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At Tuesdays COP26 session called Economics of Climate Change a company called Infinite Power proposed a carbon neutral way to provide baseload for electricity grid. Their technology claims work by a "kinetic junction" a p-n junction optimized to turn alpha-, beta- or gammaradiation into electrical energy. This video contains more detailed technical claims including views of their radioactive material. In it they assemble and demonstrate a demo unit which charges an USB device (so the cell should be able to generate 2.5 W). They further claim a 1 cubic meter of (larger wafers of) such cells can provide 10kW peak and 9 million KWh life time power (probably continuously falling) over 100 years.

Is this plausible?

In particular does there exist an radioactive material (including it's decay products) that matches all these criterias:

Is there any radioactive material which has a sufficient energy density to produce so much power?

Is there any radioactive material which has a sufficient half life to produce so much energy over 100 years?

Is there any radioactive material that could be made with low enough price to make this financially plausible?

I am aware that betavoltaics with a single digit percentage efficiency exist in the literature what kind of efficiency would be required to make this work as assumed when answering above questions.

Notes:

The company existed previously under a different name: Kinetic Energy

The session Economics of Climate Change is available here. Someone from InfinitePower talks here and InfinitePower also appears in video description.

The inability to control decay is hailed as feature to supply baseload. The decay of the material is not acknowledged since there is a complete decay chain, maybe it is sorta compensated.

It's obvious that 72*2.5 W doesn't equal 10kWh but those are demonstrator units only which have lots of empty space in them. The fact that those "laboratory scale units" are not meant to be the final product is acknowledged here.

worldsmithhelper
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  • We don't answer questions (of which you've provided several), we challenge claims (a single claim per post, to be specific). Which claim is it you want challenging? Could you edit to make it clear? – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 02 '21 at 21:08
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    In particular, could you give us a link to the reference stating they attended COP 26 on Tuesday, as the whole thing seems to stem from that and I'm unable to find any reference to their attendance (or eligibility to attend) and propose anything. – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 03 '21 at 00:45
  • **BIG** problem here: 10kW "peak" (which would have to simply mean the start as there's no ability to control decay) means that more than .1% of it's total power is produced in the first hour. That puts the half-life in the ballpark of a year. That's utterly incompatible with the stated lifespan. – Loren Pechtel Nov 03 '21 at 00:51
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    They also state 72 of those rectangular boxes fit into the meter cube, if each is a USB charger as per the video - 72*2.5 Watts sure doesn't equal 10kW anyhow. Lots of inconsistencies. Their handling techniques in the vid were sloppy and deadly. Their patents are all for film deposition techniques, batteries - nothing about kinetic junctions. – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 03 '21 at 01:12
  • I don't think "is this plausible" is a good fit here. Of course it's a scam - a magic semiconductor that converts radiation to electricity is not real. The probably hide batteries in their devices and pretend to make electricity to get money from investors. Can't prove that without taking their devices apart so this is a comment. – Jerome Viveiros Nov 03 '21 at 05:49
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    @JeromeViveiros: You don't need magic to convert radiation into electricity in a semiconductor. Photovoltaic cells are a glib answer. Less glib: [betavoltaic devices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betavoltaic_device) are [commercially available](https://citylabs.net/products/). – Oddthinking Nov 03 '21 at 07:50
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    @ARogueAnt. [At least one of their patents](https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO2016074044&tab=PCTBIBLIO) is for a "power battery using the energy from a radioactive material". – Dave Nov 03 '21 at 08:26
  • Ahh, that's interesting, it's one not listed on the site I looked on. Maybe they have some sort of basis for the hype(erbole). @Dave – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 03 '21 at 08:29
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    Interestingly it's also in contradiction to the video which explicitly shows copper oxide layers being deposited - not zinc oxide - still not anything approaching straightforward and clear what they're up to except that they're obfuscating - a convincing sign that they're motivated to fudge the details (I wonder why, hmm). @Dave – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 03 '21 at 08:34
  • @LorenPechtel Can you elaborate on that 9 million KWh/10KW >= 100 years. What made you say that 0.1% percent of total power are produces within the first hour? – worldsmithhelper Nov 03 '21 at 12:45
  • @ARogueAnt. This patent is linked on their website. And i don't see why ZnO vs CuO should matter as they are both metal oxides that can serve in a n-type conductor fashion in semiconductor manufacturing. Reference to COP26 added. – worldsmithhelper Nov 03 '21 at 12:47
  • The questions I'm asking myself: "Are they after the UK government's Plutonium stocks, maybe the USs and the EUs too, what will they do with them?" and "Will the various governments be damn fool enough to fall for it?". – Jiminy Cricket. Nov 03 '21 at 18:32
  • Argh! Nevermind my numbers--I dropped a K in my math. – Loren Pechtel Nov 03 '21 at 21:57
  • Might be worth comparing to known nuclear decay power sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Stirling_radioisotope_generator presumably NASA knows what they're doing; though maybe this company's solution is weight prohibative for NASA applications. – Dave Nov 05 '21 at 00:36
  • You're asking the wrong questions. A cubic meter of plutonium-238 (widely used in radiothermal generators) will generate 500 MW, far more than the advertised "10 kW peak", and will do so with a half-life of 87.7 years. The question you should be asking is "will the power conversion system last a hundred years?". (For radiothermal generators, the answer is "no": radiation causes the thermocouples to degrade.) – Mark Nov 06 '21 at 03:27

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