Nuclear waste made into batteries.

[jaslion]

On 8/20/2022 at 4:12 AM, Octobernight said:

Interesting so many people seem to have concerns about safety.  Based on what I have read the risk seem minimal.  My scepisizem is of the end products performance mainly run time.  If I understood the article correctly this technology is low current and will charge up a capacitor so that it can discharge a useful amount of current.  I think the idea of never having to plug in my cellphone to charge it is pretty cool.  But if it can't provide a useful run time of hours of screen on time so you can watch movies on a plane for example the technology won't take off.  I think if the end product fails to provide useful run times before needing to be set aside to allow the capacitor to recharge that the product will die. 

Explaining it like that it would possibly be interesting as a battery bank. Possibly not for phones or consumers but other tasks

[rikitikitavi]

On 8/21/2022 at 11:09 AM, BlueChinchillaEatingDorito said:

The idea of people throwing away nuclear waste in the form of batteries into the trash... Yea doesn't sound like a good plan. People can't even be trusted to not throw AAs into the garbage. 

Well most buildings I lived in would get constant reminders from managers: 'Please CAREFULLY sort your recycling', 'please STOP throwing x into y bin' etc... given that I lived in the clean neighbourhoods of one of the cleanest cities of NA... with periodical dog shit just left along the side walk... So yes, trust general public that has a considerable ratio of 'don't give a damn' pricks.

[mr moose]

On 8/22/2022 at 4:56 PM, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

 I remind you a case where a child played with radioactive powder, she had to be buried in a lead coffin. E.g. A child could ingest polverized remains of a NDB nuclear decay battery.

 

 

 

Kids die from eating and playing with everyday household things like batteries and cleaners all the fucking time, sure it's sad (for me devastating) but the issue is not the batteries its the fucking numpty parents who don't keep dangerous things away from kids.      If your reasoning for not having nuclear batteries is that kids might die from eating them then you should also ask for all button cell batteries to be banned too.   

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

1 hour ago, mr moose said:

 

Kids die from eating and playing with everyday household things like batteries and cleaners all the fucking time, sure it's sad (for me devastating) but the issue is not the batteries its the fucking numpty parents who don't keep dangerous things away from kids.      If your reasoning for not having nuclear batteries is that kids might die from eating them then you should also ask for all button cell batteries to be banned too.   

Radioactive substances are a lot more lethal than lots of other substances. You need Kgs of water to die, but a few milligrams of injested C14 might do it.

I rekon putting such substance, in enough amount to get 100mW of power in tens of millions of items that break all the time is a great way to increase accidental exposure to radiation worldwide. And with a decay time of 28000 years, I speculate the expected number of death per unit mass over the lifetime of the nuclear battery compared to a Li-Ion battery is not favourable at all. How unfavourable, I don't know, but "trust us no battery will spill C14 for 28000 years" doesn't sound like an acceptable answer to me.

I mean... What if you grow a crop over a landfill with nuclear batteries 100 years from now? Plants can't tell the difference between C12 and C14. Sounds like a great way to poison future generations to me. What if people unload a cargo of spent nuclear batteries in a lake? We have very strict regulation where we can put spent nuclear material today, because it takes lots less of it to do damage compared to other industrial byproducts. UK just spilled tons of sewage. Bad. Spilling tons of nuclear batteries? Oh Boy.

Regulations are proportional to how little of the stuff is needed to do harm and how long the stuff persists in the environment. You need very little C14 to do harm and it will last a very long time. Many chemicals are very lethal but degrade with UV radiation or just exposure to oxygen over time, some chemical weapons are designed to be extremely lethal, but decay into harmless substances fast.

Cobalt 60 is a nice radioactive substance beacuse it decays fast enough to not be a problem forever, but a long enough decay time to be useable in industry. Guess what, those machine are forgotten and spill, despite being expensive, few in numbers and with tight regulations. I would require an ungodly amount of testing to certify a 28000 year long decay nuclear battery is fit for commercial household use.

[HenrySalayne]

On 8/19/2022 at 9:08 PM, RollinLower said:

and a 28000 year life expectancy? yeah that is a massive benefit!

