China’s 50-year battery isn’t the longest-lasting nuclear power cell in the works

Betavolt’s new BV100 battery, which its Beijing-based maker says can run for 50 years without charging, is not the only long-life nuclear battery project making headlines recently. According to LiveScience’s reporting, scientists at the University of Bristol in the UK have built a prototype nuclear diamond battery using carbon-14 instead of the BV100’s nickel-63.

Carbon-14 was chosen specifically because it emits very short-range radiation that is absorbed almost immediately by the surrounding solid diamond material, minimising radiation exposure concerns. The isotope has a half-life exceeding 5,000 years — dramatically longer than nickel-63’s roughly 100-year half-life — meaning a battery built around it could theoretically produce usable power for thousands rather than tens of years. The Bristol device remains a research prototype rather than a commercially available product.

Betavolt’s BV100, by contrast, is already specified and marketed: it measures 15 by 15 by 5 millimetres and generates 100 microwatts of power at 3 volts by sandwiching a two-micron-thick sheet of nickel-63 between two diamond semiconductor converters.

Betavolt has said its batteries are modular and can be combined to scale up power output, with plans for higher-powered versions using different isotopes in the future.