NDB's — Totally Safe — Nuclear-Waste Battery Could Power Future Gadgets for Up to 28,000 Years

An energy-focused startup claims to have developed a battery which can run for up to 28,000 years using — perfectly safe, it reassures would-be users — waste by-products from the nuclear power industry: NDB's eponymous nano diamond battery.

Powering devices off the grid can prove a challenge, particularly where solar — the most popular renewable source for off-grid sensor networks and other Internet of Things (IoT) applications — isn't available. NDB's solution: A battery which simply keeps running for, it claims, 28,000 years — even in high-drain fields like automotive and consumer electronics.

"NDB is a high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery that can provide device life-long and green energy for numerous applications and overcome limitations of the existing energy creation/distribution solutions," the company claims. "It can be used to power fields such as automotive, consumer electronics, sensors, space machinery, and other electronics powered by a chemical battery. In brief, NDB is a safe, high-powered, green and versatile solution to the globally growing energy demand made from recycled nuclear waste."

That latter is key to its green credentials: The NDB batteries are produced using radioactive isotopes harvested from nuclear waste, in particular radiation-contaminated graphite. Using its in-house proprietary blend of nano-scale synthetic diamond, the natural decay of the isotopes — which do not expose the user to dangerous levels of radiation — produces usable energy, with no emissions and without any input beyond a supply of fresh air.

As to how long a battery could last, that depends: The company is working on prototypes which it claims could run for between six and nine years, but suggests that the same technology could be used to produce a battery — an expensive battery, to be sure — which could power a space probe for 28,000 years.

The technology isn't quite ready for prime-time yet, however: A switch from natural to synthetic diamonds, announced by the company in August last year, was shown to boost the efficiency of a prototype battery from 15 percent to 40 percent — but the company admits it could be three years or more before a commercial device is offered. It has also not yet answered claims from critics that the technology is unlikely to ever result in a useful amount of energy or to outperform existing betavoltaic technology.

More information on the technology is available on NDB's website.