This needs to be a thing

[Tamina]

I can't count how many times someone showed up with the next "Super Battery" just to disappear after and never be heard again from. So I am extremly sceptical when those topics come up.

I have no idea about the stuff Mailo is talking about - I am reading his posts with much interest, though. So apart from the physical stuff, just logically speaking: If it scales up as they claim and is as financially efficient, why don't they build a reactor out of their super battery? Would be more cost efficient in production & operation, safer and they would make money directly, without selling a product to an intermediate chain link (costumer). Except of course they want to sell their product to an intermediate person holding the financial risk, as their battery is just not doing the math alone. At best a consumer who is unable to understand the financial risk, someone... like an average consumer... of a button cell.

[Vertigo 7]

I can't count how many times someone showed up with the next "Super Battery" just to disappear after and never be heard again from. So I am extremly sceptical when those topics come up.

I have no idea about the stuff Mailo is talking about - I am reading his posts with much interest, though. So apart from the physical stuff, just logically speaking: If it scales up as they claim and is as financially efficient, why don't they build a reactor out of their super battery? Would be more cost efficient in production & operation, safer and they would make money directly, without selling a product to an intermediate chain link (costumer). Except of course they want to sell their product to an intermediate person holding the financial risk, as their battery is just not doing the math alone. At best a consumer who is unable to understand the financial risk, someone... like an average consumer... of a button cell.

Well this seems to be garnering a much different type of attention than a Billy Mays special TV offer. Again, these are PhDs putting their reputations on the line. Especially in the case of Professor Scott, I would find it hard to believe he would jeopardize his career if this was just some scam or gimmick. He is a published physicist and teaches classes. Not saying he is infallible but I know more about him than I do about Mailo, meaning I can actually verify his credentials and establish his credibility and not just take his word for it. The only thing I can confirm about Mailo is that he's clearly highly intelligent. And that's fine, I'm not asking for his credentials.

As far as trying to build a reactor, I could only speculate but if they're going to build something large, they would be better off converting the closed loop steam generators into high energy voltaic capacitors and try to capture everything from alpha to gamma emissions from heavy metals. Converting the radiation to heat in order to produce steam to spin a turbine to generate electricity is horribly inefficient. I forget but it's somewhere in the 30% efficiency range due to a butt load of energy loss in the conversion processes. I don't believe the technology exists yet that would be capable of efficiently capturing and converting the various types of radiation at such high energy levels. If that comes about, I'm sure that'll be one of the first things it's used for.

This is attempting to make use of the graphite that's used in reactors as a moderator that helps the reactors efficiency. That process ultimately transforms the graphite carbon-12 into radioactive carbon-14 (which has drastically lower energy output than say Uranium-235) which eventually has to be replaced and disposed of. But directly converting the beta radiation from the carbon-14 to electricity would be incredibly efficient, possibly in the 90% range.

The cost saving idea is that the governments will pay to have some of their nuclear waste stock pile taken off of their hands. So it's a give/take kind of deal; the expense of production being offset by the funding to make use of the spent graphite.

Anywho, not saying you need to invest in this. Hell, I'm not going to invest. I'm just excited about the potential of this. Who knows where this may lead?

[Mailo]

I can't count how many times someone showed up with the next "Super Battery" just to disappear after and never be heard again from. So I am extremly sceptical when those topics come up.

I have no idea about the stuff Mailo is talking about - I am reading his posts with much interest, though. So apart from the physical stuff, just logically speaking: If it scales up as they claim and is as financially efficient, why don't they build a reactor out of their super battery? Would be more cost efficient in production & operation, safer and they would make money directly, without selling a product to an intermediate chain link (costumer). Except of course they want to sell their product to an intermediate person holding the financial risk, as their battery is just not doing the math alone. At best a consumer who is unable to understand the financial risk, someone... like an average consumer... of a button cell.

Well this seems to be garnering a much different type of attention than a Billy Mays special TV offer. Again, these are PhDs putting their reputations on the line. Especially in the case of Professor Scott, I would find it hard to believe he would jeopardize his career if this was just some scam or gimmick. He is a published physicist and teaches classes. Not saying he is infallible but I know more about him than I do about Mailo, meaning I can actually verify his credentials and establish his credibility and not just take his word for it. The only thing I can confirm about Mailo is that he's clearly highly intelligent. And that's fine, I'm not asking for his credentials.

