• mumblerfish@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    100 microwatts? What does a phone use, like 1W? So they are 4 orders of magnitude off? So phones need to become 10,000 times more efficient or the battery that much bigger?

    Edit: Also what is the language of the article? “63 nuclear isotopes”, it sounds like they mean “63 [different/individual atoms of] nuclear isotopes” but do they mean “nickel-63” by this? It is very confusing. Nickel-63 also has a half-life of 100 years, so if the battery is supped to last for 50 years, it has to be producing twice as much energy on day one that is discarded?

    • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Betavolt is planning to boost its tech to produce a 1-watt battery by 2025. And while it still has some way to go, the company seems confident stating development is way ahead of European and American scientific research institutions and enterprises.

      RemindMe! 1 year repeat

      • Gladaed@feddit.de
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        10 months ago

        This is physically implausible. Also self proclaimed advances without 3rd party proof are less than worthless.

        • JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          Yeah, I thought I was expressing my doubt with the “repeat” part of my Remindme joke, but I guess it wasn’t appreciated.

        • mumblerfish@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Yeah, like to get four orders of magnitude more they must get some real problems. 1. They have to find some isotope that decays very differently, faster/higher energy decays, which should mean more dangerous materials and inconsistent output over time. 2. It might be true that their 100 microwatt battery is fairly resistant to impact and cannot be manipulated to produce some explosion. But if you have a battery with 10,000 times the energy, like the energy equivalent to several modern EV car batteries in your phone? I would really start to doubt it.