Home > Researchers Create
Smaller and More Efficient Nuclear Battery,
11th October 2009
Researchers at the University of Missouri have developed
smaller more efficient nuclear batteries by using a new
construction method.
Currently nuclear batteries can be found in a range of
items from pacemakers, to underwater installations and
spacecraft.
Jae Kwon, assistant professor of electrical and computer
engineering at the University of Missouri said of the
development; "To provide enough power, we need
certain methods with high energy density. The radioisotope
battery can provide power density that is six orders of
magnitude higher than chemical batteries."
The innovation comes in the form of not only a reduced
size battery, but also a new liquid semiconductor is used
instead of a solid semiconductor.
"The critical part of using a radioactive battery
is that when you harvest the energy, part of the radiation
energy can damage the lattice structure of the solid semiconductor,"
Kwon said. "By using a liquid semiconductor, we
believe we can minimize that problem."
The University of Missouri team says that the batteries
hold a million times as much charge as standard batteries.
And they can provide a useful amount of electricity for
incredibly long times - up to hundreds of years or more.
With the current moves toward reduced emission motoring,
could it be that cars are one day powered by nuclear batteries.
It would certainly solve the problem of limited range
faced by current electric powered vehicles.
Source missouri.edu via bbc.co.uk
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