Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy

Reader zymano points to this news.com artcle on innovations in portable power sources. Would you feel comfortable with a radioactive power source inside your laptop or cellphone?

why not?

[C_nemo]

i feel comfortable with a nuclear detector in my fire alarm

New regulations

[bsharitt]

If these came into wide use, the US govenment would probably impose harsh export restrictions, since there is a small amout of radiation.

Export?

[dnoyeb]

Bah, then the US would be like Japan, radiation everywhere. IT would be impossible to locate any smuggled explosive devices.

Nuclear powered cellphone

[Christianfreak]

The "Cellphones cause cancer" groups would defenatly have fits over that. But the Government might find it useful. I can just see Bush on TV, "If we don't stop the evil terrorists(tm), they could turn your cellphone into a nuclear holocost. Think of the children!"

In all seriousness if the manufacturers can guarentee that its safe I'm all for portable power that lasts 200 years.

What do do with them...

[stubear]

...when they eventually do wear out? Eventually these batteries will have to be replaced and if they use radioactive material in their core then they could pose a very hazardous problem to the environment. Yucca is going to look like a playground compared to the problem with these batteries being disposed of when laptops are thrown out and replaced without transferring batteries for whatever reason.

Re:Radio Waves and Radioactivity

[Anonymous Coward]

The difference seems to be the emotional baggage that follows anything "nukyoolar".

And the hundred years worth of experimental evidence showing the extreme dangers of nuclear power sources, compared to the small, inconclusive quantity of experiments that have been done on cellphone radiation. Don't forget about that!

Re:Nuclear powered cellphone

[Chris Burke]

In all seriousness if the manufacturers can guarentee that its safe I'm all for portable power that lasts 200 years.

Screw that. I want the manufacturer, a government agency, and a dozen or so independent non-profit organizations to guarantee it is safe. I mean, we saw well letting the company tell us what is safe worked with tobacco. ;)

But do that, and yeah, I'd use one. :)

Re:What do do with them...

[ivan256]

Do you actually do any reasearch or have any knowledge to base thing you say on, or do you just talk out your ass all the time. It's people like you that are going to wreck it for the rest of us and make it so that new battery technology won't ever be availble.

The worst part is you're not even harmless. The lack of progress in the battery field due to people being afraid of flamable liquid, and anything that contains the word 'nuclear' or 'radiation' means we're going to keep dumping cadmium and mercury into landfills. It's kneejerk comments like yours based on false information that cause these new technologies to be dismissed without consideration.

For the sake of the rest of us, if you don't know what you're talking about, don't talk.

Re:What do do with them...

[Tyler Eaves]

Actually, no. Did you read the article?

1. Uses beta particles. Non dangerous[1]
2. Think abou it: All energy used (battery dead) means NO radation remaining. It'd be no worse, than say, lead.

[1] Okay, iif you breath in a lot it my casue problems, but it's not going to make your kids have green skin.

indistinguishable from magic

[technoCon]

one problem with advanced technology is that it is often indistinguishable from magic as every SF reader knows. The downside is how people respond to magic with awe and fear.

ugh, radiation bad, me no like radiation. it heap bad juju; it give Grog cancer.

Meanwhile, Grog likes woodstove and fireplace. Note that the pleasure of such heat sources is infrared radiation. There is a lot of difference between ionizing and non-ionizing radiation.

the article says these devices would use BETA radiation. Whazzat? fast electrons. If they won't penetrate skin, they won't cause mutations, they won't give Grog cancer.

Slashdotters SHOULD know better. If we're half as smart as we think ourselves, then we ought to be able to distinguish between beta radiation, infrared radiation, etc. and also the safe energy levels of each type of radiation

Folks, we have a leadership role here. If we know the techie background to say whether something is safe or not, we ought to apply it to this kind of stuff.

At the airport

[chris_mahan]

I wouldn't have a problem with it, but I can imagine my conversation at LAX:

Me:
"My laptop is nuclear-powered, so don't drop it please."

Federal Screener (recoils in horror):
"You've got a NUKE in here?"

Armed national guardsmen (running hard toward me):
"Get Down Get Down NOWWW!!!"

