We carry phones that look like small computers in our pockets. The advantages of these devices are limited by the power source behind the technology. As the battery degrades, the clock is no longer valid. It's difficult to make sure a battery is charged and ready to go on a daily basis, and we all forget to plug it in.

It can become quite a chore to make sure my electronics are working when I need them, as a content creator and with cameras, drones, tablets, microphones, and other devices to keep charged. It is difficult to replace the battery in many mobile devices. There's a solution on the way. Nuclear waste and diamonds will be used in a battery revolution.

A collection of different batteries.
Andy Zahn / Digital Trends

There are many problems with batteries from the beginning to the end. The refining and mining of rare materials is a dirty and destructive business. More and more of our wild landscapes will be affected by these impacts.

Our batteries and devices end up in the trash once they die. Sometimes our electronic waste is shipped overseas and ends up in the air and water. A small percentage of our electronics are recycled. The waste could be reduced if batteries didn't degrade so fast.

How nuclear tech could be our solution

Nuclear batteries are the most exciting new battery tech currently being worked on. It would be possible for such batteries to last hundreds of years, or even thousands of years. In the not-so-future, our batteries might last us a long time, but they wouldn't need to be charged.

The ones that might one day find their way into our phones and cars are made of artificial diamonds. There is a lot of science behind these batteries. The radioactive elements are encased in diamonds using chemical Vapor deposition. The diamond acts as a transformer, converting the radiation into electricity.

A microscope image of nano diamonds.
D. Mukherjee/Wikimedia Commons

Nuclear batteries would change the design of the phone. They would make charging ports useless so phones could be waterproof. As artificial diamonds become cheaper to produce, it is possible that our phones will soon be diamond- coated.

Every electronic device we use today could potentially be powered by a nuclear battery. Cars, drones, and evenrobots are just some of the things that have been covered. When you begin to think about it, you realize that the limitations of our current battery design are holding back many aspects of our technology.

The company trying to make nuclear batteries a reality

NDB is an acronym that stands for "Nano Diamond Batteries." According to Dr. Nima Golsharifi, the difference is that NDB uses the radiation from radioactive materials rather than the sunlight.

The disposal of waste from nuclear power plants has been a problem for a long time. It's incredibly expensive to store or dispose of large quantities of this dangerous material. Nuclear batteries NDB is developing are powered by this waste.

The NDB technology logo on a chip.
NDB inc

The purpose of the company is to help the environment by promoting the nuclear energy which is a clean source and in turn supporting it.

Whether or not these batteries are safe is a logical question. There is a potential roadblock to the adoption of nuclear power, but Dr. Golsharifi believes that it can be overcome by educating the public.

The radiation from nuclear batteries is kept out of those tiny diamonds. The NDB's power source prevents the isotope from being accessed in bulk and used for other purposes. Dr. Golsharifi says that this is done by the ion implantation of radioisotopes within the structure.

NDB has done a lot of research to make sure their batteries are safe to use. NDB batteries are not harmful to the environment. Nuclear batteries made of diamonds are likely to be safer than batteries made of Li-ion.

Cost is one of the important questions. There is a product that is made of both diamonds and nuclear material. According to Dr. Golsharifi, the cost is going to fall to $40,000 in 2018? With mass production, NDB expects the price to fall further and eventually be competitively priced with lithium-ion.

Wouldn't you be willing to pay more for a phone you don't need to charge? A car that doesn't need to be refueled. Which device sells their juice back to the grid or lowers your home power bill?

The age-old question of what to do with our nuclear waste could be solved with the help of theNanodiamond batteries.

Nuclear gadgets coming in 2023

We don't know when nuclear batteries will be on the market. NDB plans to have a working product ready by the year 2023. Arkenlight has low-power nuclear batteries in use in monitoring equipment in the Stromboli volcano and a U.K. nuclear waste site. It will be a long time before we see the first batteries in our phones and cars.

It's not a good idea to wait five to 10 years for this technology to become commonplace. It is worth acknowledging how unpredictable bleeding edge tech can be. I see a good reason to be optimistic that one day our batteries will last longer than our phones, and never need to be charged, given that the science behind it is sound, and that minor implementations of these batteries are already out in the field.

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