Nuclear power in your pocket? 50-year battery innovation
Chinese startup Betavolt recently announced it developed a nuclear battery with a 50-year lifespan. While the technology of nuclear batteries has been available since the 1950s, today’s drive to electrify and decarbonize increases the impetus to find emission-free power sources and reliable energy storage. As a result, innovations like Betavolt’s are bringing renewed focus to nuclear energy in batteries.
Nuclear batteries — those using the natural decay of radioactive material to create an electric current — have been used in space applications or remote operations such as arctic lighthouses, where changing a battery is difficult or even impossible. The Mars Science Laboratory rover, for example, uses radioisotopic power systems (RPS), which convert heat from radioactive decay into electricity via a thermoelectric generator. Betavolt’s innovation, however, is a betavoltaic battery that uses beta particles rather than heat as its energy source.
Before expecting to find these long-lasting batteries in common devices, it’s important to understand some key tradeoffs. The long lifespan of betavoltaic batteries is counterbalanced by their relatively low power output per unit mass, known as power density. The power density of the current betavoltaic batteries is so low that they cannot power a cell phone or laptop.