This may be hype, or maybe very early news. Or they may have finally boosted the overall effeciency. We will see.


Here's the patent info on Radioactive decay batteries:
US4835433: Apparatus for direct conversion of radioactive decay energy to electrical energy


Also, you'll see that 'nuclear batteries' have been around since 1913, so they are not 'new' and the overall effeciency is very low ranging from about 1-25% tops.


From [url=http://www.peswiki.com/index.php/PowerPedia:Beta_volta...

This may be hype, or maybe very early news. Or they may have finally boosted the overall effeciency. We will see.


Here's the patent info on Radioactive decay batteries:
US4835433: Apparatus for direct conversion of radioactive decay energy to electrical energy


Also, you'll see that 'nuclear batteries' have been around since 1913, so they are not 'new' and the overall effeciency is very low ranging from about 1-25% tops.


From Powerpedia:

TRITIATED AMORPHOUS SILICON POWER CELLS

PAUL M. BROWN, PH.D.

ABSTRACT

The application of tritiated amorphous silicon as an intrinsic energy conversion semiconductor for betavoltaic devices is presented. Analysis of the betavoltaic application shows an overall efficiency of 25% for tritiated amorphous silicon. A betavoltaic battery is a nuclear battery that converts energy from beta particles released by a beta emitting radioactive source, such as tritium, into electrical power. Common semiconductor designs of betavoltaic batteries use a semiconductor p-n junction device that is either directly exposed to beta decay or is illuminated by photons created when betas strike a phosphor. These common betavoltaic batteries suffer from technical problems in that the directly irradiated cells suffer material degradation of the p-n junction limiting the operating life to days while the photo conversion systems are indirect and limited by efficiency to less than 1%. A limitation of the aforementioned betavoltaic batteries is the self-absorption of beta energy in the radioactive source itself. In order to reduce the self-absorption of beta energy the radioactive isotope must be incorporated into the lat