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posted by CoolHand on Tuesday November 29 2016, @10:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the diamonds-are-our-best-friend dept.

[Converting] Carbon-14 from nuclear waste to long life battery.

From engadget

Nuclear waste is normally a major environmental headache, but it could soon be a source of clean energy. Scientists have developed a method of turning that waste into batteries using diamond.

From treehugger

"There are no moving parts involved, no emissions generated and no maintenance required, just direct electricity generation," said Professor of Materials Tom Scott. "By encapsulating radioactive material inside diamonds, we turn a long-term problem of nuclear waste into a nuclear-powered battery and a long-term supply of clean energy."

From newatlas

One unexpected example of this is the Bristol team's work on a major source of nuclear waste from Britain's aging Magnox reactors, which are now being decommissioned after over half a century of service. These first generation reactors used graphite blocks as moderators to slow down neutrons to keep the nuclear fission process running, but decades of exposure have left the UK with 95,000 tonnes (104,720 tons) of graphite blocks that are now classed as nuclear waste because the radiation in the reactors changes some of the inert carbon in the blocks into radioactive carbon-14.

Presumably other beta emitters could be wrapped in diamond shells creating a common class of Betavoltaic nuclear batteries. Although the diamond in a diamond seems an elegant technical solution.


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:24AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 30 2016, @11:24AM (#434859)

    Theoretically C14 could be used for dirty bombs but it would only leave some radioactive soot and radioactive CO2 it would not be very effective (CO2 would quickly dilute with little lasting effects). Also vaporizing diamonds would require a lot of energy. Another problem C14 has half life of 5k years so you would need a lot of it to have some serious radioactivity. Best isotopes for dirty bombs would have half lives around 10 to 100yrs (too short and it will decay too fast, too long and there will be not enough radiation at all or people in attacked area won't have to clean all of it to make area somewhat safe) and have mix of several elements to make clean-up harder.

    Unrelated: have this nice chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14#/media/File:Radiocarbon_bomb_spike.svg [wikipedia.org]

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