The battery won't live that long, but it will have the potential to kill you for the next 28,000 years. 

 

In all seriousness: yes, C14 is pretty harmless as long as it doesn't enter the human body. So "totally safe" is not true but quite close to reality. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14)

But the energy they can take out of an radioactive isotope with a half-life of 5,700 years is minuscule. Powering a car? Nope, not going to happen. For remote sensors and other low-power but long-life applications, this might be really nice. Anything else - not so much.And it's not even a new invention, they are just using a different isotope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device

 

 

[HenrySalayne]

4 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

What if you grow a crop over a landfill with nuclear batteries 100 years from now? Plants can't tell the difference between C12 and C14.

The diamond configuration of carbon is basically inert. The diamond needs to be thermally decomposed to be any real risk; if they are turned into CO2, risk is probably minimal, because the gas will disperse. Side note: we currently experience a C14 drought because the atmosphere is over-saturated with fossile and already decayed CO2. Today's flora and fauna cannot be carbon dated in the future. 

[mr moose]

22 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Radioactive substances are a lot more lethal than lots of other substances. You need Kgs of water to die, but a few milligrams of injested C14 might do it.

 

Maybe, but you sidestepped the argument, if a battery is lethal when eaten, then your argument is that that battery should be banned.   Which includes all lithium button cells and most alkaline batteries.

 

22 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

I rekon putting such substance, in enough amount to get 100mW of power in tens of millions of items that break all the time is a great way to increase accidental exposure to radiation worldwide. And with a decay time of 28000 years, I speculate the expected number of death per unit mass over the lifetime of the nuclear battery compared to a Li-Ion battery is not favourable at all. How unfavourable, I don't know, but "trust us no battery will spill C14 for 28000 years" doesn't sound like an acceptable answer to me.

I mean... What if you grow a crop over a landfill with nuclear batteries 100 years from now? Plants can't tell the difference between C12 and C14. Sounds like a great way to poison future generations to me. What if people unload a cargo of spent nuclear batteries in a lake? We have very strict regulation where we can put spent nuclear material today, because it takes lots less of it to do damage compared to other industrial byproducts. UK just spilled tons of sewage. Bad. Spilling tons of nuclear batteries? Oh Boy.

Regulations are proportional to how little of the stuff is needed to do harm and how long the stuff persists in the environment. You need very little C14 to do harm and it will last a very long time. Many chemicals are very lethal but degrade with UV radiation or just exposure to oxygen over time, some chemical weapons are designed to be extremely lethal, but decay into harmless substances fast.

Cobalt 60 is a nice radioactive substance beacuse it decays fast enough to not be a problem forever, but a long enough decay time to be useable in industry. Guess what, those machine are forgotten and spill, despite being expensive, few in numbers and with tight regulations. I would require an ungodly amount of testing to certify a 28000 year long decay nuclear battery is fit for commercial household use.

 

Your argument seems to be centred on a lot of what if's, like handling radioactive material will be done by the same unskilled workers that handle sewerage or that future development will not improve their efficiency.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Maybe, but you sidestepped the argument, if a battery is lethal when eaten, then your argument is that that battery should be banned. 

Safety, performance and convenience are part of a trade off:

• Exceed on the side of safety, and users will either not use the item or bypass the safety.
• Exceed on the side of performance, and users will get harm
• Exceed on the side of convenience, and pefrormance will suffer

I also believe priority is to be placed in making the item useable. Safeties should never exceed the point where one can't work anymore. I'm pro nuclear energy for this reason. Our civilization NEED energy. The perfect power source doesn't exist. Nuclear is extremely competitive in lots of metrics compared to other energy sources.

 

Likewise, our civilization NEED cost effective high density batteries. We need the safest cheapest way to get them. For the sake of this conversation, I compare lithium ion and carbon 14.

• Lithium is a fire hazard. Sometimes a battery will catch fire. If you try to eat a battery, you'll burn your lungs, then get intoxitcated.
• Carbon 14 is an extremely long lived beta decay radiation hazard. It's usually harmless, unless you ingest it. Cells can't tell the difference between C14 and C12, it can be used to build proteins or DNA. Then the C14 decays and bombards the cell from the inside.

