[mahranch]

> This particular thing 'feels' sort of slimy

I was just coming here to talk about how inaccurate the title was. It implies (or leads people to believe) that "nuclear batteries" are something new. Or at least, that's what they want readers thinking. They're not even close to new. They're decades old. They're aboard the Voyager probes (which is why they're still working, 30 years later) and they're powering the Curiosity rover on Mars. Hell, there was even a nuclear battery powered automobile made by Ford I believe (the "Nucleon") as proof of concept. This was in the 1950s.

The new thing here, is the fact that they can run the batteries with nuclear waste.

[x3n0ph3n3]

Voyager I and II and Curiosity are powered with radioisotope thermoelectric generators [1], which are nothing like this proposal.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge...

[mahranch]

> Voyager I and II and Curiosity are powered with radioisotope thermoelectric generators

AKA a nuclear battery... That's how they're referred to by just about everyone.

[qbrass]

The Ford Nucleon was a styling exercise and was never intended to have a working prototype.

The concept itself didn't use a nuclear battery, it was designed around a miniaturized nuclear reactor which powered the car using a steam turbine.

[nathan_f77]

I knew about the nuclear batteries in space, but isn't the new thing here the miniaturization and safety?

> Carbon-14 was chosen as a source material because it emits a short-range radiation, which is quickly absorbed by any solid material. This would make it dangerous to ingest or touch with your naked skin, but safely held within diamond, no short-range radiation can escape. In fact, diamond is the hardest substance known to man, there is literally nothing we could use that could offer more protection.

That sounds really promising to me. And I wonder if there is some more optimal lattice structure, or some way to scale it up and produce enough energy to power a smartphone.