The news that a young American company, NDB had developed a technology for the production of batteries with a mind-boggling life of 28 thousand years was sensational for the world of startups and technologies of the future.
To do this, the researchers used radioactive diamonds recovered from nuclear waste. On the face of it, it is alarming but nevertheless poses no danger.
EXCEPTIONAL LIFE
Twenty-eight thousand years is the theoretical life of the innovative batteries. It corresponds to the amount of energy contained in the radioactive diamonds, their draining process occurs gradually and in a natural way.
The actual life of nuclear-powered diamond batteries is by one order less. Under normal operation, the reserve of their lifetime can reach nine years. This is a much shorter period, but, nevertheless, it goes beyond the ordinary battery life and indicates a breakthrough in the scientific and technical ideas.
OPERATION PRINCIPLE
While creating nuclear-powered diamond batteries, the NDB researchers came to a simple conclusion: nuclear waste is a significant hazard, but it also contains a huge amount of unused energy.
Once converted to radioactive waste, some of this waste continues to emit energy. This applies to carbon-14 (C14) widely used in nuclear power plants.
Carbon is the only chemical element in a diamond that is not only an excellent electrical conductor, but also safely holds radiation within a diamond. NDB produced diamonds from radioactive carbon-14 and received a source of energy of a huge potential that is also safe.
SOLUTION FOR RADIOACTIVE WASTE
The nuclear waste costs taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Their management is a real headache, since the humanity has not yet come up with a completely safe way to dispose the radioactive waste.
Tanks to carbon-14, NDB has proposed a viable solution for managing some of this waste. In theory, when a nuclear-powered diamond battery runs out of energy, it is no longer radioactive.
However, this does not represent a magical solution. Radioactive carbon is just one of the many elements that form radioactive waste. Contaminated water remains the most important of all the radioactive wastes, and no solution for its disposal has yet been found, according to the geekeries.com.
Alex Shishlo for Rough&Polished
