Is 20 year Tritium battery for real?

Article here: http://en.rocketnews24.com/2013/01/...ntinuous-years-of-pocket-sized-nuclear-power/

It says the battery is good for 20 years, developed by an American company. How likely is this to be true? What is the power output of this? Can it help power some things in a house?

I believe that it could be real. However, it would only fit for very specialized applications. They are going to be for low power applications and also since you cannot control tritium decay, their best use would be for continuous power demands, as any unused power is wasted rather than stored. I don't see these going in cell phones any time soon (as the article claimed). Who would spend all that money (and they will always be relatively expensive) for a twenty year battery in a device you are only going to use for 3 years.

Other thing to keep in mind is that tritium has an eight year half life. Which means in 8 years it will only produce have the power it produces when new. 16 years and it is down to 25% of original power. 20 years and it would be down to around 15-18% or original power. So the claim of 20 years may be a bit of a stretch.

Eagle

Eagles1181 said:

Other thing to keep in mind is that tritium has an eight year half life. Which means in 8 years it will only produce have the power it produces when new. 16 years and it is down to 25% of original power. 20 years and it would be down to around 15-18% or original power. So the claim of 20 years may be a bit of a stretch.

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Half life of tritium is 12.3 years.

I think the cost and lack of power output stats have me looking at this as just another breakthrough for the military and space exploration. I don't think most people want to pay 1100 dollars for a battery when you would have to use it for 20 years at $55 a year it just isn't cost effective and I seriously doubt any device that is slated for use with this type of battery would be around that long. The smart phone idea mentioned doesn't make sense as I doubt anyone has used the same cell phone for 20 years or even 10 years these days. Until it gets into a format of normal type of batteries compatible with perhaps AAA or lithium ion in voltage and power ranges it would either have to be part of a portable power pack or end up in a device that goes obsolete before the half life is reached.

WalkIntoTheLight said:

Half life of tritium is 12.3 years.

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I stand corrected. It still means that after 20 years you are at 25% of original power (roughly). Which is probably why they claim 20 years. Again, I see the application for this in space and other had to access, low power, applications.

Eagle

Eagles1181 said:

Again, I see the application for this in space and other had to access, low power, applications.

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Sure, it's a ridiculous power source for any commercial or consumer application, and certainly extremely low power. You'd probably need a tritium battery the size of a car to power a cell phone. I'm not sure if that's an exaggeration or not, but it would definitely not fit inside a cell phone.

Over 20 years, you'd be better off buying two disposable lithium primary cells, and using them for 10 years each.

I think you will discover that the cost of the tritium in any battery with useful output capacity (more than 1 ma) will make the cost such that only the military could possibly afford it. If you want reasonable (a few watts to a few hundred watts), the Pu-238 radio-isotope thermal units work quite well and IIRC, Pu238 has something like an 80 year half life. Note that unlike Pu239, Pu238 is NOT fissile. (you cannot make a bomb out of it). The stuff is so 'hot' (both literally and figuratively) that it usually glows red hot. The bad news is the only supply of Pu238 at the moment is from the Russians. I doubt the US will ever make any more of the stuff. I think the tritium battery is a solution in search of a problem to solve.

mattheww50 said:

I think you will discover that the cost of the tritium in any battery with useful output capacity (more than 1 ma) will make the cost such that only the military could possibly afford it. If you want reasonable (a few watts to a few hundred watts), the Pu-238 radio-isotope thermal units work quite well and IIRC, Pu238 has something like an 80 year half life. Note that unlike Pu239, Pu238 is NOT fissile. (you cannot make a bomb out of it). The stuff is so 'hot' (both literally and figuratively) that it usually glows red hot. The bad news is the only supply of Pu238 at the moment is from the Russians. I doubt the US will ever make any more of the stuff. I think the tritium battery is a solution in search of a problem to solve.

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Yes, all the great solar system probes use an RTG, because the sun isn't strong enough for solar. Unfortunately, I think the US only has enough to build about 1 more probe, and that's it. I don't know why they can't make more, but I guess it requires specialized reactors to produce. Voyager 1 and 2 RTG's are still giving them enough juice to do science.