Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production
floo@retrolemmy.com 1 month agoThey decay into copper, which can be easily recycled.
Comment on Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production
floo@retrolemmy.com 1 month agoThey decay into copper, which can be easily recycled.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Yeah, but it’s radioactive nickel-63 for many decades until it all decays.
WoodScientist@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
There’s radioactive and then there’s radioactive. It beta decays with particles that would only penetrate 5 cm of air or .01 cm of tissue.
You could get a thousand of these batteries, grind them up into a powder, explode them in a crowded place as an improvised dirty bomb…and you would still cause less harm than if you did the same with countless chemicals you can buy at the hardware store.
There are many forms of radiation. Something like this going into a landfill is perfectly safe.
floo@retrolemmy.com 1 month ago
Yeah, that’s how the battery works.
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 1 month ago
Which is why your suggestion of simply recycling copper won’t work. You don’t have copper, you have a radioactive alloy.
floo@retrolemmy.com 1 month ago
Not after 50 or so years. Then it’s just non-radioactive copper.
markinov@lemmygrad.ml 1 month ago
And that nickel-63 can be recycled to make new batteries.