1532 How To Make A DIY Nuclear Battery

[Music] hi so in 2018 the russians created a nuclear battery um they actually followed work done by bristol university where what they did was take the carbon rods out of a nuclear reactor and turn it into a battery now the carbon rods are used to cover the nuclear fuel rods because the nuclear fuel rods put out lots of neutrons some of those neutrons are just fast moving some of them are hot you want the hot ones inside you want to get rid of the fast moving ones so the fast moving ones go into the graphite that surrounds the rod absorbed in the graphite and changes carbon 12 and 13 which is pretty innocuous into carbon 14 which is radioactive so of course when they decommission a nuclear reactor there's a ton of radioactive graphite kicking about what bristol did was take that graphite sublime it that that is turn it directly from a solid into a gas use chemical repetition and create a sheet of radioactive diamonds that's kind of cool if you think about it because diamond actually is a semiconductor when it's in that state so making a sheet of radioactive diamond and putting another semiconductor device on top of it means that they were able to make a battery out of it and this battery works in pretty much the same way as a solar cell does by emitting these alpha particles or beta particles knocking off electrons and driving a current now when something decays it decays back from carbon 14 to carbon 12 or whatever it is doing that when it does it by the emission of alpha particles which are helium or beta particles which are electrons now diamond emits an awful lot of beta particles so it's called beta voltaic other materials emit an awful lot of alpha particles are they called alpha voltaic both of these have been used in batteries before it was in 1970 when the first nuclear battery was commercialized and used in pacemakers because it was used in pacemakers and because it had an 88 year life span then you need never replace it normally a pacemaker is replaced through surgery every five to ten years but these nuclear ones that were put in the 1970s never need replacement right 88 years life span and you're done you would you would be in your grave longer than it would take for this battery to run out now that's only um pacemakers they use plutonium actually and the half-life of it is what it gives it is power now when you think about nuclear batteries you probably think about space shuttles that sort of thing really high-end really dangerous stuff and that's very true they they are but they're also exceedingly interesting because they last such a long time in themselves they have a low energy density during a short period of time but because they last for such a long time they've got huge amounts of energy density and of course we've got quite a lot of nuclear waste so being able to use that nuclear waste in a productive manner like that is what's got everybody kind of excited particularly as bristol and the russians have come up with this diamond battery and that's got a lot of people's imaginations going now i think we're going to make our own nuclear battery because they're surprisingly easy to make you only really need three things you need a smoke alarm the ionization type and you need a transistor now i'm using the 2n 305 2 2nd 305.5 205.5 what is it ah 3055 so i'm using a transistor the 2n 305 5 because these things can be used a straightforward solar cells if you chop off that top connect to the collector which is the tin here and the base of the output legs then you'll get yourself a solar cell when you pop that into the sun because a nuclear battery needs an ionization source and a semiconductor junction and the only other thing it needs is a healthy disregard for your own safety and that of any future children who may be born with two heads if you've got those things then you can make your own nuclear battery actually really easily now what's inside these things is an npn junction these two are the end materials and this one is the p material and you want the np junction now between the base which is this leg here and the case is the np junction that's lying on the top so it's the one that's going to perform the best if you want to make a solar cell you do exactly the same thing just shine it in the sun and you'll get the most out of that particular junction although they'll all work anyway let's take this apart and have a look that's what it looks like on the inside once you've got it open and that tiny square is the semiconductor material and there's some delicate wires going to each pin gonna expose to ambient light and you can see on the pip it's about quarter of a volt if i cover that up then obviously the voltage drops off because i think light responds got myself a torch shine that on and there we go the voltage jumps up so that's the transistor having a photovoltaic effect and like i say alpha voltaics and photovoltaics are not too different from each other so now what we need to do is take our source out of here these which ionizing alarms use americum 241 as their radioactive sauce they collect the um smoke ionize it and that's how the smoke alarm actually works but inside there is a small piece of american dude 41. now americum has a half-life of something like 432 years so just like that little square in the photovoltaic is only going to produce about 70 microamps or so it's not going to produce a huge amount but it's going to do it for 430 years and that's what makes them incredibly energy dense okay so word of warning this is for experimentation purposes only so that i can show you what's going on and it's meant for education illustration and i'm doing it so you don't have to so if you go ahead and do this yourself well on your own head be it it's purely for educational entertainment take your smoke alarm apart you'll have this big black thing in here that's where the actual material is that's just a piezo buzzer and we take that off black thing off you find this red thing here and right in the center there is the americum emitter now it's held in a case covered with foil and covered with a ceramic and so behind it actually the alpha particles can't actually escape it's only from that little dot there that all the other particles are being fired out so if i'm pointing at you you're the one getting the radiation not me so i've got my radioactive material and put it on a stick so it's at the moment emitting alpha particles only in that direction so i have no intention of staring at this like that or pointing it at my genitals what i'm going to do is keep it pointing outwards now we have our transistor here we've got our pip and you can see it's reading about quarter of a volt and that's because of the ambient light if i stick my finger over there so that we can see that it's we got no light going in there and it drops right down to what is more or less zero that's because i'm about to cover it with this so anything that produces is going to be because of the radiation that's coming off of that not because of the ambient light so hahaha there we go we successfully made ourselves a nuclear battery it was alpha voltaic and it was using the same principle as photovoltaic cells do by hitting that np junction with alpha particles and driving a current and that and beta voltaics are the basis for most of the research in nuclear batteries at the moment and as i say this is a demonstration and we now have ourselves a nuclear battery didn't give out a huge amount but it wouldn't do but with americum it will last 432 years so that is going to be pretty energy dense over the lifetime of the battery anyway i hope you enjoyed the video that's how you make your nuclear battery and if you did please remember to like and subscribe

Channel: Robert Murray-Smith

Views: 58,086

Keywords: nuclear, battery, diamond, alphavoltaic, betavoltaic, solar, cell, robert, fwg, tnt

Id: TAAj6_owy3U

Length: 8min 32sec (512 seconds)

Published: Fri May 06 2022