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Batteries, in a sense, rule our lives. From the compact lithium-ion batteries powering our smartphones to the much larger units powering our EVs, not to mention all the battery ecosystems that tool manufacturers have invested in, it’s safe to say we wouldn’t be where we are without battery technology.

The main downside of batteries, of course, is their limited lifespan. After all, even the smartphones with great battery life will rarely last more than a day or two before needing to be recharged. This normal discharge-recharge cycle will eventually degrade a battery, leading to plenty of frustration as a phone (or other device) stops lasting as long on a charge as it used to. A Chinese company, however, has shown that this may not have to be the case.

In January 2024, BetaVolt announced that it had developed a nuclear battery allegedly capable of lasting 50 years without recharging. The coin-sized BV100, as it’s called, uses nickel-63 as a power source to generate 100 microwatts at 3 volts. The company also announced plans to unveil a 1-watt version in 2025, although it’s unclear whether that ever happened. As for the BV100, news reports claim that it entered mass production in 2025. Let’s look into how it works and why, for all the BV100’s promise, you may not want to get too excited about it.

While the BetaVolt BV100 is indeed exciting, it’s far from the first radioactive battery that scientists have developed. In late 2024, for example, researchers from the University of Bristol developed the first-ever carbon-14 diamond battery, with an estimated lifespan of thousands of years. But even that battery was a relative latecomer to the game: RCA had developed an atomic battery as early as 1954. Similarly, a nuclear battery, in the form of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG, also known as a radioisotope power system), powered the U.S. Navy’s Transit 4A and 4B satellites in 1961.

The basic concept of nuclear batteries is relatively simple. They harness the decay of radioactive elements, which can go on for decades, and convert this energy into electricity. RTGs, for example, did this via the Seebeck effect, which generates voltage via temperature differences (caused by the heat of radioactive decay) in a suitable conductor.

BetaVolt’s BV100 operates on similar fundamental principles, but harnesses beta radiation instead. In the BV100, the radioactive nickel-63 core’s beta particles are absorbed by diamond semiconductors, which then convert the electrons generated from radioactive decay into electricity. The result, then, is a tiny battery that could conceivably last 50 years — all without posing much threat to living beings.

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BetaVolt’s January 2024 press release highlighted the possibility of its battery eliminating the need to charge smartphones and allowing drones to stay in the air near-indefinitely, both of which sound quite exciting. However, it’s worth noting that not all observers are quite as optimistic.

Speaking to Live Science in 2024, materials scientist Juan Claudio Nino pointed out the BV100’s low voltage, stating that while “it’s within the range for a pacemaker or perhaps a passive wireless sensor,” it simply “doesn’t have enough power to run a cell phone.” One hundred microwatts is far from enough to run a smartphone; smartphones can use up to 4,000 milliwatts on a video call, so any nuclear battery designed for a smartphone would need to be capable of generating orders of magnitude more power than the BV100.

Simply scaling up the battery isn’t necessarily a viable solution either, as Wired pointed out in 2024. Considering a standard smartphone draws up to 2 amps in use, we’d ideally want a nuclear smartphone battery to generate a consistent 1.5 amps to make it a viable alternative. However, a BV100-style battery that could generate that much amperage for that long would need to be made out of 680 pounds of nickel-63. Even the world’s biggest iPhone might struggle to make room for a battery that large.