Here’s an intriguing technology. Researchers have developed a way of using nuclear waste and man-made diamonds to create nuclear batteries. Phys.org reports:
New technology has been developed that uses nuclear waste to generate electricity in a nuclear-powered battery. A team of physicists and chemists from the University of Bristol have grown a man-made diamond that, when placed in a radioactive field, is able to generate a small electrical current. The development could solve some of the problems of nuclear waste, clean electricity generation and battery life.
This innovative method for radioactive energy was presented at the Cabot Institute’s sold-out annual lecture – ‘Ideas to change the world’- on Friday, 25 November.
Unlike the majority of electricity-generation technologies, which use energy to move a magnet through a coil of wire to generate a current, the man-made diamond is able to produce a charge simply by being placed in close proximity to a radioactive source.
There’s nothing in the article about the sensitivity of the technique or whether it requires a high-level radiation source or whether a low-level radiation source is adequate.
Whatever might be believed the nuclear power generation industry generates only about 3% of the nuclear waste by volume. Quite a bit of low-level nuclear waste is produced by the healthcare sector.