While you could probably find my credentials on here (I think I posted a link to my PhD thesis way back when somewhere on this forum), you don't need to, I gave you all of my calculations, you could reproduce them yourself.
As to the "no PhD would put his reputation on the line like this" ... how many people with PhDs were working at Theranos just as one example? Funnily enough, I can't find the number in a quick online search, only "At that time, the company experienced exuberant growth, reaching a total of 700 employees, including renowned PhD researchers." Also, the Dean of the School of Engineering at Stanford University, Channing Robertson, was on the board of Theranos, and that's pretty far up the academic pole. Much higher than a professor in Bristol University.
Sometimes, cash trumps academic reputation, which, while nice, doesn't pay very well at all.
(edit)That's why in science pretty much any result only counts if multiple independent groups have reproduced and validated it. One guy/group could always be running a scam, make an honest mistake, have a fluke defect in a measuring instrument giving off spurious data, etc. Especially in the times of today where fake research reports are used for political and monetary gains (looking at you, tobacco and oil industry, you are not the only ones, but you started this crap), independent verification is of even higher importance than before. Always look at what other experts in the field say if you hear a wild claim. Also look at where the funding comes from, in the case of oil and tobacco, they didn't even try to hide it.(/edit)

But directly converting the beta radiation from the carbon-14 to electricity would be incredibly efficient, possibly in the 90% range.

Where did you get the value of 90% from? All I found in various papers were values between 9-10% (and a paper claiming the theoretical upper limit when using Tritium and Silicon as materials is only 8%).

The cost saving idea is that the governments will pay to have some of their nuclear waste stock pile taken off of their hands. So it's a give/take kind of deal; the expense of production being offset by the funding to make use of the spent graphite.

This one I haven't really fully understood. So the government has a pile of radioactive stuff that is expensive to store and impossible to get rid of. Then it will pay someone to take it away, enrich the concentration of the radioactive substance, and distribute that enriched part to the general public, which can easily remove the radioactive material from the device (by burning it). Also, what happens to the leftovers of the enriching process? They will still contain significant amounts of C14, making them radioactive as well ... which means they need to be stored safely.
If it is no problem to spread the C14 over the world, why is there actually a problem in storing or getting rid of the nuclear waste in the first place?

[Len5]

If it scales up as they claim and is as financially efficient, why don't they build a reactor out of their super battery?

Maybe selling the batteries to manufacturers of electrical devices is more profitable.
To me it seems to be way more convenient and functional if every electrical device has this kind of a battery. It reduces the need for power lines and cables.

[Observe]

Throw away the cell phone. Problem solved.

[Alan Phipps]

Or, plug your cell phone into the car socket to charge your electric car and not the other way around - as no doubt somebody in marketing will claim can be done.

The thing is that if this works and is as good/affordable as stated then it will become 'a thing' and be in pretty general use as well - at least until something better is discovered and comes along. Of course if the reality is far less advantageous or the downsides are prohibitive then it will sink without a trace except maybe in niche applications where the downsides matter less than reliable power lifetime.

[brucewarren]

If there is as much power left in US nuclear waste as some claim then it begs the question - why doesn't the US reprocess it the way
several other nations do?

It's not a trivial task, but if the UK and several other nations can manage to do it safely it seems a little odd that the US does not.

[Vertigo 7]

If there is as much power left in US nuclear waste as they claim then it begs the question - why doesn't the US reprocess it the way
several other nations do?

It's not a trivial task, but if the UK and several other nations can manage to do it safely it seems odd that the US can not.

Cause they're f'n lazy. There's a loooooooong history of the US screwing the pooch on nuclear waste going as far back as the Manhattan Project, including doing absolutely retarded things like loading it up in oil drums with concrete and tossing the barrels into the ocean just off the coast of New Jersey and then strafing the barrels with machine guns when they floated instead of sinking. And then the politicians get involved and make policy decisions on this stuff with no expertise applied.

Back in the 70's or 80's the US started construction on a centralized storage and disposal facility in the middle of nowhere in Nevada. This facility was designed to deal with the waste from all of our reactors across the country and then some and one senator from Nevada blocked that facility from going live saying that it was "smarter to leave it where it is". Now it sits there unused while every reactor is just stacking its waste in the cooling pools which were not designed for long term storage. They're a major catastrophe waiting to happen, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima ... r_disaster X 10. This is a thing that US is likely not going to do anything about until it's too late.