled it, shielded all the materials and was loading it into his car to dispose of when someone thought it would be funny to call in a bomb threat on him and police overreacted to an already dismantled reactor. He later joined the Navy and was forbidden from going near the reactor which sucks because he was kinda born for that sorta thing.
This is the type of Man that was my Physics teacher in the 80's, enthusiastic and loved trying to blow the science room up or blind us all with lasers. We need more people like this educating our Children.
I would’ve done anything for a teacher like him. I love the contagious feeling of wanting to learn. The joy I get from listening to them geeking out about what they’re passionate about is a feeling I can’t find anywhere else
@@l-l I was lucky, our Physics teacher tried to blind us, irradiate us, nearly get arrested by MPs for a radar jamming device one of our classmates designed and our Chemistry teacher tried to blow us up, burn us with acid, fill the room with poison gas and fill the floor with mercury (the room was closed down and did not open for the four years I remained there). I was put on detention for nearly setting fire to my classmate, he told me 'Only he was allowed to kill us, and that I was not insured to do so'. Professional educators that really inspired us with exciting, sometimes harmful tasks for the benefit of leaning or knowing there are real dangers in class/life, real life lessons.
Hi. maths teacher here. Its the curriculum that holds most of us back, particularly science teachers. Yes some are boring, some are fun but I also need someone that cover enough content such that my child can eventually pass exams and go on to A levels and beyond. A lot of newer teachers only see that side of things and not the whole ‘I should be trying to inspire kids’. There’s a fair chance that this fella would struggle in a class of 32 where 20 of them have no interest and mess about accordingly. 50-60% of what we do nowadays is behaviour management, seating plans, admin, reports, managing detentions etc etc. I always find it sad how quickly people speak negatively of my profession without ever done the job themselves or considering a variety of elements.
So if my math is correct, assuming 1mA at 110 mV, it should produce 9.504 Joules of energy over 24 hours. For a red LED operating at a F.V. of 2V with a current draw of 20 mA, the energy if stored with no losses or leakage would be enough to keep it lit for 237.6 seconds or ~4 minutes. This could prove to be extremely useful for supplying enough power to actuate some relays (or beefy transistors) and wake up hibernating electronics in applications where they’ll remain turned off for extended periods of time. 4 of these nuclear batteries could maintain a 1000mAh NiMH battery at 80% state of charge for 156 years. Or maybe you could create an atomic clock utilising the time-averaged regularity of the decays.
@@philip5940 So I deleted my previous comment because I misunderstood you, apologies. I was merely making a calculation for Rob’s little transistor based device. I think the real breakthrough is probably that Diamond doesn’t break down like the semiconductors we use in electronics do when exposed to radiation. Spacecraft have had reduced operating lifetimes in space due to radiation spikes (such as from CMEs, for instance) damaging the solar panels thereby decreasing their output. I’m not sure how the power output differs between Rob’s little experiment and the Chinese company’s product but the lifetime is what really matters (I think). Anyway, thanks for sharing!
I checked your numbers, seems right to me, and it's a good use of variables many may overlook or think they will never need beyond Ohm's Law. I checked using this equation to start with: voltage = joules of energy / coulomb of charge
This part of opening smoke sensors for its nuclear source remembers me a kid years ago that caused a nuclear accident while attempting to build his own home-made miniature nuclear reactor for his college science fair.
he collected all sorts of radioactive stuff, mainly "glow in the dark" stuff from mid 20th century...eventually it "piled" up so much, that he could register the emitting radiation in his room...the stuff was out in the garden iirc...and it didn´t stop there...he "irradiated", me thinks, two or three blocks of the neighborhood
Thank you, Sir Anthony Hopkins, for this fascinating information.
5 месяцев назад
Its like seeing every experiment from my scientific books brought to life. Always amazed how fast you knock out these videos while still being quality. nuke battery was something i made after reading about the radioactive boy scout which eventually lead to making B.E.A.M robots, fm transmitters, rc airplanes, cnc devices...list goes on.
A nuclear battery, etc, of low power can be assisted by a capacitor for when a relatively large amount of power is needed, say a transistor radio or a LED lamp to function when needed.
