Betavoltaic's PlasmaVolt Technology
By Tim Ventura, August 7, 2003
World Exlusive from American Antigravity: Batteries
that run for years on end, promising endless energy from
a clean, safe, environmentally-friendly fusion technology.
This is the one man's incredible journey into a branch of
physics that isn't supposed to exist - low energy transmutation
of elements.
It's the middle of August and I'm standing in the basement
of a house a few miles outside of Redmond, grateful to be
in a cool area. The room itself is as large as the main
floor of the aging brick house above it, but it's a completely
separate entity - the only entrance is a semi-hidden door
with a tarnished padlock hanging off the edge of it.
I hadn't seen the entrance to the basement I was now in
from the street, due to an abundance of sun-bleached weeds
blocking the view through the short driveway. The house
itself hadn't been much more visible, as the bricks on the
outside had aged enough to make it seem almost invisible
next to the other houses in this middle-class suburban neighborhood.
This house was only a few miles outside of Redmond, and
just a few blocks away from my own home, but as I'd entered
through the door I'd realized that this was an entirely
different world than anything in the surrounding area.
From what I can now see of the basement's interior, it
appears that this house was built in the 1960's or 70's
- it certainly doesn't appear new, but I'm also not smelling
that thick damp musk that accompanies the interior of a
lot of older homes in the Pacific Northwest when they begin
to age.
A series of metal racks fill the wall space along most
of the interior of the basement - a few of the racks have
recognizable objects in them, such as a set of 30 or 40
large glass jars containing what appears to be herbs - I
can read names like "Ginseng" and "Gotu-Kola"
scrawled in magic marker on the screw-top lids. Not everything
down here is immediately recognizable, though - several
pieces of large equipment are strategically placed amidst
the racks, and while I recognize one of them as a gigantic
oscilloscope, the rest are unknown. Most of the equipment
in the lab can be identified as electronics equipment, but
there is so much of it that it tends to blur together into
a gigantic collection of parts and gizmo's - a visual collage
of technology in a very raw form.
This basement is the "secret lab" of experimenter
Merlin Del Orion - a white-bearded gentleman in his late
60's that bears more than a little resemblance to his namesake
from the age of Camelot. In addition to the physical resemblance,
a slim pair of spectacles adds a bit more to his personal
mysticism. I suddenly realize that perhaps I'm projecting
- in addition to being a former Boeing employee and long-time
electronics experimenter and engineer, Merlin is also one
of the few practicing alchemists in the modern world. While
in many ways a wizard, he is also well versed in contemporary
science.
Merlin pauses to adjust his spectacles and frowns slightly,
with one eyebrow curling up just slightly. "Betavoltaic
cell?" he asks, questioningly. I've just finished telling
him about my encounter with businessman and inventor Michael
McDonnough, and a remarkable new technology that I've been
building a page for on the American Antigravity website.
"It's a nuclear battery," I tell him, "using
a method of stimulating the decay of a nuclear isotope to
produce abundant, safe and clean electric energy. I don't
know if it's for real or not, though, because I haven't
actually seen one yet."
Merlin walks over to a shelf in one of the racks covering
the entire back-wall of the basement. I can recognize an
electric typewriter and several other pieces of electronics
test-equipment on the shelf, but what he pulls out of a
shadowy area is unrecognizable. "Oh, they work,"
he says, "Here's one that I've been tinkering with
for the last few months".
The device that Merlin is holding is obviously a piece
of electronics equipment, but I can't really place many
of the parts on it. Mounted on a 1-foot square epoxy circuit
board, I recognize the familiar dull-green plastic case
of a high-voltage flyback transformer, and after realizing
what that component is I then recognize the multi-vibrator
circuit that feeds it - a set of two transistors set to
pulse at a specific frequency through the flyback to power
the device.
Flyback transformers are used in television sets and HV-experimental
equipment to step up a low-voltage input current to a high-voltage
output, and can be further connected either directly to
a rectifier diode or instead to a Cockroft-Walton voltage
multiplier, which then steps the voltage up even further.
These devices are almost always used in circuits with a
high-voltage direct-current output, probably because it's
much easier to simply use a neon-transformer than go through
the trouble of putting together a flyback circuit if high-voltage
AC is required.
