A nuclear battery with a photovoltaic cell capable of generating electricity for hundreds of years. It sounds like science fiction, but China could soon make it a reality. In an article published in the magazine Nature, Asian scientists claim to have achieved a result that until recently was considered a mirage. If confirmed, its conclusions would be potentially extraordinary for the global objectives of the energy transition.
The investigation was carried out by the team of Professor Wang Shuao, from Soochow University in Suzhou, a province of almost 13 million inhabitants not far from Shanghai, together with the team of researchers from the Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology and the University from Xiangtan. They designed a nuclear battery with an embedded layer that works like a solar panel to optimally take advantage of alpha radiation. In this way, the main obstacle to the use of alpha radioisotopes in the development of micronuclear batteries is overcome, that is, the capacity with which they lose energy through self-absorption; an effect of its brief penetration into solids.
“One of the most significant discoveries in decades”
“This self-absorption significantly reduces the effective energy production of the tested alpha radioisotope micronuclear batteries to levels much lower than theoretical expectations,” explains Wang. According to the media South China Morning Post, The team would have managed to incorporate an “integrated energy converter”, a polymer layer that surrounds the isotopes and that transmits the energy released during radiation, converting it into lightand then transformed into electricity, like a photovoltaic cell.
Using just 11 microcuries of the synthetic radioactive chemical 243Am, the specialists produced a bombardment of visible ionizing radiation from alpha rays emitted by the decay of the isotope. In additional experiments they determined that the power was 11.88 novawatts, with a conversion efficiency from decay energy to light reaching 3.43%. A figure that the study of Nature considered “impressive.” According to the researchers, the power converter is exceptionally stable, with performance parameters almost unchanged over 200 hours of continuous operation; The battery could have a useful life of several centuries. The newspaper Science Technology Daily of China hailed the achievement as “one of the most significant advances in nuclear batteries in decades.”
The professor of Experimental Particle Physics at Cambridge will be the successor of the current director Fabiola Gianotti.
Renewables and nuclear energy: impressive figures
The study is in accordance with the strategic objectives set by the Chinese government and the Communist Party regarding energy security and the use of nuclear energy as a renewable energy source. China connected its first civilian reactor to the grid in 1991, about three decades after the US. However, Beijing is now 10 to 15 years ahead of Washington. in the development of fourth generation nuclear technology, suggests the think tank Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. The Asian country is also building conventional reactors much faster. Approximately 45% of the 60 plants under construction worldwide are located in China.
President Xi Jinping hopes to reduce his dependence on oil and gas imports by turning to nuclear energy, which is cleaner than fossil fuels. It is no coincidence that Beijing is also recording notable figures in renewable energy: according to the latest report from tracker Global Energy Monitor, the amount of wind and solar energy under construction in China is almost double that of the rest of the world. Beijing has 180 gigavolts of commercial-scale solar power under construction and 159 gigavolts of wind power. This raises both energies to 339 gigavolts; For comparison, in the US there are only 40 gigavolts in buildings.
The data only refers to solar parks with a capacity of at least 20 megavolts, which means that the total volume of solar energy in China could be much higher. Small-scale parks represent around 40% of the Asian giant’s solar capacity. The People’s Republic not only confirms its global leadership in the production of renewable energyalso on a monstrous scale: between March 2023 and March 2024, it installed more solar energy than it installed in the previous three years combined, and more than the rest of the world combined by 2023. Everything indicates that it will recover 1,200 gigavolts of wind and solar capacity by the end of 2024, six years ahead of the long-established 2030 goal.
Compared to wind turbines and solar panels, sectors that also dominate in terms of exports, nuclear energy offers the possibility of continuous and “autonomous” energy production, disconnected from nature. Not surprisingly, China aims to increase the percentage of electricity produced by nuclear plants from the current 5% to 18% by 2060. Having a battery capable of producing electricity for hundreds of years could be a definitive game-changer.
Article originally published in WIRED Italy. Adapted by Alondra Flores.
#China #working #battery #hundreds #years #powered #nuclear #energy
