This needs to be a thing

[Vertigo 7]

https://newatlas.com/energy/nano-diamon ... eries-ndb/

If this pans out, it could ultimately upend the energy sector. Modern homes completely off the grid without the need for solar. Planes, cars, etc., that can practically run indefinitely. Never having to charge a laptop or cellphone again... the possibilities are endless.

The proof of concepts sound promising. This could even potentially end conflicts over oil. I genuinely hope the scientific community gives this it's due attention and they're able to fund research and development of this.

[Alan Phipps]

It would be most excellent news if it pans out as explained/anticipated and with no serious down-sides. Recycling dangerous waste is a plus too. Let's hope that it doesn't end up like the cold fusion research though.

[felter]

COOL, I wonder just how many batteries I would need to make myself a dirty bomb big enough to kill everyone in London.

[Vertigo 7]

If they're not lying (which i don't think they are), your body is more radio active than the diamonds are. I won't be overly concerned about the possibility of someone using these to make a dirty bomb. There's already radioactive components in common smoke alarms and those have been around for decades. Besides, dirty bombs are just conventional explosives used to distribute chemicals or radioactive particles. There's more damage that can occur from the panic and fear that they would cause than the actual damage of the bomb itself.

[jlehtone]

Reminds me of Wulff & Morgenthaler comic 1 and comic 2

[brucewarren]

The thing about smoke alarms is that they use only a minute amount of nuclear material. It doesn't use it as a power source, but as
way to detect smoke. Typically you fit them with a 9 volt battery to actually power them.

In the article the writer suggests that the tech could be scaled up to power an electric car. A car that develops say 132 horsepower
works out at around 100 Kilowatts. Generating that level of power isn't trivial. It seems to me that scaling up this tech to do it without
also scaling up the amount of radiation the customer receives might not be nearly as easy as the writer of the article seems to think it is.

[Len5]

If something sounds to good to be true...
But if it is true, like they say, this will be world changing technology.

[felter]

They are also talking about running a house off grid, do you honestly think you would be able to make a battery that can power a modern day household with the amount of nuclear material that is in a smoke detector, let alone a car. I doubt very much that you could make a 9volt battery with that amount to power the smoke detector.

[RegisterMe]

Smells like sophisticated click bait to me.

[Vertigo 7]

The thing about smoke alarms is that they use only a minute amount of nuclear material. It doesn't use it as a power source, but as
way to detect smoke. Typically you fit them with a 9 volt battery to actually power them.

In the article the writer suggests that the tech could be scaled up to power an electric car. A car that develops say 132 horsepower
works out at around 100 Kilowatts. Generating that level of power isn't trivial. It seems to me that scaling up this tech to do it without
also scaling up the amount of radiation the customer receives might not be nearly as easy as the writer of the article seems to think it is.

What they're saying from their website is that by "scalable" they mean connecting the batteries in series and parallel. They have the advantage of using graphene sheets to store the charge from the diamond. The actual footprint of the battery itself without conforming to standard specifications (like AA) is fairly small and lighter as a result.

I personally don't know if this is true or not, but they're saying the human body contains one carbon-14 atom for every 1 trillion carbon atoms in our body. I do know that we are radioactive to a certain degree but the specific amount, i don't know. Anyway, at 70kg, the human body has 7*10^27 carbon atoms. I'm just saying, i don't think the safety concerns are being understated. They're encasing the carbon-14 diamonds in carbon-12 diamonds. Whatever radiation may find its way through the shielding wouldn't amount to much even in large scale applications like powering a house or building. Even then, a minimal safety enclosure could be fabricated to further protect the consumers from potential exposure.

[pjknibbs]

If something sounds to good to be true...

Yeah, this. We've known how to generate power from radioactive decay for decades--the RTGs fitted to many long-duration spacecraft are little more than a source of heat from radioactive decay with a thermocouple to generate power. The ones fitted to the Voyager probes contain 4.5kg of plutonium and generated 157W of power when new--this power output would halve every 88 years or so due to the half-life of the radioactive material. Unless the laws of physics have changed significantly in the 50 years or so since Voyager launched, I really don't see how they're planning to generate significant amounts of power from the radioactive decay of a few grammes of Carbon-14. Until I see a peer-reviewed scientific paper on how these batteries work, I'm calling bull on this.

[Vertigo 7]

If something sounds to good to be true...

Yeah, this. We've known how to generate power from radioactive decay for decades--the RTGs fitted to many long-duration spacecraft are little more than a source of heat from radioactive decay with a thermocouple to generate power. The ones fitted to the Voyager probes contain 4.5kg of plutonium and generated 157W of power when new--this power output would halve every 88 years or so due to the half-life of the radioactive material. Unless the laws of physics have changed significantly in the 50 years or so since Voyager launched, I really don't see how they're planning to generate significant amounts of power from the radioactive decay of a few grammes of Carbon-14. Until I see a peer-reviewed scientific paper on how these batteries work, I'm calling bull on this.

this isn't even remotely the same thing. 1, the electricity generated is from the electrons that are shed from beta decay, not converting heat to electricity. That's completely different than what Voyager uses, or any nuclear reactor. 2, graphene wasn't around when voyager launched.