I really don't want to do a deep research on the Toxic and Lethal doses of lithium and carbon 14, radioactive materials also have a stochastic long tail of effects. That's on the side of the manufacturers and regulators to work out. We do use nuclear reactors after all. For the sake of this conversation I'll assume it takes a lot less mass in C14 to do harm compared to mass in lithium both for fire/ingestion, and that C14 is harmless if not ingested.

 

The next consideration is permanence, this is the deal breaker:

• With Li-Ion batteries, once the accident happens, that's it. Lithium ash is inhert. You can ingest the ash, but the event is very noticable, so a clean up is noticable, cheap and effective. The ashes themselves do not require special handling.
• C14 is an ongoing hazard. You can only tell the hazard is present with a gaiger sensitive to beta decay. 28000 years is quoted because you need to wait lots of halving times before the radiation is diluted enough. Even thermally vented as radioactive CO2, it's still soluble in water, and it can rain down, then Carbon is metabolized, it enters the food chain.

The two most dangerous nuclear byproduct in nuclear disasters are Iodine 131 because it gets metabolized by the thyroid (it's dangerous for two weeks) and Cesium 137 because it's soluble in water and get treated like a salt by living creatures. Having both solubility and metabolization is the big NO-NO.

This wall of text I hope explains why my stance on having C14 based nuclear decay batteries as household item is that the onus is on the manufacturers to prove to regulators that their battery WILL contain C14 for 28000 years with no foreseen spillage pathways.

Because if they don't, one hundred year, one thousand years, or ten thousand years from now, we'll have someone uncovering a cache of spent C14 nuclear batteries and having to dispose of it with taxpayer money.

I take you consider it acceptable to have potential radiation spills in the future if it means cheaper phones now?

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Your argument seems to be centred on a lot of what if's, like handling radioactive material will be done by the same unskilled workers that handle sewerage or that future development will not improve their efficiency.

NDB wants to put those batteries in phones and cars. By definition, they are going to be handled by the millions by people with no training, not even expectations that their device is dangerous.

I remind you that Samsung retired a phone from sales because it had an excess fire hazard risk. The manufacturer must ensure the item is safe for household use.

For special/industiral use it's different. Regulations require there to be people paid and trained that knows how to handle the item. For remote use, regulations should enforce tracing and inspecting them once in a while. It's not perfect, buit it limits the risk enough to be worth for some applications.
 

21 hours ago, HenrySalayne said:

Powering a car? Nope, not going to happen. For remote sensors and other low-power but long-life applications, this might be really nice

I fully agree, and I made the same example applications I would be fine with.
NDB claims their battery will power phones and cars. That's the problem I have with it.

[mr moose]

On 8/28/2022 at 12:05 AM, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Safety, performance and convenience are part of a trade off:

• Exceed on the side of safety, and users will either not use the item or bypass the safety.
• Exceed on the side of performance, and users will get harm
• Exceed on the side of convenience, and pefrormance will suffer

I also believe priority is to be placed in making the item useable. Safeties should never exceed the point where one can't work anymore. I'm pro nuclear energy for this reason. Our civilization NEED energy. The perfect power source doesn't exist. Nuclear is extremely competitive in lots of metrics compared to other energy sources.

 

Likewise, our civilization NEED cost effective high density batteries. We need the safest cheapest way to get them. For the sake of this conversation, I compare lithium ion and carbon 14.

• Lithium is a fire hazard. Sometimes a battery will catch fire. If you try to eat a battery, you'll burn your lungs, then get intoxitcated.
• Carbon 14 is an extremely long lived beta decay radiation hazard. It's usually harmless, unless you ingest it. Cells can't tell the difference between C14 and C12, it can be used to build proteins or DNA. Then the C14 decays and bombards the cell from the inside.

I really don't want to do a deep research on the Toxic and Lethal doses of lithium and carbon 14, radioactive materials also have a stochastic long tail of effects. That's on the side of the manufacturers and regulators to work out. We do use nuclear reactors after all. For the sake of this conversation I'll assume it takes a lot less mass in C14 to do harm compared to mass in lithium both for fire/ingestion, and that C14 is harmless if not ingested.