No, it can't. What you can do is use it to charge a conventional battery during "off-time", for devices that require power only intermittently. And yes, I said "battery" and not "capacitor", because capacitors can only store relatively small amounts of energy. However, a far more efficient way to achieve this is by using a bog standard charger if you live in a first world country and have access to mains voltage Or a dynamo built into the device, like with some torches or radios, if access to mains voltage is problematic (no infrastructure, or during a power outage). Or use solar panels if it's a device in a remote location where you don't have mains and winding the dynamo is impractical. E.g. a LoRa node monitoring some environmental parameters in a remote location in a forest, or what have you. I get it, these batteries are cool. But they're not a solution to every problem that has "power" in the title. There's a place for these things for sure, but powering devices that require more power than they can deliver is not it.
@@chemistryofquestionablequa6252 a problem with most types of capacitor is self discharge or leakage current, they drain pretty quickly when sitting unused. It is highly likely that the self discharge rate of most, if not all capacitors is above the power output of one of these nuclear batteries.
I watch a lot of science videos along with a science background but Robert MS seems to be the science teacher I never had. To be fair I have a lot of trouble keeping up with his latest project. This one was a mash of all I know about pn junctions and semiconducters together with nuclear physics. I am in awe.
Nice demonstration. In 1960s, our military developed a portable nuclear plant that operates years providing a local power plant anywhere. There's a military documentary on yt showing this. And just in recent news this concept is being revisited. Thanks for sharing and providing good inspiration.
Many small scale nuclear things were tried including nuclear powered cars (Ford Nucleon). At the time it was envisioned that small scale reactors could also be a home power source. These days with battery energy storage this is truly feasible, but the nuclear dream died long ago.
It got scrapped because the fuel rods would build steam if removed improperly and one of the techs wasnt paying attention when removing it and got pinned to the roof by the rod
I just wanted to say I love your energy and your way of explaining. I got the idea of how this works now with little pre knowledge which makes you an excellent teacher
Idk how to explain the dopamine rush i felt when it all clicked how it worked. Incredibly clever engineering, and i applaud you for taking a stab at one in your garage. Thank you, im subscribed now
Thanks Robert. There is also some low energy Gamma radiation from the decay of Americium-241, so it's worth remembering. The smoke detector works by generating a voltage between two plates at each side of an air cavity. Smoke particles enter the cavity and disrupt (absorb) the Alpha particles, causing a drop in voltage, and triggering the alarm. So the detector is also essentially a low power battery.
I haven't used smoke detectors in years but don't they require normal batteries too? I'd image they're for the speaker that makes the sound, as the nuclear battery (more exactly some circuit component that works on it's own for years and triggers a signal in case of particles in the air) has not enough power. Wouldn't it be possible to use the radioactive sensor to charge a small normal battery while the speaker isn't used? I mean like a buffer, cause the sensor can't deliver enough throughput to 1:1 power the speaker.
@@user-up1id5rv2m indeed. You'd imagine you could charge a capacitor with the americium that could power the buzzer for 10 minutes or so. Assuming it had sufficient hours to charge before needing to go off.
This was wonderful :) Educational, entertaining and your joy mirrored mine :) I love seeing people enjoy doing what they do and I thank you for the informative content :)
One comment. Half-life refers to the halving of the fissile material. This means that after 400+ years you'll get half the current but the battery will continue for hundreds of years more.
@@advaits6427 No atoms do eventually die off and break down atoms are not eternal and Radioactive isotopes have a chance of shooting off and electron, I think Bismuth 209 or something like that is the longest of any isotope. Some faster than others, the elephant's foot - Chernobyl is a great example of radioactivity that is breaking down at a fast rate, original photographer died a week after being exposed to it, now you can spend an hour in a suit in front of it. Nothing is eternal and nothing lasts forever.
@@advaits6427 Before the battery gets half-discharged it must get half of half discharged, and before it gets half of half discharged, if must get half of half of half discharged, etc. It lasts forever.
Fascinating! I wonder why this couldn't be scaled up to power larger items? I also have to wonder if the research and development of cheap, safe energy production and storage isn't restricted by the desire for "planned obsolescence". Companies aren't interested in spending the time and money to develop a power source you only need to by once a century. Looks like it's up to you Robert! 😜
well this is going very fast for what this is. 2018 till 2024 is only 6 years and we defenitly need to know excatly how pure and perfect we can make these batteries as their first use case is powering bios batteries keeping system times things like that
they can be scaled up but you wouldn't be able to power anything like a vehicle with them, they would be best suited for stuff like smart phones, smart watches and small electronic gadgets that don't draw massive amounts of power. i've commented on another tech channel trash talking the nano diamond battery when it first came out as they were poking fun at how little energy it produced... my response was that you'd stack them to get the voltage you need and that's your battery for the device for what would quite literally be a few lifetimes, you could take the battery out of a dead device and put it into a new one and reduce tech waste a significant amount.