Some other dudes in uniform (on the radio):
"We've got a 99-56!!! Notify STARTAC!!!"

Me: (writhing on the floor my hands pinned back)
"It's a Dell, Dude!"

About time...

[kakos]

Nuclear piles have been used for power sources in deep space probes for quite a while. All of the Voyagers have used this type of power source. I'm not sure the exact workings of the mechanism that is talked about in the article, but it probably just converts the heat from nuclear decay to energy. No fision is involved, as there certainly wouldn't be enough mass to reach critical mass. The radiation is also beta radiation, so there isn't much risk of it damaging you.

Nuclear waste

[InodoroPereyra]

So, how exactly would you get rid of the battery after use ?. Moreover, even if there is a proper way to dispose them, how can you make sure that people will be responsible enough not just trash them in a regular trash can ?. It sounds horribly risky !

Re:What do do with them...

[gorilla]

No, when the battery doesn't have enough radiation output to still function as a battery it will still have remaining undecayed isotopes. Exactly how much depends on what fraction of the original radiation output is required to produce enough energy. It should therefore be treated as hazardous material and disposed of in an appropriate way.

Nice headline

[digidave]

quote: Run Your Laptop On Nuclear Energy

Does this include when I plug it into my wall outlet, the electricity from which is generated by a nuclear station?

Perhaps something along the lines of "Portable Nuclear Generator for your Laptop" would have been more appropriate. The next article could be "Portable Birth Control for Men", with the same link.

You mean like regular batteries?

[rebelcool]

Which contain nasty, highly toxic chemicals which don't have half-lives, such as cadimum and lead?

I think its okay to dispose of them like those others. Probably safer to drop them in the trash than regular nicads..

Nuclear? It'll never happen.

[AB3A]

Obligatory joke: "My BRAIN? Why, that's my second favorite organ!"

People are scared of what RF radiation could do to them. That's RF, as in Radio Frequency. Telling them that it's non-ionizing is pointless. They only understand "radiation" and they don't want to understand any more.

Now someone is proposing a nuclear battery. I wish them luck. With so many people believing that putting a cell phone next to their heads is dangerous today, wait until interest groups discover that the battery they're using is a nuclear device.

Once again, we have what is probably a technically elegant solution being offered to a seriously ignorant public. Expect the risks to be blown entirely out of proportion while "harmless" chemical batteries are added by the ton to landfills every day. Thank-you Jeremy Rifkin. Thank-you Paul Brodur. Thank-you Nancy Wertheimer. Thank-you Rachel Carson. You and your successors have taught a generation of idiots all about fear-mongering. Now we can all pay for the wages of stupidity and political grandstanding.

Meanwhile, because of our societal phobias we'll continue making a mess of our environment.

(Rifkin: Fearmonger on Genetically modified foods. Brodur: wrote the "Zapping of America", a treatise on RF phobias and science by innunendo. Nancy Werthiemer: Co-author of a seriously flawed paper on powerline exposure and lukemia. Rachael Carson: "Silent Spring"; although her cause was reasonable, her facts were not.)

Misleading description

[mysidia]

The word Nuclear seems to have become a misnomer for anything at all involving atoms. The article you have linked to is not talking about nuclear power at all: power harvested from the nucleus is a distinct thing.

What they are doing is not making a battery out of a nuclear reactor or nuclear power source -- no fission or fusion is being used, therefore, they are not harvesting the power derived from splitting or merging nucleii, so the term nuclear would seem incorrect.

They are simply using some substance that has a certain radioactivity: it has the tendency to decay and release some energy, but other than that, is relatively harmless unless you ingest it or something (You would at least get very sick if you opened and ingested the contents of any battery, however!).

Read from the article:

Lal said that he chose only isotopes that emit beta particles because their energy is small enough not to penetrate skin. Radioactive material can emit beta particles, alpha particles or gamma rays--the last two of which are carry enough energy to be hazardous, said Lal.

You won't be glowing or sterilized if you put one of these in your lap, the danger is about as great as using an ordinary battery -- it could pop a leak and fill your lap with mercury, hydrochloric acid, or something, which would be just as bad.