 

The next consideration is permanence, this is the deal breaker:

• With Li-Ion batteries, once the accident happens, that's it. Lithium ash is inhert. You can ingest the ash, but the event is very noticable, so a clean up is noticable, cheap and effective. The ashes themselves do not require special handling.
• C14 is an ongoing hazard. You can only tell the hazard is present with a gaiger sensitive to beta decay. 28000 years is quoted because you need to wait lots of halving times before the radiation is diluted enough. Even thermally vented as radioactive CO2, it's still soluble in water, and it can rain down, then Carbon is metabolized, it enters the food chain.

The two most dangerous nuclear byproduct in nuclear disasters are Iodine 131 because it gets metabolized by the thyroid (it's dangerous for two weeks) and Cesium 137 because it's soluble in water and get treated like a salt by living creatures. Having both solubility and metabolization is the big NO-NO.

This wall of text I hope explains why my stance on having C14 based nuclear decay batteries as household item is that the onus is on the manufacturers to prove to regulators that their battery WILL contain C14 for 28000 years with no foreseen spillage pathways.

Because if they don't, one hundred year, one thousand years, or ten thousand years from now, we'll have someone uncovering a cache of spent C14 nuclear batteries and having to dispose of it with taxpayer money.

I take you consider it acceptable to have potential radiation spills in the future if it means cheaper phones now?

NDB wants to put those batteries in phones and cars. By definition, they are going to be handled by the millions by people with no training, not even expectations that their device is dangerous.

I remind you that Samsung retired a phone from sales because it had an excess fire hazard risk. The manufacturer must ensure the item is safe for household use.

For special/industiral use it's different. Regulations require there to be people paid and trained that knows how to handle the item. For remote use, regulations should enforce tracing and inspecting them once in a while. It's not perfect, buit it limits the risk enough to be worth for some applications.
 

I fully agree, and I made the same example applications I would be fine with.
NDB claims their battery will power phones and cars. That's the problem I have with it.

Again, if your argument is they are deadly if swallowed so should not be allowed then your argument should also apply to lithium button cells. 

 

Also the batteries in the end product might be handled by millions of people, but your were insinuating some sort of mass problem stemming from the handling of the product at more of a production level (likening it to unskilled workers spilling sewerage).   There is still no evidence that these batteries will be unsafe,  that is simply an argument based on speculation that there will be no development in safety or performance.

[tikker]

On 8/27/2022 at 4:05 PM, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

I remind you that Samsung retired a phone from sales because it had an excess fire hazard risk. The manufacturer must ensure the item is safe for household use.

If Samsung hadn't used a type of battery that is a fire hazard due to the materials used and is dangerous when something gets damaged, then this problem wouldn't have occured. Should we now put a ban on all use of lithium-ion batteries for being a fire hazard until proven safer or a safer alternative comes around? The vast majority of us are likely not properly qualified to handle the materials such as lithium that are in the batteries after all.

 

Yes, they will need to ensure these C14 batteries are safe and it's absolutely something to keep a close eye on given the nature of the material. In the end that is no different from other products on the market though, like with your Samsung battery example: flaw is discovered, product deemed unsafe, product recalled. I haven't seen evidence for these C14 batteries being any more dangerous then the potential incendiary devices what we already carry around in our pockets daily yet, so we'll have to wait until they come to market (if ever) and official reports before drawing such conclusions.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

1 hour ago, tikker said:

I haven't seen evidence for these C14 batteries being any more dangerous then the potential incendiary devices what we already carry around in our pockets daily yet, so we'll have to wait until they come to market (if ever) and official reports before drawing such conclusions.

Luckly people in the sixties had enough sense not to use nuclear radioisotope generators in household items. That's why we didn't have large scale disasters on that. We had disasters involving other household items using radiation, like the radium used in clock hands, and the radioisotope based remote installations did cause spills decades after installation, and there are unknown installation lost out there, waiting to cause disaster.