In this case, I can't recognize the circuits that the flyback
is connected to - they're utterly meaningless to me, and
they appear to connect to an even stranger device - a round
metallic post with a metal ball mounted on the top of it,
which gives the entire board and its apparatus the appearance
of being a scale-model of an airport traffic-control tower
assembled by a deranged electronics technician.
"Wait a second", I tell him, "this nuclear
battery technology is totally new stuff - even Michael McDonnough
doesn't have a prototype that he can demonstrate for me
yet. You're actually telling me that this device is a working
model of a nuclear battery?"
Merlin responds by launching immediately into an explanation
of how the device works, and explains to me that the flyback
transformer powers a circuit that provides the stimulating
charge to the nuclear isotope, which in this prototype is
contained in the metal ball located at the top of the post.
It turns out that this isn't a strange model of an airport
traffic control-tower after all, and I can see what he's
talking about in more detail as he twists at a seam in the
middle of the metal ball and lifts off the top portion for
me to look inside. The ball contains a collection of maybe
20 or 30 small pellets. From their dull-gray metallic color,
these might as well be made of lead or pewter, but I know
better as I realize that they are the Americum-241 pellets
used to provide ionizing radiation in smoke detectors. "I
had to pry these out of the little epoxy cases that they're
normally housed in within the smoke detector", Merlin
tells me, "and they're safe as long as you wash your
hands after touching them."
Merlin explains to me that this device must be primed initially
by being connected to the flyback transformer. After external
power has been applied and a static-charge initiated through
the special control-circuits running into the isotope chamber,
the isotope becomes self-sustaining for a period of time
and generates its own electricity as the decay-rate of the
Americum-241 accelerates and releases a steady stream of
high-voltage electrons. Merlin's device isn't perfect though
- it won't self power indefinitely after it has been initially
activated. "I put it on the oscilloscope a while back,"
he says, "and it basically rings. It doesn't generate
enough electricity to completely self-power, and that's
mostly because of inefficiencies in the feedback-circuits
that I've designed. The result is that as the power winds
down the overall static-charge in the device decays very
slowly when compared with an inert test-sample, which provides
a ring-curve on the oscilloscope. I'm planning on modifying
the circuitry to allow it to completely feedback the electricity
that the isotope generates through the stimulation circuit
in the near future - that should let it run indefinitely,
and after that I can attempt to draw high-voltage electricity
from it to power other projects. For the moment, though,
it just rings ..."
Merlin's nuclear-battery does more than just ring, though
- and both he and I know it. After spending a good 4 hours
earlier in the week on the phone with Michael McDonnough,
I know that the electricity given off by Merlin's Americum-241
battery when it 'rings' is accompanied by an enormous surge
of nuclear-energy in the form of high-energy neutrons and
protons. I know that Merlin also realizes this, because
the inside of the reflective metal-ball that the isotopes
sit inside is lined with at least 1/8th inch thick lead-shielding.
After taking into consideration the possibility that I might
want to actually have children in the future, I decide not
to ask him for a demonstration of the device - at least
not today.
Betavoltaic's Two-Stage Process
It's August 2003 - almost exactly one year after Merlin's
demonstration of the stimulated decay cell, and I'm sitting
at a desk in the basement of my home on the phone with Michael
McDonnough. At 40 years old, he's old enough to be experienced
in business, but still young enough to follow his dreams.
The dream that we're discussing is his vision of environmentally-friendly
stimulated-decay technology in the commercial marketplace,
and he seems sensible and motivated enough that he just
might pull it off.
""Hold on a second", he tells me. I can
hear him talking to somebody else on his end of the phone,
but it's difficult to tell what he's saying. After a moment
he's back, "Sorry about that, Tim - I'm in the living
room because it's not as hot here, but this is a busy area."
In my location in the Pacific Northwest it's a cool 55 degrees
outside and raining, but at his residence in Tulsa it's
11 o'clock at night and still sweltering from the August
heat wave.
I've been telling McDonnough about the article that I'm
putting together on the stimulated decay technology and
the Americum-241 battery that Merlin's shown me. "You
know," he says, after a pause, "devices like that
just aren't commercially feasible at the present time. For
instance, nobody is going to be able to get onto a plane
with a cell-phone powered by a Strontium-90 nuclear battery.
