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Maker Pro

long lasting battery

Nice.http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-betavoltaic-10.1...

I wonder how they handle the step-down from 100 kV to, oh, 18 V...

Michael


Oh never mind, a bit of Googling shows that one might be a scam...

Try this one:
http://medgadget.com/archives/2005/05/new_nuclear_bat.html

I was trying to get more information on Technetium-99 as a chemical
process catalyst (it's a really good catalyst!), and in my web
wanderings, I came across betavoltaic batteries...

Michael
 
Dunno. Tritium half life is 12 years and ~19keV per beta particle so
with the right ideal converter you might hope to get 1000 electrons at
18v per disintegration. But to get laptop powering currents out of it
would require a quite alarming level of radioactivity inside the
battery. It is a hoax see for example:

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2007/10/02/30year-betavoltaic-b.html
(and more than a year old too)

Apart from the radioactive source powering the thing it is non-nuclear.
Useful in some remote low current applications like spacecraft maybe.

I suppose in the news silly season we have to expect this sort of thing.

Tritiated plastic emergency lights and fishing floats are real enough
and use the same basic technology to power them.


Nice, thanks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-powered_lighting

Radioactive fishing floats... where to buy...?

Regards,
Martin Brown


Michael
 
E

Eeyore

Jan 1, 1970
0
From here:
http://peswiki.com/index.php/BetaVoltaics

Admittedly, this may not be the most reliable source of information,
but several years ago when I went looking for betavoltaic batteries I
realized they were easily over 10 kV - a bit more than I wanted...

You do realise Peswiki also promotes over-unity devices ?

Graham
 
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