A powerful enough version would likely need a low half life isotope, in order to emmit a ton of particles in a short enough time to make a meaningful current without weighing a ton itself, anyway, refueling yoir car each 5 years beats once a week by a factor of 54. Beta and Alpha particles are safe, an aluminium foil can block them with ease, and if you can't afford a piece of your hat, you can always stay atarround 2 meters of the source to be safe.
Awesome video!...made my day. Can we increase the voltage out put in the two ways? 1) make a hole above the N and not cut off the top when aiming the Nuclear material at it, which would allow the alpha particles to be concentrated and the ones who are not going straight down would bounce around in the can and eventually hit the the N. 2) Would sorting the two Ns together increase the voltage. Also this may make a great mil volt reference standard.
I recall a story awhile back of a young teenage hobbyist in the USA who made his own mini nuclear power generator by using a bunch of that material from those smoke detectors.
I'm sure betavoltaics and other nuclear batteries hit the news every year now. Usually it's some article claiming you'll be able to power an EV with a stack of them, then followed by some "Busted" video showing how this isn't even remotely feasible. I think my favourite was Nurdrage taking the low-efficiency approach of sandwiching a bunch of tritium-filled phosphor-coated vials between two solar panels and getting a few microwatts. Would be kind of fun to see how many americium pellets and transistor cores it would take to do something simple like drive a wristwatch or a calculator though, if it can be done without significant risk. Even alpha and beta emitters can be dangerous if you swallow or breath them!
If you are willing to carry a phone that is the size of an early 1990s handphone,,, you definately can make a nuclear powered handphone. Phone, exercise weight and self defense instrument all in one.
@@nickl5658Honestly that doesn’t bother me at all the size, as long as it never dies I could also just use the battery as a battery charger as well which would be amazing.
This is amazing. Thank you for showing this. I've taken apart a couple metal detectors to give my new Geiger counter. (Wearing proper ppe of course) and not sure what else I could do with the buttons other than leave them in a jar in my garage for the next 400 some years but this solves my issue I made for myself!
And to think I had hundreds of 2N3055s once, another opportunity missed. How would a darlington transistor fare with the two base junctions effectively in series? Would a plastic bodied transistor be a better choice?
Wow, this will actualy change the things and move the technology to next level. I am really exited to see the 1W version. Even slowly filling supercaps would solve the high power peak issues.
If this gets cheap enough for consumer products, one of the first applications I thought of was for smoke detectors, some of which use a radioactivity source (an isotope of Americium, I believe) to detect smoke. Perhaps they could use the same radiation source to power AND operate a smoke detector?
Add a supercapacitor, charged by the source. By the time the alarm is needed, it will have stored enough charge to provide the power required for the alarm.
@@tcmtech7515 Sure, at the moment, but if you consider that a computer as powerful as your phone is would cost $100,000,000 thirty years ago (and draw tens of kilowatts to operate) it’s a fairly safe assumption that not too long from now this nascent technology will become affordable.
I love it! This is the most expensive power source in the world at almost $100 000 per W. Compared to solar, which is currently at $0.1 per W, the price would need to drop a million times. The first solar panels cost about $115.3 per watt, the price dropped 1000 times in fifty years.
The current Betavolt does 100 MICRO watts, not milliwatts as you stated in the beginning of the video.(yes, you stated it correctly later but just in case someone doesn't watch that far maybe they'll read this and know the truth)
sounds about right, but they're still talking about prototypes (edit: video says they are in pilot production, so i guess they are already making them) and they say they are stackable in layers and very thin so they could probably make a stack of 1000 and wire them in parallel or series, if they want to increase the current or voltage
Philip Brody already found this out. By having a lead-lantheum matrix, encasing a radioactive element (Which we'll use radium as an example), you'll be able to effectively cause an ionization event giving a DC output. Depending on the purity of the lead-lantheum, it can go up to ~1500 volts/cm with a 30 nano-amp flow. See Patent US 4,041,465
I saw the product announcement yesterday and hoped you'd review your battery. Thanks. Wouldn't ɑ/ɓ radiant voltaic battery continue to produce electricity after its half-life, but at a reduced rate? Only half of the mass would have decayed into its new stable element -- the rest would still be active? WOuld love to see this or a karpen cell as a charger for the fractal capacitor array. One cell per capacitor.
