Power tech: A battery inside a diamond

Fuel is limited. The liquid powering your car is expected to run out within our lifetime. The electricity coursing through the Christmas lights has become precious enough for politicians to promise it and your phone, with its giant screen and a camera capable enough of framing your face by the waterfall, needs its fix every evening. The world, it appears, is hungry for power. Take the United States, for example. The country makes up for less than five per cent of world population but consumes 26 per cent of the planet’s energy. Solutions must be immediate and radical. In that spirit, the University of Bristol has unveiled a battery that can last for thousands of years. It uses nuclear waste and the battery is an actual diamond — fantastic.

The researchers have admitted that the power produced by their invention is low when compared to what today’s batteries are capable of but the trade-off is remarkable. The ‘Bristol diamond battery’ has no moving parts, no emissions and will never need maintenance. Such a battery can be invaluable for pacemakers, Space travel and even an Iron Man suit.

But don’t let the ‘radioactive waste’ part alarm you. Nuclear reactors generate heat using extremely radioactive uranium rods. One can control these radioactive rods by placing them in blocks of graphite and after several years of exposure, these graphite blocks themselves become radioactive. Everything is a dense nest of heat and controlled reactions until the nuclear plant is decommissioned and dismantled. Now, the clean disposal of these graphite blocks is crucial for the environment. Which makes the Bristol battery rather special.

The scientists realised that they can actually use this disposed graphite by heating it up. High temperatures turn the radioactive carbon into gas and the gas is then collected and compressed with enough force to form an industrial diamond. This jewel is the key.

The Bristol team found that the diamond is capable of generating a small electrical discharge. Yes, the output is low but imagine the industrial uses of a power source that can last, according to estimates, a whopping 5,730 years. If the Egyptians had used these little nuggets inside the pyramids of Giza, they would still have lights on. Your average AA battery has in it about 13,000 Joules. But the diamond batteries — despite their daily output of just 15 Joules — can produce over 20 million Joules in its lifetime.

Everyday use is still a few years away. A pacemaker running on a power source that can last 5,000 years can be very expensive. This battery then, is for the future, when everything else, has run out.