Sounds like clickbait

Went there, read the article.  The takeaway is 1: It's not an actual product yet, 2: Never heard of this company, it's website indicates it is mostly an "investment opportunity" at this point

All available research on Google lists this story appearing only in classic clickbait sites, and three years ago Snopes debunked the idea of this being an actual product, saying that while it is theoretically possible, the technology to actually manufacture these things doesn't exist, much less anyone actually producing them.

My considered opinion is that this it the type of mail you toss in the bin rather than put money behind. 

I don't expect those batteries to be available during my lifetime, if for no other reason except that getting permits to process radioactive materials and resell them to the general public is going to be exceedingly difficult and is unlikely to succeed until the money to build the plant has been actually spent and a very small sample produced and examined by the federal government to determine that 1: they work, and 2: they can't be repurposed into a dirty bomb of some sort.

Janet N.

The miracle battery for dead

The miracle battery for dead rail is still years off, probably many years.

I had not gone that far into

I had not gone that far into researching it. I guess its correct to be very skeptical, but who knows in these days?

I keep hoping that a combination of new energy collection and storage technologies will out grow our old coal and oil days.

I'll believe it...

... when Elon Musk invests in it.

He said recently he expects battery energy density to increase by 50% in 4-5 years.

Charge an iPhone 5 times in an hour? "Instantly available" power? have you ever seen an iPhone battery short out first-hand? I have. I don't want a 5x larger event like that anywhere near me. 

...and nuclear? Are you kidding me? My mother worked in K10 in Oak Ridge,  and my dad worked on the nuclear jet engine project.

No thanks. It's not for casual use.

Meet the Inventor

found this kind of interesting,..
https://www.prescouter.com/2018/04/meet-inventor-nuclear-waste-powered/

That looks exactly like ANOTHER clickbait site

Wow.  Please do your research before posting about this sort of stuff.

I'm just gonna stop there. 

Janet N.

Not clickbait at all - both are reputed sites and state facts

This is something I've done a lot of reading about. Both New Atlas and PreScouter are very reliable sources of info. The researcher in the interview forecasts it taking at least 6 years before we see something like this being applied. It's a promising tech, but still is undergoing a lot of research!

beware

Notice that the above post is by a brand new member. I suspect the click-baiters have detected the links dropped to their site, and a hired web-troll has arrived to defend their 'technology'.

Any money anyone "invests" in this is going to pay the salary of the shysters running the scam, or the web trolls they hire to provide verisimilitude. And the technology is always going to be six years away, as long as their are rubes to be found.

Pro tip: real legitimate investment ideas are not offered over the internet to individual investors.

If it sounds to good to be

If it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.  And remember what PT Barnum said too.  nuff said.  

Read through it ...

If you read through it you find ...

1. They're at least 3 yrs away from the first prototypes to start testing.
2. They're 6-10 years away from a marketable product.
3. Given this uses spent nuclear fuel (see that radioactive symbol?), getting government approval for consumer use could be tough.
4. They don't know yet what the cost will be.

Bottom line, 6 years to never. Don't even know how safe it is yet. It's currently a crazy idea and not much more.

Everything isn't a conspiracy theory...

I am an undercover agent working to debunk bad comments about companies :D. I will change the world.

Inventor's interview

Looking back thru that 'interview' with the British inventor I didn't see the case where he was overselling the idea like some carnival barker. He had a measured approach, ....even to the point that it just might not work, ....particularly in a commercial sense. And it appeared to me he had some reasonable timetables as to how the tech might evolve.

One thing I am confused about is how this technology now seems to be a product of an American company when it began in a British university. Maybe the snake oil sales approach is a product of American involvement?

Reading the Wiki entry on

Reading the Wiki entry on this device, they haven't even made one with the carbon (C14) core yet. The only ones that have even been prototyped are made with nickel (N63)

Note that this Wikipedia article caries several warnings as to the veracity of the statements...

Having read through the article I would argue that it's not properly called a battery, but rather a "micro-generator", best applied as a tiny "trickle charger" for more conventional storage devices...  and at a rate of 100μW, it's not going to be the miracle energy source fpr widespread application to "dead rail".

I'm not enough of an electrician to do the math, but it might be interesting to compare the charge capability of the NDB to the typical self-discharge rate of a Lithium battery

Yep, pretty telling

This editorial comment on the Wikipedia entry for the "diamond batter" pretty much punches a hole in most of the claims ...

Some Maths*

Let's figure it out.

Say a battery loco is running an average of 1/2 hour on 6V at 100mA.

P = Power I = Current V = Volts

P = I X V

P = 0.1 X 6

P = 0.6 W

WH  = Watt Hours t = Time

WH = P X t

WH = 0.6 X 0.5

WH = 0.3

For this unit to recharge this battery at its rated output of 100uW 0r 0.0001W.

t = required charge / supplied charge

t = 0.3 / 0.0001

t = 3,000

Therefore it would take 3,000 hours (125 days) to charge the Loco Battery!

Not really practical I would think!

* Hey I am Australian so "Maths" it is!

Dick Tracy radio watches then.........

........Apple and other smart watches now.  Why is everyone today such a "doubting Thomas"?  Li-Po batteries now............Nuclear Batteries tomorrow!  I guess you youngsters here will see......

Peter

Dick Tracy watch

The Dick Tracy watch was “invented” in 1946.  The smart watches that actually worked (for a reasonable definition of worked) came out around 2015.  That’s 69 years later.  I kind of doubt we’ll be using radioactive power sources in our model locos 70 years from now, but I do expect battery technology to have progressed significantly by then.  Maybe even significantly enough that dead rail might be practical for medium to large layouts.

I hope to get my new layout operational a bit sooner than that though. 

DeBunked by an Austrailian

This guy is fun to watch - he's debunked a lot of the BS stuff you see on the internet.  As most of these things - there is a tiny bit of truthful science behind it.  But, at least for now - there's no practical way to make it useful, or any different than already existing products.

gs

dead rail. heck even if they

dead rail. heck even if they could make these to replace the very heavy lead acid in my rv. ( lipo) is way over priced and it is real. the so-called “solid state” are a farce. if they want you to invest. give me the moneys, it would go to a legal use.