Yust look at the voyager probes. They passive energy source decayed more and more over the decades and now only a few of the instruments have enough power to stay online. Theoretically it's never out of energy but practically it all depends on the half life.
Very Cool. For all those that want a long term battery, I would like to point out there are 50 year batteries on you tube. If size is not an issue, basically, just take large chunks of any two metals, aluminum and copper for example and stick them in a bucket with water and salt, and you have a battery. If you connect several cells, you will get higher voltage. In order to make it last long, like 50 years, one uses large chunks of copper -copper piping- and large chunks of aluminum tube or pipe. I built my own battery that powered an LED 24 hours a day with some aluminum foil and copper wire. After three months, the foil was starting to dissolve, and I had my fun.
I was watching your backlog of members videos on hemp batteries, and it got me thinking about all of the ashes I've accumulated from my wood burning fire. I know you can add water to ashes to make lye.. since I have such an excess of ashes to be used, is there any way I can use them in making a battery? Maybe as the anode? I love your videos and would love to hear your ideas on this idea, even if it's just a simple "no, that wouldn't be worth it."
@@LittleXtracaustic soda you get hydrogen, so many fun times had as a kid .. hydrogen balloons , and a wick.. well you can take it from here....🤔😂😎🇦🇺👌
@@LittleXtra I figured it could be put to use somehow. What anode and cathode would you recommend to use for a battery using a Sodium Hydroxide electrolyte?
I got very excited when I saw the title but after watching the full video I realised is a edit of the old that for some reason got deleted in the last 24h, which made this video feal a bit like clickbait. Also by using the same footage you did not address the one important question from the comments. Can the mv reading you got from the apparatus be because of light contamination ( as the test is not done under complete absence of light) There are some research papers on building alpha voltaic cells online, the most promising one I could find is using Zirconium anode, Iridium cathode and is using liquid Galium as conversion medium. . The open-circuit potential of the cell is expected to be 1.62 V and is expected to deliver a current between 7 and 12 ma. (the full name is :Alpha-Voltaic Sources Using Liquid Ga as Conversion Medium)
This kind of voltage/ current would be useful for offsetting parasitic drains on circuits where there is always something that slowly depletes a battery even when you are not using it
Nuclear batteries have been contracted to the US military from an Oregon manufacturing firm long ago. They were used in those sky beam search light units.
Very interesting. It didn't occur to me until now that alpha radiations, being near the UV wavelengths, could cause photovoltaic cells or semiconductors to generate a voltage. I guess the same is true of x-rays too since they're the next step up from UV. Not that I know of any material which puts out x-rays while decaying. With the Americium, it looks like quite a few pieces would be needed in series to get 3.3V. I suppose each pellet could produce twice the output if it's extracted from its casing, to expose the underside and to sandwich ir between two transistors. My smoke detector with Americium is definitely putting out Beta radiations too as I get an increase of over 500 CPMs when pointing my Geiger counter towards the plastic case and Alpha radiation wouldn't make it through the plastic and thin metal cage surrounding the ionization chamber. I don't think it puts out Gamma though because the readings drop when I insert a 1mm steel plate between the smoke detector and the Geiger counter. It's still bad though if it can ionize floating dust which might end up being inhaled.
That could be a concern , but I remember another vid where a person went into a mine and the air was very radioactive from all the uranium decay. I could be misrepresenting but the main issue was the charged particle radiation attracting and sticking to the clothing which came out pretty radioactive, however it decayed quickly and putting the clothes into a bag away from the camp overnight dropped the radiation to background levels, perhaps simply an airtight unit would suffice.
@@terrysobkowich2084 If you meant airtight batteries then yes, I'd expect them to be both airtight and shielded sufficiently to block beta radiations, as someone will inevitably end up carrying one in their pants pocket. If you meant airtight smoke detector, that wouldn't work of course as the smoke needs to get in 🙂
I honestly think we could power our world off of small atomic reactors. There is no need for oil. But imagine something that lasts ages and doesn't break - small profits.
@@adamstewarton no sure thats true, im thinking of things like phones and laptops though, most people tend to replace them long before the battery goes wonky. it'd be a gamechanger for cars though i suppose, but they could just do what the tech industry and many car manufacturers already do and engineer them to fail after so many years, as well as make them impossible to maintain without ten million specialized tools and put in software to make it harder to get off brand spare parts etc etc. There are always shady ways to maintain profits lol. I get your point though, its definitely an incentive for companies to want these things away from the market.
