Diamond Nuclear Battery: Will It Last Up To 28,000 Years?

From Science Times.com (Mar. 31):

Nano Diamond Battery (NDB) is a "high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery" that can provide devices with "life-long and renewable energy."

NDB is working on a low-power diamond battery for deep space missions. They're also working on a diamond battery for mobile phones and consumer electronics that would last for nine years.

The company began developing its battery in 2012 and anticipates having a working product by 2023.

How Does it Work?

According to Popular Mechanics, diamonds are excellent at conducting heat, and micro-sized diamonds move heat away from radioactive isotope materials to the point where electricity is generated.

The NDB battery concept is similar to the first known DNV battery concept, which used waste graphite from a graphite-cooled nuclear reactor.

The device could last thousands of years thanks to radioactively contaminated graphite and heat-conducting diamonds. The difference with NDB's concept is that it employs multiple layers of diamond and radioactive waste panels to generate more energy.

Though the long battery life is certainly a plus, each battery cell produces a negligible amount of energy, necessitating using a large number of cells to power regular and larger devices.

The battery will be encased in layers of paneled nano-diamonds to absorb the energy emitted by the isotopes.

Because isotopes have thousands-year half-lives and diamonds are excellent heat conductors, the battery will continue to emit energy without needing to be recharged.

Dr. Nima Golsharifi, co-founder and CEO of NDB, told Future Net Zero in October 2020 that the battery would have two benefits. The first step is to turn nuclear waste into something useful. The second is a timer that could last hundreds of lifetimes. [read more]

Interesting.