Emerging Voices: Is Nuclear Energy the Future of Batteries?

A few months ago, I stumbled across an article that caught my attention. A Chinese start-up company, Betavolt, was able to produce a new battery that was capable of providing power for 50 years (1). The interesting part is that during those 50 years, the battery is said to require zero charging and maintenance. This battery is known as a betavoltaic battery, a type of nuclear battery (also commonly referred to as an atomic battery) that is currently in pilot testing stages. As the name suggests, nuclear batteries utilize nuclear energy to generate electricity from the decay of a radioactive isotope. A groundbreaking technology of its time, nuclear power can potentially revolutionize battery systems as we know them today.

The inklings of nuclear power. A topic of discussion for the past century, nuclear power became a reality in the 1940s after the discovery of nuclear fission in the late 1930s. In 1942, the construction of the first nuclear reactor, Chicago Pile-1, was spearheaded by a group of scientists led by Enrico Fermi (2). It wasn’t until the 1950s and 60s, however, that nuclear batteries began receiving in-depth research for long-life use in space (2).

There are two groups of nuclear batteries: thermal converters and non-thermal converters. Thermal converters utilize the heat generated from nuclear decay to produce electricity, while non-thermal converters generate electricity from emitted radiation from the nuclear decay directly.

What are betavoltaic...