5:07 also the plutonium battery in “The Martian” that kept Matt Damon toasty warm until he crossed Mars. Great Content Roberto! You never cease to amaze and astound. Cheers!
Have you lost your mind the first thing you want to do when you grow up is stop being bothered by the stupid phone brainwashed and programmed by a plastic glowing box
good question, the answer is that we are going to dispose of the radioactive material within the devices long before the half life of the radioactive material, just as many people do now the radioactive material will end up in the landfills. the good news is that many more people will get cancer from the exposure, the medical industry will do well.
Because it is not powering the actual alarm, only triggering the alarm. You need a battery to power the alarm. And the failure point of these alarms is not the radiation source, it is the other parts (random electronics randomly end up going, or dust builds up inside of the radiation chamber, etc). And they are good for longer than 10 years on average, that is just when they recommend getting a new one.
@germanlopez9448 your comment isn't even coherent yet seems to imply conspiracy to poison everyone. I disagree, also the americium is perfectly safe in its containment capsule as americium produces primarily alpha particles which are easily stopped with the outer (dead) layer of skin or a piece of paper. So much work has gone into making it safe that no, smoke detector alpha emitters are not going to be a risk unless you intentionally break open the capsule and then decide to swallow the americium piece inside. Don't say "the answer is" unless you are willing to back up a claim with documentation and evidence.
While it would work in principle, it would only work placed right next to a hot source. The threshold of background radiation needed to set this off would be immediately dangerous to a human being(I presume), but if that’s all that your goal is, I don’t see why you couldn’t give it a shot!
Do they last longer or shorter if they are in use? Like you could hook up hundreds of them and power your house for 50 years? Or will they wear out too fast if you don't give them recharge time
The reason they produce such a low voltage is because the amount of power they produce is limited by the rate of decay of the radioactive source. No matter how much of the the energy the decay puts out, the rate of decay doesn't change. There's a finite amount of energy that can eventually be extracted, but no way to increase the rate at which the matter decays. Well, unless you're talking about fissile material reaching criticality, but then you're not dealing with a battery, but a reactor...or a bomb.
*In theory,* a 1-watt continuous output battery that can run for 50 years would have a~438,000 amp-hours capacity. At 3 volts that's a ~ 1.3 MWH battery! 😋 However, in realistic terms, in order to use a set of such batteries to do anything large like power an average home or electric vehicle. Each application would need many thousands of them. Likely about 10,000 of them to power an average house like mine and about 70,000 to 100,000 to make an EV that could be driven like a normal vehicle. 🤡 Oh ya, and current pricing estimates put them at about $ $4500 - 5000 US dollars each if you buy in bulk! 😂
You don't use these batteries to run things directly, you use them to charge super capacitors which will charge traditional larger capacity batteries continuously for 50-100 years.
Calculating watts per dollar might be more accurate. I am very bad at electricity math, so giving that the price of electricity is 16 cents per kwh; In theory, can this method produce cheaper electricity?
Got a new subscriber! Awesome video! Very exciting news with these new batteries! Love the content and explanation! You remind me of what the “nuclear boys scout” must be all grown up haha
If this really works we could get consumers to pay to slowly move all the nuclear waste from it's expensive storage facilities into domestic landfill, via gadgets... That'd be great. :)
i am sure this is the intended outcome the academic community was aiming to achieve. what genius is lurking withing the halls of academic institutions.
I'm not getting too excited Robert. I saw a vid on this yesterday and the one thing we all want is a battery to power our house for say ten thousand bucks (or at least lower our energy bill), but this isn't it and isn't going to be apparently. Perhaps I was expecting a panacea, but I wonder what it'll be used for or if it will take 10 or 20 years to find the perfect application.
for sure but you can step it up and use it to charge other things. you could even run a small motor with a differential to do .. something. you can also hook a couple up in series for more power
Just think of IoT devices that'll last a lifetime (sensors, LoRa, etc) Plus we live on an electric generator (Earth), we just need to "tap" into it (not for silly waste of energy as many westerners/ easterners do right now, but still)
Below par editing or not, I love geeking out and listening to this guy, I wish he was my science teacher 30 odd years ago, I’d have probably taken a completely different path 😂❤
not at all, because you need 25x the same radiation source and thats I guess more problematic, because you have 25x higher risk that something bad might happen. Maybe Im wrong.
Radioactive materials should not be made easily publicly available. Our society as it stands in 2024 is not conducive to peaceful responsible and non-destructive use of radioactive products.