There's buzz around a 'nano diamond battery' that produces electricity for thousands of years while making nuclear waste harmless. The company NDB presents it as the end to all our energy woes and a self charging alternative for lithium ion.
BUT...
newatlas.com/energy/nano-di…
BUT...
newatlas.com/energy/nano-di…
It seems relevant to mention that the power density is currently about a million times lower than a regular battery.
10 miliwatt per liter according to this 2018 paper (that already calls this a breakthrough). sciencedirect.com/science/articl….
10 miliwatt per liter according to this 2018 paper (that already calls this a breakthrough). sciencedirect.com/science/articl….
To put that into perspective: in order to deliver 100 kW to the engine of your car you would need a battery of 10 000 cubic meters, weighing around 35 000 tonnes.
And while readers of "The Diamond Age" know that making diamonds could theoretically become very cheap, for now a radioactive diamond encased in a normal one doesn't sound like a really affordable battery to me. Let alone if I literally need tonnes of diamonds.
So I don't want to rain on the parade and having a power source for thousands of years is truly great in some applications, but let's not confuse people into thinking this will replace regular batteries.
