In 1964, on the occasion of the New York World’s Fair, Isaac Asimov wrote in The New York Times his prediction of what a similar exhibition would be like half a century later, in 2014. Among his erroneous predictions—imbued with the spirit of modernity of the time, which aspired to a greater detachment from nature—the great science fiction writer proposed something that seems impossible: household appliances “powered by long-lived batteries running on radioisotopes.” Today, nuclear batteries are only used for very specific purposes, but there are those who suggest that this could be the clean, portable energy of the future. Will we ever have mobile phones powered by atomic batteries?
Nuclear fission energy got its start in 1942 with the Chicago Pile-1 experimental reactor at the University of Chicago, a project that led to the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project under the direction of Julius Robert Oppenheimer at the Los Alamos laboratory. The first grid-connected nuclear power plant would not arrive until 1954, and it would do so on the other side of the Iron Curtain, at the Soviet plant in Obninsk. Nuclear power expanded during the second half of the 20th century and, although it has always been controversial because of its accident record, it is championed by some as an alternative to fossil fuels, which are responsible for climate change.
The beginnings of atomic batteries
The fission chain reaction is not the only way to extract energy from the atom. Nuclear fusion is a long-awaited, clean and inexhaustible source of energy, but it is still several decades away. But there is still a third option. In 1913, decades before the discovery of nuclear fission, the British physicist Henry Moseley demonstrated that beta particles—high-energy electrons or positrons released by the decay of a radioactive nucleus—emitted by radium produce an electric current, thus inventing the atomic battery. Moseley encountered technical difficulties that prevented him from developing this idea, as he considered it “useless to pursue the matter further.”
In the 1950s and 60s, this line of research began to gain momentum. In 1954, Popular Mechanics magazine reported on an atomic battery developed by the RCA company that contained a tiny transistor-like wafer that released 200,000 electrons for each one it received from the radioactive source. Although the amount of energy was small, the magazine predicted more powerful atomic batteries that could power radio receivers or hearing aids for 20 years.
The development of nuclear batteries was primarily motivated by the need for a power source for space probes. The so-called radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) was invented by scientists at Mound Laboratories in 1954. In 1961, the US launched the first RTG-powered spacecraft, Transit 4A, a military navigation satellite. These batteries, made from plutonium or other materials, have since been used mainly in probes that travel too far from the Sun to capture its energy, and in Martian and lunar landers. They have also been used in underwater or polar installations and, in the 1970s and 80s, in cardiac pacemakers.
The RTG is a type of thermal conversion nuclear battery, i.e. it uses some of the heat generated by radioactivity to produce electricity. For miniaturised applications, non-thermal converters, which extract energy directly from radiation without the need for a temperature difference, are more practical. Among these, current technology focuses on betavoltaic batteries, which use beta particle radiation, as in the Moseley case. Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen, is one of the most suitable sources.
Nanotechnology for the general-purpose atomic battery
Advances in non-thermal nuclear batteries have been made over the past few decades, but recent developments in nanotechnology have provided new tools. For example, companies such as NDB and others are developing nanodiamond batteries based on radioisotopes encapsulated in synthetic diamonds. This company uses radioactive waste from nuclear power plants, something Asimov foresaw in his 1964 prediction. NDB says its batteries could last up to 28,000 years, powering everything from smartphones and medical devices to cars and planes.
Several companies are already producing some form of nuclear battery, but so far only for specialised applications. But the general-purpose atomic battery is getting closer. In 2024, the Chinese company Betavolt announced a coin-sized nuclear battery using radioactive nickel sandwiched between thin layers of diamond, which acts as a semiconductor, that could power devices such as mobile phones, laptops and drones for a half a century, with an energy density 10 times higher than our current lithium-ion batteries. Betavolt hopes to begin industrial production in 2025.
A common objection to any kind of nuclear powered device is the presence of a hazardous material, which poses no risk as long as it remains inside the battery, but does pose a risk if the battery ruptures. As NDB CEO Nima Golsharifi pointed out, common devices such as smoke detectors also contain radioactive material in many cases. The truth is that the current lithium-ion batteries we use in our devices are problematic: apart from the small but possible risk of explosion, they have a high environmental cost due to the mining of rare earths and metals, making the battery of the future a holy grail coveted by scientists and companies. The nuclear battery could provide a zero-emissions option. Its biggest drawback today: price.
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