Betavoltaics
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Betavoltaics
A betavoltaic device (betavoltaic cell or betavoltaic battery) is a type of nuclear battery which generates electric current from beta particles (electrons) emitted from a radioactive source, using semiconductor junctions. A common source used is the hydrogen isotope tritium. Unlike most nuclear power sources which use nuclear radiation to generate heat which then is used to generate electricity, betavoltaic devices use a non-thermal conversion process, converting the electron-hole pairs produced by the ionization trail of beta particles traversing a semiconductor.A 25-Year Battery: Long-lived nuclear batteries powered by hydrogen isotopes are in testing for military applications
Katherine Bourzac,

Betacel
Betacel is considered to be the first commercially successful betavoltaic battery."Nuclear-Fueled Cardiac Pacemakers," Fred N. Huffman and John C. Norman, CHEST 65, page 667 - 672 (1974). It was developed in the early 1970s by Larry C. Olsen at the American corporation McDonnell Douglas, using the radioisotope Promethium-147 as the beta-electron source coupled to silicon semiconductor cells. This power source was incorporated in the Betacel-Biotronik heart pacemaker. The device was not widely adopted because of its limited lifespan and doubts over the use of radioactive material. Development The betavoltaic program along with the development of the Betacel was led by Dr. Olsen and a team of researchers at Donald W. Douglas Laboratories (DWDL), McDonnell Douglas Corporation, in the early 1970s. As the first (and only) viable betavoltaic power source ever developed, it was immediately used to power heart pacemakers. Betacel powered cardiac pacemakers were implanted in numerous p ...
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Nuclear Battery
An atomic battery, nuclear battery, radioisotope battery or radioisotope generator is a device which uses energy from the decay of a radioactive isotope to generate electricity. Like nuclear reactors, they generate electricity from nuclear energy, but differ in that they do not use a chain reaction. Although commonly called batteries, they are technically not electrochemical and cannot be charged or recharged. They are very costly, but have an extremely long life and high energy density, and so they are typically used as power sources for equipment that must operate unattended for long periods of time, such as spacecraft, pacemakers, underwater systems and automated scientific stations in remote parts of the world. Nuclear battery technology began in 1913, when Henry Moseley first demonstrated a current generated by charged particle radiation. The field received considerable in-depth research attention for applications requiring long-life power sources for space needs during ...
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Promethium
Promethium is a chemical element with the symbol Pm and atomic number 61. All of its isotopes are radioactive; it is extremely rare, with only about 500–600 grams naturally occurring in Earth's crust at any given time. Promethium is one of only two radioactive elements that are followed in the periodic table by elements with stable forms, the other being technetium. Chemically, promethium is a lanthanide. Promethium shows only one stable oxidation state of +3. In 1902 Bohuslav Brauner suggested that there was a then-unknown element with properties intermediate between those of the known elements neodymium (60) and samarium (62); this was confirmed in 1914 by Henry Moseley, who, having measured the atomic numbers of all the elements then known, found that atomic number 61 was missing. In 1926, two groups (one Italian and one American) claimed to have isolated a sample of element 61; both "discoveries" were soon proven to be false. In 1938, during a nuclear experiment conducted a ...
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Health Protection Agency
The Health Protection Agency (HPA) was a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom. It was an organisation that was set up by the UK government in 2003 to protect the public from threats to their health from infectious diseases and environmental hazards. The HPA's role was to provide an integrated approach to protecting public health in the UK. It did this by providing advice and information to the general public, health professionals, and local government and by providing emergency services, support and advice to the National Health Service (NHS) and the Department of Health. The HPA also had a lead role in helping preparations for new and emerging health threats, such as a bioterrorism or in the event of an emerging virulent disease strain. There were four HPA centres – at Porton Down in Salisbury, Chilton in Didcot, South Mimms in Hertfordshire, and Colindale in NW London. In addition, the HPA had regional laboratories across England and administrative headquarte ...
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Half-life
Half-life (symbol ) is the time required for a quantity (of substance) to reduce to half of its initial value. The term is commonly used in nuclear physics to describe how quickly unstable atoms undergo radioactive decay or how long stable atoms survive. The term is also used more generally to characterize any type of exponential (or, rarely, non-exponential) decay. For example, the medical sciences refer to the biological half-life of drugs and other chemicals in the human body. The converse of half-life (in exponential growth) is doubling time. The original term, ''half-life period'', dating to Ernest Rutherford's discovery of the principle in 1907, was shortened to ''half-life'' in the early 1950s. Rutherford applied the principle of a radioactive element's half-life in studies of age determination of rocks by measuring the decay period of radium to lead-206. Half-life is constant over the lifetime of an exponentially decaying quantity, and it is a characteristic unit for ...
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Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never far from the Sun, either as morning star or evening star. Aside from the Sun and Moon, Venus is the brightest natural object in Earth's sky, capable of casting visible shadows on Earth at dark conditions and being visible to the naked eye in broad daylight. Venus is the second largest terrestrial object of the Solar System. It has a surface gravity slightly lower than on Earth and has a very weak induced magnetosphere. The atmosphere of Venus, mainly consists of carbon dioxide, and is the densest and hottest of the four terrestrial planets at the surface. With an atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface of about 92 times the sea level pressure of Earth and a mean temperature of , the carbon dioxide gas at Venus's surface is in the ...