Moreover, if simple radioactive decay is called nuclear because it deals with atoms, then it could perhaps be argued, that all batteries (and indeed, all power sources) are nuclear, because all electrical power sources eventually depend on generating electricity: exciting electrons, and electrons effect atoms.

It is not apparent that there is any danger with this battery that is new, that is, you can't tell by the fact that a battery uses this particular method of power generation that it would be more dangerous than any other kind of battery.

Already happening in other devices...

[Hyped01]

Anyone have any idea how long radioactive isotopes have been used in smoke detectors and similar in home devices? Much less how much radiation still leaks from "low emmision" TV's and monitors - or projection TVs?

Check it out, then tell me if this is a big deal. (it's not.)

Rob

Re:Not a nuclear engineer...

[gorilla]

Unfortunatly, there are idiots [bbc.co.uk] around who do [buffalo.edu] cut corners. It's essential that whenever a dangerous substance is handled, it's almost impossible for it to be mishandled. Not just idiot proof, because idiots are so ingeious. This of course applies regardless if the dangerous substance is nuclear, or "just" chemically dangerous.

Re:Another Beta Test

[DroppedPacket]

Here is a stunning prediction. Somebody will come up with a good name for the technology and everybody will want to use it.

Just for grins, count the number of "death rays" you have around you right now. Perhaps you know them as "lasers". Remember to check you local CD and DVD players.

Re:Nuke batteries

[Raiford]

Well you have got a little bit of Americium in your house or place of work right now. Every smoke detector has some of the radioisotope in it. I would not be too worried about my laptop or cell phone containing the stuff. I would be more concerned about how all of the nuke powered electronics would be disposed of when they become obsolete. I guess the power sources could be recycled.

Re:Nuclear waste

[adolphism]

As opposed to the current crop of heavy metal batteries? It doesn't take much mercury to seriously contanminate a water source or area of ground. I see this as a similar and therefore acceptable risk for the kind of long-term power they're talking about.

Re:Misleading description -- WRONG!

[mysidia]

Using a nuclear process is different from harvesting the nuclear power. There is a major difference between the amount of energy released from decay and the release from fusion, for example, which popular conception assumes the same.

To be overtly vague and to misuse popular misconception is a way to mislead people

Re:More importantly....

[MECC]

The radioactive battery in a pacemaker has enough plutonium to poison 50,000 people. They are put through rigorous crash testing. Still, if you're faced with dying or having a nuclear power source implanted in your chest, you might opt for safe, clean, nuclear power....

About time

[zerus]

It's about time that this came into play for battery powered devices. The older NASA satellites all ran on "nuclear" power, actually most ran on the beta and alpha particles because the long halflives and powerful decays allowed the satellites to last for 30+ years, such as the probe that left our solar system 2-3 years ago, and the satellites around jupiter right now. Currently, shielding techniques for gamma rays are too heavy (lead or other heavy atoms) and they are too dangerous in low shielding around the battery because gamma rays have the ability to transmit enough energy into DNA and perform substitutions and translations that can make your children be born with a tail or something. Beta particles have an distance of something to the negative 7 meters, which is pretty small and easy to shield. That and beta particle is a form of a charged radiation so that you can effectively shield the source by providing enough of a voltage or ground so that the particles won't harm you. Alpha particles, in my opinion, are the safest forms of radiation (unless you eat it, I'll explain in a second). Alpha particles are simply helium particles that have a varying momentum and lack electrons, meaning that it's a relatively large, charged particle that can be deflected. So they too can be effecively shielded against. If you eat it, the lining in your system isn't thick enough to stop the particles, so the +2 charges can enter your system and kill off cells very easily, and rapidly. In my opinion, radiation powered batteries are great if engineered right. In case you're wondering of my validity, I am a nuclear engineer.

Re:Beta particles...

[theycallmeB]

You might be thinking of alpha particles (helium nucleus), which cannot penetrate very far due to their large mass and low velocity. Beta particles are very energetic electrons and require a few centimeters of something like polyethylene to block fully. Gamma particles, which are high-energy X-rays, require several feet of lead, steel and concrete to stop.

Now my question is how much radioactive material will these things actually contain? I seem to recall that the largest samples that could be sold to the public (for use in one of my high-school labs) were all well less than a gram for even the lowest level isotopes.