Diamond batteries powered by nuclear waste promise 28,000 years of clean energy

A sliver of diamond that turns nuclear waste into electricity sounds like sci-fi—but the core idea is real. For ultra-low-power devices that must run for decades, the emerging diamond battery could turn a costly liability into quiet, long-lived energy.

Turning Waste Into Power

The concept of a betavoltaic “diamond battery” was first reported by University of Bristol researchers in 2016, using carbon-14 recovered from irradiated graphite blocks; in December 2024, Bristol and the UK Atomic Energy Authority announced the first carbon-14 diamond battery device, underscoring progress from idea to hardware.¹

The Science Behind The Sparkle

Betavoltaics convert electrons from radioactive beta decay directly into electrical current. In this approach, carbon-14 from reactor graphite is embedded into a chemical-vapour-deposited (CVD) diamond structure that both contains the radiation and harvests charge—a steady trickle of power rather than a surge.

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Carbon-14’s half-life (~5,700 years) helps explain the extraordinarily long theoretical lifetimes quoted for such cells.²

Small Power, Big Possibilities

Output is tiny—on the order of microwatts per square centimetre under typical designs—so this won’t run phones or cars; the fit is remote sensors, implants, and hard-to-service devices where reliability beats raw wattage. Lab FAQs from the Bristol team also note open-circuit voltages around ~2 V in prototype stacks, reinforcing that this is a trickle-power technology.³

From Science Fiction To “28,000 Years” Of Energy

A California startup, NDB Inc., publicised a nano-diamond battery in 2020 and has claimed lifetimes “up to 28,000 years” for very low-drain uses—eye-catching figures that hinge on duty cycle and remain to be independently validated. Independent coverage generally agrees on the promise for niche applications while warning against smartphone-style expectations.⁴

A Greener Future Built On Old Problems

Diamond batteries won’t replace lithium-ion in laptops or EVs soon, but the reuse of nuclear waste is a meaningful shift: extracting carbon-14 reduces the radioactivity of legacy graphite and could lower storage burdens. And there’s precedent for nuclear batteries in practice: NASA has flown radioisotope power systems (RTGs) on dozens of missions, and Pu-238-powered pacemakers were implanted in patients in past decades—examples of long-life power where maintenance is impossible.⁵

Footnotes

1. Diamond Batteries (2016) & “World’s first carbon-14 diamond battery” (2024) — University of Bristol / UK Government: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/research/casestudies/2016/diamond-battery.html ; https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/news/2024/diamond-battery.html ; https://www.gov.uk/government/news/diamonds-are-forever-world-first-carbon-14-diamond-battery-made
2. Bristol Cabot Institute explainer & UKAEA note on carbon-14 half-life: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/cabot/what-we-do/diamond-batteries/ ; https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/diamonds-are-forever-worlds-first-carbon-14-diamond-battery-produced/
3. Betavoltaic power densities review (2024–25) & Bristol Diamond Battery FAQs (2016): https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378775324008486 ; https://www.bristol.ac.uk/media-library/sites/cabot-institute-2018/documents/Diamond_battery_FAQs_Nov_2016.pdf
4. NDB announcement and lifetime claim (2020–21) & context reporting: https://www.ainonline.com/news-article/2020-08-25/developer-diamond-battery-says-self-charging-power-supply-evtol-aircraft ; https://ndb.technology/ ; https://www.wired.com/story/are-radioactive-diamond-batteries-a-cure-for-nuclear-waste
5. NASA Radioisotope Power Systems (missions & RTGs) & NRC on Pu-238 pacemakers: https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/radioisotope-power-systems/missions/ ; https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-science/programs/radioisotope-power-systems/power-radioisotope-thermoelectric-generators/ ; https://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/fact-sheets/plutonium.html