I'm not arguing that more research isn't needed. But I don't wan't to try to equate this to something that's been around for years because that just simply isn't the case.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

If it's true, it's good news.
I expect some downsides, and I expect oil / energy companies are going to try and stop that, like they did with hydrogen fuel cells (Eni bought all hydrogen related patents to keep using fossil fuel).
I won't bother about radioactivity or dirty bombs though.

[Mailo]

There was a debunking video by Thunderf00t about half a year ago. While he probably sounds way more gleeful than required, his physics usually seems to check out. He points out quite a few problems with this:
- The energy density is not that high, he quotes a russian experiment using Nickel-63 yielding 10 microW/g ... leading to a 60kg battery to power a mobile phone
- While the generated beta particles will be absorbed within the covering layers, diamonds can be burnt or dissolved in water. Breathing in the resulting CO2 or drinking the carbonated water will kill you if enough is consumed.
- He states that the recoil of the C14 atom (momentum conservation, if an high energy electron is sent off, the sum of all momenta (momentums? momenti?) has to be zero) would reduce the diamond structure to graphite within less than a year (this claim I am not sure about ... but it is true that radioactivity plays havoc with electronics, destroying them quickly if they are not hardened against radiation, which only slows down the process)
- The cost of extracting pure C14 seems prohibitive ... pure C13 for example costs ~$400 per gram, while pure C14 costs ~$2000 per gram

I did some calculations myself. The Wikipedia page for specific activity gives a formula for the activity in Bequerel per gram, which is decays per second per gram. Plugging in the values for C14, I get 1.65*10^11 decays per gram per second. Each decay gives on average 49keV of energy, which is 7.85*10^-15 J. Putting both together I get 0.0013 W per gram. According to the video above, a cell phone requires 0.2W to operate, so the battery would be 155g.
Of course, this assumes that the C14 is 100% pure, and the process is 100% efficient. Considering the price of absolutely pure C14, and the supposed process of burning the top layer off the graphite blocks and condensing the resulting CO2 vapor to industrial diamond, we can safely assume the purity is way below 100%. The efficiency is difficult to estimate, I found a theoretical paper here, which gives a theoretical upper limit of 8% for a betavoltaic cell using silicon and tritium.

Also, in this interview, the team claims 1g of C14 would give off 15 joules in one day. Using that with my numbers above gives a efficiency * purity of 13%. That would turn the 155g necessary for the smart phone into a 1152g battery.
I'd qualify the 13% here as rather optimistic, so in reality the battery would be even heavier.

Keep in mind a large amount of this weight is radioactive C14, which is mostly (see next paragraph) harmless ... unless dissolved in water or burnt, both of which is possible ... then it is REALLY deadly.

Something that was missing in the debunking video though is the X-rays this battery will generate. An x-ray tube works by shooting accelerated electrons at a inert target. Typical tubes use 50kV acceleration voltage (I work in an R&D department building XRF analysis devices, which are based on this process), the electrons emitted from C14 are up to three times higher in energy. The same thing happens here in the battery. X-rays of up to 156keV are generated (which are in Gamma Ray territory). 10cm of carbon will let ~5% of X-rays above 150keV through, and even 1.5% of all X-rays above 50keV. At the activity levels we're talking about here, that is way too much.

My recommendation ... if you ever get that >1kg battery for your iPhone .... never, never EVER take it out of the solid lead box it was shipped in. And if your house ever catches fire, and that lead box is inside ... evacuate everything within a 5km radius for the forseeable future

Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any oil / energy companies

[Vertigo 7]

So, my question to you @Mailo, how much radiation could C12 diamonds absorb before a lead barrier is needed? These guys are making it sound like the C12 diamond covering the C14 diamond is more than sufficient. (also note they are using diamond lattice and not just C14 chunks or dust. Their purification process is outlined on their website I linked above.)

I have a lot of experience with solid state and microwave electronics. Working on fire control radar systems was part of my job back in my Navy days. But I admittedly have little practical knowledge of nuclear physics other than the basics of current power generation methods. That and I've watched many documentaries on Chernobyl and other nuclear plant disasters =p

[Mailo]

So, my question to you @Mailo, how much radiation could C12 diamonds absorb before a lead barrier is needed? These guys are making it sound like the C12 diamond covering the C14 diamond is more than sufficient. (also note they are using diamond lattice and not just C14 chunks or dust. Their purification process is outlined on their website I linked above.)

I have a lot of experience with solid state and microwave electronics. Working on fire control radar systems was part of my job back in my Navy days. But I admittedly have little practical knowledge of nuclear physics other than the basics of current power generation methods. That and I've watched many documentaries on Chernobyl and other nuclear plant disasters =p

It depends on the thickness of the C12 if you want to take it out of the lead box. To absorb the electrons, ~0.2mm should be sufficient (~0.1 inch for you less than metrically inclined folks ) To absorb the X-rays ... 20cm might be enough? (8 inches) ... maybe 30cm (12 inches) to be safe. Keep in mind these 30cm must be on all sides. Lead would be better, then you'd need only ~0.5cm / 0.25 inches. Again, on all sides.