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Again, if your argument is they are deadly if swallowed so should not be allowed then your argument should also apply to lithium button cells. 

I agree, in my example I allied it to both in the risk analysis. I use lithium batteries at all times, I keep them in lithium fire proof bags.

 

I would need to keep the nuclear batteries in shielded sealed bags as well.

 

I argued quite a lot on why I want the nuclear decay battery technology to be proved safe for millennia (the useable lifespan) before deployment, just like lithium batteries need to be safe for a decade (the useable lifespan).

 

I do not understand why are you advocating forNDB to be allowed to release millions of nuclear decay batteries to be released inside household phones just in case the technology is safe? 

We released lead gasoline, knowing for a fact lead is bad for the brain because it was cheaper, and maybe, just maybe it would be safe there. It wasn't. For once, could we as a civilization not deploy a technology whose mode of failure we know for certain is really bad until we are certain that mode of failure has been mitigated?

[suicidalfranco]

1 hour ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

We released lead gasoline, knowing for a fact lead is bad for the brain because it was cheaper, and maybe, just maybe it would be safe there. It wasn't. For once, could we as a civilization not deploy a technology whose mode of failure we know for certain is really bad until we are certain that mode of failure has been mitigated?

Then humanity should have just never come down from the trees where they were hanging cause it was safer than walking on the plains.

Taking risks is what drive us forward.

[tikker]

5 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

Luckly people in the sixties had enough sense not to use nuclear radioisotope generators in household items. That's why we didn't have large scale disasters on that. We had disasters involving other household items using radiation, like the radium used in clock hands, and the radioisotope based remote installations did cause spills decades after installation, and there are unknown installation lost out there, waiting to cause disaster.

We don't live in the 60s anymore though. We have made great strides in science and I'm confident our understanding about nuclear stuff is appreciably better then it was half a century ago. I'm not against safety measures in manufacturing these things that notably exceed the usual. Not to dismiss smaller incidents, but there is something to be said that we basically remember only a handful of "notable" nuclear disasters over many decades (basically Chernobyl, Fukushima and Three Mile Island).

 

5 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

I argued quite a lot on why I want the nuclear decay battery technology to be proved safe for millennia (the useable lifespan) before deployment, just like lithium batteries need to be safe for a decade (the useable lifespan).

Do we have proof of lithium batteries being safe for a decade that is not based on having studied them operating for a decade (genuine question)? This is a fair point. It's probably not something that can be hard proven, but a study on how durable the casings are would certainly be important.

5 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

I do not understand why are you advocating forNDB to be allowed to release millions of nuclear decay batteries to be released inside household phones just in case the technology is safe? 

For a similar reason others advocate against it just in case it's dangerously unsafe. I agree about safety and definitely want to see verification in that regard, but until they do we don't know the extent of the risk these things pose. Proponents can't yet assume it's completely safe and opponents cannot assume it's unsafe. We should proceed, in my opinion, to see where we can get this. We'll have to start making them at some point to answer certain questions about safety and failure modes and to identify areas that may need improvement.

5 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

For once, could we as a civilization not deploy a technology whose mode of failure we know for certain is really bad until we are certain that mode of failure has been mitigated?

We don't even know much about what the final form of these things will be, let alone what modes of failure they have. The mode of failure of my PC that I know for certain is really bad is catching fire and burning my house down. That failure is made unlikely, however, through standards that we have developed and adjusted over the years. A similar thing will need to happen for this (be it to a higher standard maybe).

 

A dangerous failure mode would be releasing C14 into the surroundings and having you ingest it, but we have no figures on how likely that is to happen. Obviously that is not something they want to happen and should be made as unlikely as possible. As far as I understand one of the things the diamond encasing is indeed to prevent any C14 from escaping. Until more information about durability tests and the like any speculated failure mode is just that, speculation. I tend to compare nuclear energy sources to airplane travel. The extreme failure modes in either are disastrous, so it comes down to how likely that failure is.

