Re:Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear react...
by waste_monk on Tuesday December 03, 2019 @07:09PM
(#21698314)
I'd accept a thick phone if it had a huge battery life. But then how do you perform waste disposal? People are, largely, irresponsible jackasses who would think nothing of throwing old RTGs into the ocean / landfill / other improper decomissioning methods.
Also the potential damage is a lot higher e.g. if you're in a car accident and the RTG gets punctured vs. just a Li-ion battery catching fire. In terms of cleanup and containment.
Re:Canadian provinces band together to develop nuclear react...
by AnthonyMouse on Wednesday December 04, 2019 @01:28PM
(#21705273)
Using an RTG to power your phone isn't a real suggestion. Lithium batteries can last for a day (especially if you're willing to accept a thicker phone) and the inconvenience of having to charge it while you're asleep is minimal. A more realistic application might be something like military radios where you may want them to keep working for extended periods of time in areas where electricity is not available, and then you have an organizational structure that can take care of proper disposal.
The point is that it's not a scaling problem. It's practical to make an RTG that small as a technical matter.
A small steam turbine is an apparatus with about the size and complexity of a car engine. But if it has to be licensed and inspected by the NRC then you can forget about it.
And you could make a little RTG that could power a phone for a decade. Even with the terrible efficiency of thermoelectric generators it would still be much smaller than a lithium battery that could store the same number of kWh, because it's ~10% of the efficiency multiplied by much more than 10 times the power density. The main limit you hit on size is practicality -- why make a tiny, tiny, tiny one that lasts for a month when you can make an only marginally larger one that lasts for ten years?