Scientist Turn Radioactive Waste Into Batteries Using Diamonds.

[ContraBardus]

This is interesting...

 

http://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-are-turning-nuclear-waste-into-super-efficient-diamond-batteries

 

Could have a lot of interesting applications, and could make some forms of nuclear power more viable as there's something we can actually do with the byproduct..

 

Still too early to get anywhere near excited over it, but it could turn out to be a pretty important discovery for a lot of reasons.

[Fweethawt]

This is some Star Trek shit right here.

[LifeCycle]

Any step forward in battery tech is huge for so many industries. I use LiPo's a ton in the RC hobby and better batteries would make it even better. Hell, it wasn't until the advent of LiPos that RC started moving away from nitro and to battery power. This was all in the past 8 to 10 years.

[ContraBardus]

Any step forward in battery tech is huge for so many industries. I use LiPo's a ton in the RC hobby and better batteries would make it even better. Hell, it wasn't until the advent of LiPos that RC started moving away from nitro and to battery power. This was all in the past 8 to 10 years.

 

I dunno that these would be safe for general consumer use. Not dangerous on the level of waste, but too much direct contact with, or even proximity to, something like this might be a bit of a problem for a person.

 

It doesn't really get into that, but I get the impression this isn't going to be the sort of batteries you switch out like AAs and isn't really intended to replace that sort of thing.

 

They don't produce a lot of power, and their biggest advantage seems to be how long they last. So for long term low power consumption type applications where the end user doesn't ever need to mess with them, these are a huge leap forward in technology if they work as suggested.

 

If we can get the yield up and adequately shield them, they might be useful for specific consumer applications. Maybe running military vehicles and other larger industrial machines with proper shielding, but I don't get the impression this will necessarily be for anything on a consumer level. This might not be something you want to carry around in your pocket running your phone or even have in your home. It could really end up being a game changer even without that, possibly being used to generate power for use in spacecraft, or even to supplement large scale power generation.

 

I'm not sure about that, and they may turn out to be perfectly safe for running things like small electronic devices and consumer level home appliances. Still, I wouldn't go so far as to assume this will safely run your phone for a hundred years or that it will be a good idea to run an RC car or consumer level drone with something like this either.

 

Even if it is safe to handle inside the casing, diamond isn't invulnerable. It can crack and break, even if not easily so. Even small amounts of the shit inside could be deadly. I wouldn't hold my breath on this being available to consumers in the near future, if ever. Even if only because it's a bad idea to just hand out nuclear material to just anyone. It's unlikely that anyone could make a nuke from it, but it wouldn't be that hard to collect a bunch of these and make a pretty nasty dirty bomb by cracking them open to get at the material inside if this was consumer level tech.