Homeland security personnel follow very closely the efforts to develop a battery that can last a lot more , dramatically than anything that exists today. According to Homeland security news wire , experts in nuclear physics at the University of Surrey have helped develop research toward a “nuclear battery,” which could revolutionize the concept of portable power by packing in up to a million times more energy compared to a conventional battery.

A University of Surrey release reports that by capturing charged particles in a special storage ring the experts have solved a long-standing problem of how to understand the fundamental structure of an unstable isotope of bismuth, Bi-212, with potential far-reaching consequences. Professor Phil Walker, of the University’s Department of Physics, said: “The new understanding gives us confidence in the nuclear theory, which guides us to the next step of experimentation. It is hoped that this may, in the longer term, lead to the ability to control a form of trapped nuclear energy, with the ability to release the energy on demand.”

Catching the bismuth ions in a storage ring has enabled, for the first time, direct observation of the trapped energy state, resolving a previous inconsistency with theory. Now, the theory can be used reliably to predict other properties of this isotope, and this suggests possible ways to release the trapped energy — which would be a key to unlocking the nuclear battery concept.

Working at the GSI accelerator laboratory in Darmstadt, Germany, an international team of scientists has studied a long-lived excited state, or energy trap, associated with the isotope Bi-212.

The bismuth ions were created by high-energy nuclear collisions and focused into the GSI storage ring, where individual ions were observed as they circulated for several minutes at a time. This capability — observing individual charged atoms over extended periods of time — is world-wide unique to the GSI storage ring, and is opening up a range of scientific investigations into the fundamental properties of materials.

http://i-hls.com/2013/03/nuclear-battery/

The nuclear battery on the rover Curiosity must be a beauty, it’s used by date is 2026, it can power the rover for 14 years.

And it’s not very big, could easily fit in the family home, mass production would bring the price down to affordable levels and we would be in a new sunlit upland free of power poles and big transmission towers and ugly wind farms and piddling solar pannels.
What a wonderful world it would be.

Peak Warming Man said:

And it’s not very big, could easily fit in the family home, mass production would bring the price down to affordable levels and we would be in a new sunlit upland free of power poles and big transmission towers and ugly wind farms and piddling solar pannels.
What a wonderful world it would be.

It still needs to get its energy from somewhere, so it would be ideal for use in conjunction with ugly wind farms and piddling solar panels; in fact it would make any energy source that required digging stuff up totally uneconomic.

A wonderful world indeed.

Mars Rover, Curiosity has recently landed on the Mars Surface. The Mars rover had almost 899 kg weight including 80 kg of scientific instruments. It is 2.9 m long by 2.7 m wide by 2.2 m in height. Are you curious to know how the Curiosity rover travels on the Mars? What is the power source used in the rover. How The power system works? Curiosity is powered by a new version of the same power technology used by Viking 1 and Viking 2 Mars landers in 1976. The Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG). Radioisotope Power systems are electric generator which user plutonium-238,as energy source. Plutonium-238, which is an non-fissile isotope of plutonium. The natural decay of plutonium-238 liberates heat energy. It is a radioactive isotope of plutonium with a half-life of 87.7 years. It is a very powerful alpha emitter and that does not emit significant amount of other harmful radiations. Thats why they are used in RTGs. Thermocouples are used to convert this heat energy to electricity. Thermocouples are working on the principles of seebeck effect. In a circuit consisting of two dissimilar metals such as iron and constantan, if the two junctions 1 and 2 of the metals are maintained at different temperatures T1 and T2, an emf is generated in the circuit. Because of this emf current flows in the circuit. The pair of junctions formed by two dissimilar metals in thermal contact is a thermocouple. A thermocouple could provide constant power during all reasons and through the day and night. But a thermocouple is unable to convert all the heat energy generated from plutonium decay. The waste energy is used to warm systems in the Rover. There are 32 cubes of plutonium-238 dioxide inside the Mars rover. The total 4.8 kg of the fuel is supplied by the US Department of Energy. Curiosity’s power generator, Multi Mission radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (MMRTG) is the latest RTG built by Boeing and Idaho National laboratory. One gran of plutonium-238 generates approximately 0.5 watts of power. Thus It is capable to produce 125 watts of electrical power from about 2000 watts of thermal power at the start of the mission. As plutonium fuel decays its efficiency also decreases and reaches an electrical output of 100 watts. The Curiosity also holds a solar panel, which is capable to produce about 2.1 MJ (0.6 Kilowatt hours) per day. But the RTG system is capable to generate 9 MJ (2.6 kilowatt hours) per day. There are two recharge Lithium-ion batteries having capacity 42 amp-hours to provide extra power to the rover when the demand exceeds the generator’s limited output.

http://www.physicist.in/2013/02/mmrtg-power-generator-in-curiosity.html

i could run my place on two of these.

you could probably build a nuclear battery if you wanted if you had something like 20,000 dollars and a few years of spare time

nuclear materials needed are freely available

> have solved a long-standing problem of how to understand the fundamental structure of an unstable isotope of bismuth, Bi-212, with potential far-reaching consequences …

This has nothing whatever to do with batteries.

It has to do with problems in the theory of how gluons hold nuclei together. The standard models began with the water drop model and the shell model, and these two were quickly combined into an ad-hoc hybrid model of the atomic nucleus. This still has problems, and presumably Bi-212 was one of those problems. Nice it it has been resolved – very nice as this affects the stability and properties of the (still unconfirmed) superheavy elements of the two islands of stability predicted initially by the shell model.