Dwain Northey (Gen X)

We are in an energy transition point and a lot of naysayers are not only on the fence about EVs and alternative energy sources they seem to be actively throwing rocks trying to discredit this move away from burning fossil fuels. I liken these cynics to the saddle makers of the late 19^th century that would never forgo their horses for the new-fangled horseless carriage. But the times are changing, and technology is advancing and as a ‘thinking’ species we are, well at least some of us are, realizing that burning carbon is irreconcilably altering the climate of the planet that we live on. Most of us are aware that we have no other place to go and unlike Elon Musk we do not have the resources to launch ourselves into space to try and find an alternate planet to live on.

EV’s are getting a bad name mostly because the technology is new. The main complaint I hear for the detractors is that charging the batteries requires the burning fossil fuel to create the energy and when the batteries are spent that the batteries themselves are not recyclable and more toxic to the environment that just burning gas. Again, I come to the point of reminding people that this technology is relatively new, think of how far the cell phone has come from the first clunky phones of the 90’s. leaps and bounds of the past 30+ years.

Let’s get back to the EV and battery issue that is the stumbling block for many detractors of EV’s. There is an emerging battery technology that is going to change everything we think about batteries and when it is perfected it is going to cost a lot of energy companies their monopolies in the market. Here is the solution by encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy.” The team have demonstrated a prototype ‘diamond battery’ using Nickel-63 as the radiation source.

I am sure many of you just had a WFT moment. It is called a Radioactive Diamond Battery. Again, I can hear the “What Radioactive that can’t be safe.” Research has determined that the radiation level of diamond batteries will be lower and safer than the radiation level produced by the human body. Serving as a small nuclear generator, the power source for these batteries consists of high-level radioisotopes coated with multiple synthetic diamonds for safety. The next question is how do recharge this battery? The good news is you don’t by using nuclear waste as their main power source and diamonds as their heat conducting element, the nuclear Diamond battery can supposedly last up to 28,000 years, an unfathomably long time.

How would this affect EV’s? Well, I am glad you asked, according to NDB, the nano-diamond battery is self-renewing and advantageous for the environment. It could be used to power drones, electric cars, smartphones, and many other gadgets. In these batteries, the energy source is stored beneath a polycrystalline diamond covering. Now the question is, what about diamonds? We have lab grown diamonds; we don’t have to extract them for the earth. Most industrial applications of synthetic diamond have long been associated with their hardness; this property makes diamond the ideal material for machine tools and cutting tools. These same synthetic diamond are ideal for NDB (Nuclear Diamond Battery)s.

The disadvantage of these types of batteries is since radioisotope decay is sustained by the material itself, there is no need for refueling or recharging. The disadvantage of using these batteries is that their power density is lower than chemical batteries, and these have low conversion efficiencies.  

For all the science nerds that want to know how much power the batteries produce; It produced a power output of about 1 μW at for power density of 10 μW/cm³. At those values, its energy density would be approximately 3.3 Wh/g over its 100-year half-life, about 10 times that of conventional electrochemical batteries. I know for most non chemists that doesn’t mean anything let’s just leave it to say that this new battery technology sustains itself and will outlive the application that it will power.

Now that I have rambled on about science and advancements that most of us are or were unaware of, does anyone feel better about our energy future? I DO!