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Power Density
Power density is the amount of power (time rate of energy transfer) per unit volume. In energy transformers including batteries, fuel cells, motors, power supply units etc., power density refers to a volume, where it is often called volume power density, expressed as W/m3. In reciprocating internal combustion engines, power density (power per swept volume or brake horsepower per cubic centimeter) is an important metric, based on the ''internal'' capacity of the engine, not its external size. Examples See also *Surface power density, energy per unit of area *Energy density, energy per unit volume * Specific energy, energy per unit mass * Power-to-weight ratio/specific power, power per unit mass **Specific absorption rate Specific absorption rate (SAR) is a measure of the rate at which energy is absorbed per unit mass by a human body when exposed to a radio frequency (RF) electromagnetic field. It can also refer to absorption of other forms of energy by tissue, inc ... ( ...
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Isotopes Of Nickel
Naturally occurring nickel (28Ni) is composed of five stable isotopes; , , , and , with being the most abundant (68.077% natural abundance). 26 radioisotopes have been characterised with the most stable being with a half-life of 76,000 years, with a half-life of 100.1 years, and with a half-life of 6.077 days. All of the remaining radioactive isotopes have half-lives that are less than 60 hours and the majority of these have half-lives that are less than 30 seconds. This element also has 8 meta states. List of isotopes , - , , style="text-align:right" , 28 , style="text-align:right" , 20 , 48.01975(54)# , 10# ms 500 ns, , , 0+ , , , - , , style="text-align:right" , 28 , style="text-align:right" , 21 , 49.00966(43)# , 13(4) ms 2(+5−3) ms, , , 7/2−# , , , - , , style="text-align:right" , 28 , style="text-align:right" , 22 , 49.99593(28)# , 9.1(18) ms , β+ , 50Co , 0+ , , , - , , style="text-align:right" , ...
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Artificial Pacemaker
An artificial cardiac pacemaker (or artificial pacemaker, so as not to be confused with the natural cardiac pacemaker) or pacemaker is a medical device that generates electrical impulses delivered by electrodes to the chambers of the heart either the upper atria, or lower ventricles to cause the targeted chambers to contract and pump blood. By doing so, the pacemaker regulates the function of the electrical conduction system of the heart. The primary purpose of a pacemaker is to maintain an adequate heart rate, either because the heart's natural pacemaker is not fast enough, or because there is a block in the heart's electrical conduction system. Modern pacemakers are externally programmable and allow a cardiologist, particularly a cardiac electrophysiologist, to select the optimal pacing modes for individual patients. Most pacemakers are on demand, in which the stimulation of the heart is based on the dynamic demand of the circulatory system. Others send out a fixed rate of ...
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Laptop Computers
A laptop, laptop computer, or notebook computer is a small, portable personal computer (PC) with a screen and alphanumeric keyboard. Laptops typically have a clam shell form factor with the screen mounted on the inside of the upper lid and the keyboard on the inside of the lower lid, although 2-in-1 PCs with a detachable keyboard are often marketed as laptops or as having a "laptop mode". Laptops are folded shut for transportation, and thus are suitable for mobile use. They are so named because they can be practically placed on a person's lap when being used. Today, laptops are used in a variety of settings, such as at work, in education, for playing games, web browsing, for personal multimedia, and for general home computer use. As of 2022, in American English, the terms ''laptop computer'' and ''notebook computer'' are used interchangeably; in other dialects of English, one or the other may be preferred. Although the terms ''notebook computers'' or ''notebooks'' o ...
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Cell Phones
A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link while the user is moving within a telephone service area. The radio frequency link establishes a connection to the switching systems of a mobile phone operator, which provides access to the public switched telephone network (PSTN). Modern mobile telephone services use a cellular network architecture and, therefore, mobile telephones are called ''cellular telephones'' or ''cell phones'' in North America. In addition to telephony, digital mobile phones ( 2G) support a variety of other services, such as text messaging, multimedia messagIng, email, Internet access, short-range wireless communications (infrared, Bluetooth), business applications, video games and digital photography. Mobile phones offering only those capabilities are known as fea ...
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Trickle Charging
Trickle charging means charging a fully charged battery at a rate equal to its self-discharge rate, thus enabling the battery to remain at its fully charged level; this state occurs almost exclusively when the battery is not loaded, as trickle charging will not keep a battery charged if current is being drawn by a load. A battery under continuous float voltage charging is said to be float-charging. For lead-acid batteries under no load float charging (such as in SLI batteries), trickle charging happens naturally at the end-of-charge, when the lead-acid battery internal resistance to the charging current increases enough to reduce additional charging current to a trickle, hence the name. In such cases, the trickle charging equals the energy expended by the lead-acid battery splitting the water in the electrolyte into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Other battery chemistries, such as lithium-ion battery A lithium-ion or Li-ion battery is a type of rechargeable battery which uses th ...
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