“By simplifying production and boosting sustainability, the new method could enable the development of transformative diamond-based technologies.”

Another find—-Intercrystals
https://phys.org/news/2025-05-intercrystals-pave-greener-electronics-quantum.html

“Our discovery opens a new path for material design,” said Eva Andrei, Board of Governors Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences and lead author of the study.

Slicingonions: I have to admit I picked this story up too quickly. Normally I question such things, but this seemed too reasonable, at first look. My readers have made me very doubtful about it. I would not have linked to it with what I know now.

My one excuse is my unfailing desire to be optimistic. If this worked, the potential was staggering.

https://youtu.be/GJz0T7lCWRg

This has been around now for several years and apparently through a phenomenon identified by Rossi it is still pumping out more energy than it uses. (?)

However your calculations are a bit off. It’s worse than you said: 1kg pure C14 would produce about 1W of decay energy.

If you could somehow harness all the electrons being produced by beta decay, the current is 0.022mA. A typical AA battery will produce 50mA current. So you’d need 2,300 kg of your C14 “batteries” to equal a single AA.

And that’s assuming they can produce pure C14.

Are you kidding? The most expensive diamonds ever created with a half-life of thousands of years powering objects longer than humans have been walking will be worth millions Per unit. Landfill full of diamonds will not be a problem, in fact a non-exhaustible consumer products will prevent items going to the landfill. If anything, it’ll provide the cheap energy from “atomic sources” is that we’ve been promised for 70 years. Enough energy to remove and recycle all landfills on earth…
OK, I’m just dreaming. The purpose of politicians is to provide themselves with permanent importance by not solving problems. That’s why Bob promotes private solutions because no government agency will purposely work themselves out of a job, but will find a way to increase their pay by increasing the size of the problem and keep it going for generations even though a solution is at hand. If any problem is solved and their job is no longer needed, then a problem that doesn’t exist will be created like global warming, or a war.

Galen Windsor, a nuclear engineer that pioneered the nuclear energy industry, describes political solutions to nonexistent problems with the intent of controlling the most energy dense material on earth. Whistle blower from the VHS days.
https://atomicinsights.com/galen-winsor-asks-who-owns-the-plutonium-how-much-is-it-worth/
His videos are becoming hard to find being scrubbed from the Internet. He does things not thought possible with radioactive materials. He will make you question, with logic, everything you think you know about nuclear materials.
He also was part of the investigation into the 3 mile accident that he determined to be intentional sabotage to induce fear for the purposes of propaganda.

Self charging batteries are only the stuff of science fiction. Light saber, die lithium batteries, ancient active space defense weapons platforms from prior civilization, zero point energy modules that power entire cities type of stuff…
It’s hard to imagine that it might be possible in our lifetime, inexhaustible energy source will truly make the entire solar system at our fingertips.

The best part is they’re using carbon 14 which is everywhere in nature, including a considerable amount of the carbon in your own body.
Should someone with evil intent place a double A battery in a shotgun to force it open with kinetic energy, the shards will still be too heavy to be carried in the air and can be easily cleaned/vacuumed up. Minimal protection clothing will be needed.

In-fact, the lefts attacks on anything nuclear is one of the reasons I got out of the field.

However, I sure like this idea!

Reprocessing of graphite really enhances the use of radio tracers in environmental and medical research.

Fun description of them.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xY06PT5JDE
14:36
Electroboom discusses thermo electric generators.

This is a very interesting concept and technology. They claim any radioactive material is safely encapsulated in diamonds. It sounds like it would be very hard to get to any dangerous material, but nothing is impossible and people will find a way. Diamonds can cut diamonds and diamond cutters are available. They say a bad actor couldn’t get the material in a form that is useful, but all that has to happen is for the the public to get terrorized with some threats and radiation detected near a school.

So I doubt regulators would allow it in mass produced consumer devices. A more likely application might be replacing RTGs or, depending on how much energy it can produce, competing with something like the small fission reactor that Los Alamos developed (that I think was posted here on BtB).

It would be great to have forever batteries though.

On to the nuclear side. As Sippin_bourbon was talking about the RTGs and he is right. I know our RTGs use Plutonium-238 and we get the heat from alpha decay, converted to electricty by piezo-electric quartz, for a half-life of about 80 years. The enclosure of the NDB in carbon-12 reminds me of the glass mixture that is used to encase waste. They better make that NDB tough with a beta decay product.

Heinlein also warned against putting spent fuel/radioactive waste out of reach for this very reason. You never know what might be able to be done with it.

Shipstone.

And a lot more will be needed to get it past the “Radioactive! AAIIIEEEEEEE!!!!!” crowd.

(sarcasm… I can imagine the cost would be prohibitive).

Will they be better and safer than RTGs?