NanoDiamond Battery

An energy startup called Nano Diamond Battery says it’s making progress on a battery technology powered by small pieces of nuclear waste that will blow any energy density comparison out of the water, lasting anywhere from a decade to 28,000 years without ever needing a charge. The California firm said their NDB Battery is a “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery.”

The heart of each cell is a small piece of recycled nuclear waste. The energy comes from waste graphite that was previously used in graphite-cooled nuclear reactors. NDB uses the graphite nuclear reactor parts that have absorbed radiation from nuclear fuel rods and have themselves become radioactive.

NDB takes this graphite, purifies it and uses it to create tiny carbon-14 diamonds which act both as a semiconductor and heat sink. To create a battery cell, several layers of this nano-diamond material are stacked up and stored with a tiny integrated circuit board and a small supercapacitor to collect, store and instantly distribute the charge.

Diamond is the hardest material known to man. It also has the highest energy conductivity, meaning it quickly transfers heat from the radioactive graphite. So the diamond layers not only collect charge, but also prevent radiation leakage. Since the carbon-14 isotopes have half-life times in the range of thousands of years and diamonds are virtually indestructible, NDB felt confident making this bombastic marketing claim. “This battery has two different merits,” NDB CEO and co-founder Nima Golsharifi said in an interview with Future Net-Zero. “One is that it uses nuclear waste and converts it into something good. And the second is that it runs for a much longer time than the current batteries.”

The product will come in two versions. The “forever” version that is supposed to last 28,000 years before it runs out of charge. This hard-core version is meant for niche applications, such as deep space where it could power instruments onboard spacecraft and satellites. These spacecraft, for instance, could be sent to other star systems on centuries-long voyages and they would still have enough power to beam back messages. There is also a consumer version, meant for powering electric vehicles, smartphones, and other small devices. Since the graphite would be wrapped in multiple coatings of synthetic diamond, there would be no radiation leaking out of your phone. NDB even claims that the radiation levels emitted by the cells will be less than those emitted by the human body.

NDB says its nano-diamond batteries will absolutely upend the energy equation, acting like tiny nuclear generators. They will give off less radiation than the human body, according to the company. They will be nigh-on indestructible and totally safe in an electric car crash. And in some applications, like electric cars, they stand to be considerably cheaper than current lithium-ion packs despite their huge advantages. if what the company’s execs are saying holds up, it could be a game changer and would revolutionize everything from electric transportation to personal electronics.