[OrdinaryPhil]

On 8/19/2022 at 1:20 PM, Octobernight said:

 

 

Summary

 Found this article where a company is claiming to have found a way to use nuclear waste to make batteries.  Apparently every thing from common batteries like AA sizes to batteries that could power cars and satellites.

https://blog.sci-nature.com/2022/07/scientists-turn-nuclear-waste-into.html?m=1

Quotes

They claim to have built a self-powered battery made entirely of radioactive waste that has a life expectancy of 28,000 years, making it ideal for your future electric car or iPhone 1.6 x 104. 

 

My thoughts

 This seems like a really cool possibly portable power solution but the claims kinda cause me to have doubts seems a little farfetched but if they do bring them to market in a couple years it would be pretty cool.

 

 

If I had a nickel for every time someone claimed to have invented a "better battery" I'd be a very rich man.

Retired jokes aside, this is obviously not real. It smacks of some academic lab trying to justify their salary. Oil was the currency of the entire 20'th century. The overwhelming majority of human beings interact with oil in some form everyday; from heating our homes & driving cars to powering entire military fleets. all plastics are made using oil and so are all kinds of other materials that we use daily.

Right now we are experiencing a concerted attempt from world governments to shift the global currency from oil to lithium - the largest functioning lithium mine is in Afghanistan and it's no coincidence that the current American regime suddenly withdrew from that area at the same time that China moved in. It took 24 hours for the US to lose control over a $3 Trillion dollar asset and basically give it to their largest economic enemy. I'd let you make of that what you will.

Why does this matter? How is connected to your question?

It matters because lithium is used in the two most common forms of batteries in the world. Lithium-Ion, and Lithium-Polymer. There is a  reason electric cars and solar panels are being shoved down everyone's throat despite them being such a terrible option that once-first-world nations like Germany are now experiencing power curfews and black outs, because their investment into "renewable" energy proved to be catastrophic. There is soooo much incentive to convince people to buy into the solar craze, and all of those reasons are ultimately because there are trillions and trillions of dollars to be made if people can be duped into it. And right now, the biggest obstacle is how we store all that unicorn-piss from the sun.

I say all this so that there is context for what comes next: If there were ANY breakthrough in our ability to reliably store and use energy, it wouldn't be in some blog or article. Every major company in the world be falling over themselves producing it RIGHT NOW because it would make them filthy rich basically overnight.

[mr moose]

22 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

 

I do not understand why are you advocating forNDB to be allowed to release millions of nuclear decay batteries to be released inside household phones just in case the technology is safe? 

 

I am not advocating for a product just in case it is safe, I am simply not dismissing it out of hand as inherently dangerous without giving the developers a chance to prove it's safe (for all we know there current prototypes are safe, we have very little information).  

 

22 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

We released lead gasoline, knowing for a fact lead is bad for the brain because it was cheaper, and maybe, just maybe it would be safe there. It wasn't. For once, could we as a civilization not deploy a technology whose mode of failure we know for certain is really bad until we are certain that mode of failure has been mitigated?

Again you are assuming a certain outcome is inevitable,  How do you know there is a certain "really bad" mode of failure with these batteries?  There are only so many "what if's" people can mitigate without a working crystal ball.  

 

[mr moose]

22 hours ago, 05032-Mendicant-Bias said:

 We had disasters involving other household items using radiation, like the radium used in clock hands, and the radioisotope based remote installations did cause spills decades after installation, and there are unknown installation lost out there, waiting to cause disaster.

 

We also used asbestos in everything,  thought thalidomide was good for pregnant mums, ddt was good for farmers and bakers used to cut their flour with plaster to make it go further.   I am sure there are literally thousands of examples of things not related to radiation that have killed us due to ignorance.  If you use this argument to prevent the use of technology then you literally stop the development of technology, because there is an element of unknown danger you cannot mitigate against in nearly everything that has been instrumental in furthering humanity.

 

We can't guarantee absolutely that GMO is safe,  but the alternative is not being able to feed everyone without destroying the world.  Another one is glyphosate,  There are shortages right now of that stuff without the pressure from ignorant do-gooders to have it banned, and the result is that farmers are scratching their heads as to how to effectively keep production up without it (the only people sure of an alternative are the fear pedaling lawyers and green peace wankers who haven't set foot in a lab or on a farm).