Hardcore Blogger Hand-Makes Nuclear Battery: Can It Really Power a Console to Play Games?
YouTube blogger DoubleMInnovations shared in their latest video that they successfully created a miniature nuclear battery using commercially available materials in their studio, and after prolonged charging, they were able to start a game console and play a round of "Super Mario."
The principle behind this nuclear battery is not traditional nuclear fission, but rather based on the beta-voltaic effect. Double M Innovations purchased multiple glow-in-the-dark tubes containing the radioactive isotope tritium, which are commonly found in keychains and watches.
During decay, tritium continuously releases β particles (i.e., high-speed electrons). The blogger combined these tritium tubes with solid-state photovoltaic solar panels, using the photons generated by tritium decay to strike the solar panels to produce current.
Since the amount of electricity generated each time is extremely small, only enough to light an LED or power a low-power sensor, the blogger used a circuit to store the current in a capacitor. After prolonged charging, they successfully started the game console.
Tritium has a half-life of approximately 12.3 years, meaning this DIY battery can continue to output power stably for decades without needing to be charged or externally powered.
Double M Innovations points out that there are two major bottlenecks preventing nuclear batteries from becoming widespread: one is that the cost of generating the same amount of electricity is much higher than traditional lithium batteries, and the other is that the power density can only meet the needs of extremely low-power devices. However, this technology has clear application prospects in special scenarios such as pacemakers where batteries cannot be easily replaced.