I was concerned about what happens when someone accidentally throws away a device with a fresh battery, but this:
The BV100 harnesses energy from the radioactive decay of its nickel-63 core. The two-micron thick core, sandwiched between two 10-micron thick diamond semiconductors
makes me feel a bit better. That really isn’t much radioactive material. Still, it’d be good to see some environmental impact studies done in some worst case scenarios.
It has to be. Making a big one is effectively impossible, the amount of shielding needed goes up much faster than the amount of radioactive material used.
Without any expertise, I’m going to say that minuscule amounts of radioactive nickel from your CR2032 replacements compared to wasted lithium on pretty much every battery your all current devices have plus single use LiIon-cells on e-cigs, single use toys and whatever is a pretty good improvement. In 100 years or so all that nickel is converted to copper with small amounts of radiation and heat as byproducts, in today’s technology, is pretty good.
And the radiation is beta-negative. I’m not an nuclear physicist, but if I’m not mistaken your common 3032 cell has enough metal to shield pretty much all of the radiation. Just don’t eat them and maybe stick with li-ion on your wrist watch.
I was concerned about what happens when someone accidentally throws away a device with a fresh battery, but this:
makes me feel a bit better. That really isn’t much radioactive material. Still, it’d be good to see some environmental impact studies done in some worst case scenarios.
It has to be. Making a big one is effectively impossible, the amount of shielding needed goes up much faster than the amount of radioactive material used.
Without any expertise, I’m going to say that minuscule amounts of radioactive nickel from your CR2032 replacements compared to wasted lithium on pretty much every battery your all current devices have plus single use LiIon-cells on e-cigs, single use toys and whatever is a pretty good improvement. In 100 years or so all that nickel is converted to copper with small amounts of radiation and heat as byproducts, in today’s technology, is pretty good.
And the radiation is beta-negative. I’m not an nuclear physicist, but if I’m not mistaken your common 3032 cell has enough metal to shield pretty much all of the radiation. Just don’t eat them and maybe stick with li-ion on your wrist watch.