Today I learned that we have something called nuclear batteries. For more than 50 years. James Blanchard talks about the genesis of these batteries, why don’t we use them anymore, what are its current applications, and more.
In 1970, surgeons in Paris implanted the first nuclear-powered pacemaker, and over the next five years, at least 1,400 additional people received the devices, mostly in France and the United States. Encased in titanium, the batteries for these devices contained a radioactive isotope—typically about a tenth of a gram of plutonium-238—and could operate for decades without maintenance. The invention provided relief to a population of people who previously needed surgery every few years to change out their pacemaker’s chemical battery.
Technically, they are not nuclear. They are radioisotopes.
The term “nuclear batteries” may evoke images of tiny nuclear reactors, but that’s not how they work. Nuclear batteries don’t split atoms with neutron bombardment. Instead, they capture energy in the form of radiation that’s spontaneously released when atomic nuclei decay.
Most research groups developing nuclear batteries are focused on harnessing energy from radioactive isotopes of nickel and hydrogen. In many nuclear battery designs, adjacent semiconductors absorb the radiation released by the radioisotopes’ nuclei and convert it to an electric current, much like a solar cell does. In other designs, thermoelectric devices convert the heat produced by the emitted radiation to electricity. So “radioisotope power source” is a better descriptor than “nuclear battery,” but for ease of language, I’ll use these terms interchangeably.
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