[Observe]

I read a few articles on this and I saw a lot of hyperbole and half-baked conjecture. That's about it so far.

[Vertigo 7]

So, my question to you @Mailo, how much radiation could C12 diamonds absorb before a lead barrier is needed? These guys are making it sound like the C12 diamond covering the C14 diamond is more than sufficient. (also note they are using diamond lattice and not just C14 chunks or dust. Their purification process is outlined on their website I linked above.)

I have a lot of experience with solid state and microwave electronics. Working on fire control radar systems was part of my job back in my Navy days. But I admittedly have little practical knowledge of nuclear physics other than the basics of current power generation methods. That and I've watched many documentaries on Chernobyl and other nuclear plant disasters =p

It depends on the thickness of the C12 if you want to take it out of the lead box. To absorb the electrons, ~0.2mm should be sufficient (~0.1 inch for you less than metrically inclined folks ) To absorb the X-rays ... 20cm might be enough? (8 inches) ... maybe 30cm (12 inches) to be safe. Keep in mind these 30cm must be on all sides. Lead would be better, then you'd need only ~0.5cm / 0.25 inches. Again, on all sides.

Can you provide any sources that show any specific dangers of C14? I've been digging around, trying to find some info on it and I can't find anything that says C14 emits xrays. For example, here's a lab safety guide from Yale that only mentions beta decay and isn't overly strict on safety procedures, and mentions that it doesn't pose a safety concern even in large amounts. It only cautions against internal exposures.

[Mailo]

Can you provide any sources that show any specific dangers of C14? I've been digging around, trying to find some info on it and I can't find anything that says C14 emits xrays. For example, here's a lab safety guide from Yale that only mentions beta decay and isn't overly strict on safety procedures, and mentions that it doesn't pose a safety concern even in large amounts. It only cautions against internal exposures.

This has nothing to do specifically with C14. C14 emits beta-radiation, which means a proton inside the C14 atom decays into a neutron, a neutrino, and for this conversation most importantly, an electron. That electron carries a significant amount of the energy released in the decay (the rest is carried by the neutrino, which basically interacts with nothing and escapes into space) ... on average 49keV, up to a maximum of 156keV:
(image from the Wikipedia article on beta decay, though from a different beta-decay with a maximum energy of 1.2MeV, not 156 keV)
After the decay, these electrons are just that, high energy electrons flying around in matter. They bump into the atoms and lose their energy, which can be emitted via photons, in this case X-ray photons. This process is called Bremsstrahlung (yes, the German word is used in English) and is exactly the same process an X-ray tube uses to generate X-rays (there, the electrons gain their energy from an acceleration voltage and not a beta decay).
A quote from the Wikipedia page for Beta particle:

Of the three common types of radiation given off by radioactive materials, alpha, beta and gamma, beta has the medium penetrating power and the medium ionising power. Although the beta particles given off by different radioactive materials vary in energy, most beta particles can be stopped by a few millimeters of aluminium. However, this does not mean that beta-emitting isotopes can be completely shielded by such thin shields: as they decelerate in matter, beta electrons emit secondary gamma rays, which are more penetrating than betas per se. Shielding composed of materials with lower atomic weight generates gammas with lower energy, making such shields somewhat more effective per unit mass than ones made of high-Z materials such as lead.

My guess is that the lab safety guide you linked does not mention this, because unless you grip more than a couple of pounds worth of material and hold it up to your head but instead only have a couple of grams in the lab, the danger from the X-rays is negligible. This is due to the low efficiency of converting electron energy into X-ray energy, which is slightly less than 1%. Unfortunately, since we need to maximize the number of electrons, as that is where we get the electrical energy of the battery from, this 1% becomes relevant.
Estimating the danger of this requires the calculation of the dose of radiation received ... which I haven't done in a while, let me see if I get it back together. The relevant criterium is measured in Sievert. 1 Sievert (Sv) is 1 Joule of energy deposited in 1kg. We said before the battery is supposed to produce 0.2 W to power a phone, which is 0.2 J/s. Assuming 1% of that is converted into X-ray energy and absorbed in roughly 1kg of brain, we get 2 mSv per second. Add some losses due to not all energy going towards the brain, let's say another factor 100 less, or 0.02mSv per second. To have a 50% chance of dying from radiation, 4-5 Sv is enough. 5 Sv will be reached after 250000 seconds, or 69.4 hours.
I might have made some wrong assumptions in here, so another order of magnitude or two might go either way. Also, as I've said, I haven't done this calculation in a long way, but still ... these numbers are above anything that will be allowed to be sold on the open market due to people dying from this.

Add to that all the other problems (weight, price, danger of burning etc.) ... yeah, lots of open questions.

[Vertigo 7]

I guess I would like to see some specifics on C14 itself in this context. If I'm understanding the principle of Bremsstrahlung correctly, because carbon has such a low atomic value, the energy of any potentially generated x-rays would be negligible.