It would set off alarms all over the place -- that's what
makes our new PlasmaVolt technology so remarkable - when
its not in operation its basically inert."
The basis for Betavoltaic's technology is a clean, safe
version of stimulated nuclear-decay technology based on
the theoretical research of Dr. Ruggero Santilli and the
experimental research of Ted Gagnon. Dr. Santilli's research
had shown that with a specific static-charge applied to
a nuclear isotope it can be made to break down at a sustained
rate in comparison with a control sample.
What this means is that a beta-emitting isotope (one that
emits primarily electrons as it decays) can be forced electronically
to emit the same number of electrons in an hour as it ordinarily
might emit in a year or more. Therefore, instead of a scant-few
electrons being emitted from the isotope under normal conditions,
the same isotope in a charge-stimulated environment may
emit enough to actually comprise a current - perhaps micro
amps or even milliamps worth of electricity.
This is what Merlin had shown me - a first generation Betavoltaic
cell. The device operates by placing a high-voltage waveform
on a small sample of beta-emitting isotope, which then emits
electricity as the rate of decay increases.
Michael McDonnough has taken the research of Dr. Santilli
one step further, by combining it with the experimental
work of Ted Gagnon to create a two-stage process for a Betavoltaic
commercial product line. Thus, the PlasmaVolt was born.
This device comprises the second part of the Betavoltaic
technology base - an environmentally-friendly fusion device,
built to deliver electricity reliably for years on end without
any harmful byproducts.
The PlasmaVolt is a device developed by inventor and experimenter
Ted Gagnon that uses a plasma-vortex to allow the generation
of electricity in a low-pressure reactor cavity. While the
details of the PlasmaVolt are still proprietary, the device
is covered under both US and International Patents, and
McDonnough tells me that they have a prototype device on
site that has been delivering a constant 50-watt electrical
output for several months. In addition to generating electrical
energy, the PlasmaVolt generates K40, which McDonnough plans
to use in Betavoltaic's nuclear-batteries, due to its high-level
of safety and very long decay times.
"Ted Gagnon's technology utilizes inverse quotient
potential envelopes," McDonnough said, "This involves
loading frequencies (the envelope) corresponding to quantum
potentials into a proprietary liquid formula in which the
Betavoltaic material is suspended. Once the quantum potentials
have been applied to the liquid by the means of a caduceus-coil
acting as a tuned antenna, the beta-emitter in solute is
perpetually stimulated to emit electrons as a result of
these quantum potential states."
The result of Gagnon's technology being utilized in conjunction
with the low-energy transmutation research of Dr. Santilli
is that isotopes can be utilized with such a normal low
decay rate that they are considered for all intents and
purposes to be "inert materials". McDonnough tells
me that "The primary isotope is K40 (an isotope of
Potassium), with a half-life of approximately 1.7 billion
years. It has an 89% ratio of calcium formation, featuring
a double beta-decay with energy levels of 1.311 Mev (Million
Electron Volts)."
Essentially this means that K40 takes so long to decay
under normal circumstances that its basically an inert substance
- but when it does decay it releases an enormous amount
of energy. "It's the perfect fuel for beta-decay because
if the Betavoltaic cell is accidentally ruptured during
operation K40 goes back to being extremely low in activity,"
McDonnough tells me, "K40 allows us to throttle the
isotope decay. It's a nearly perfect process, because it
only releases energy under stimulation, and in the event
of a critical failure it immediately ceases energy production."
In science, K40 is stable enough that it has little scientific
use other than in studying biological systems using a highly
bio-available and generally stable isotope. Betavoltaic
expects to not only be the only market for this substance,
but also expects to be the only supplier - it turns out
that K40 is a byproduct of the contained PlasmaVolt power-systems
that they plan on manufacturing this year.
The PlasmaVolt
The PlasmaVolt is a device developed by Ted Gagnon that
creates a sustained plasma-vortex for a unique method of
energy production based on the low-energy transmutation
of elements. "The PlasmaVolt Technology will allow
us to produce unlimited amounts of K40 isotope as per Santilli's
low-energy transmutation theory," states Michael McDonnough,
"Our existing prototype PlasmaVolt has already produced
over 6 grams of nearly pure K40 this year." He begins
to get excited while telling me this, then elaborating,
"with the exception of K40 deposited on Earth from
distant supernovae events, we've got the only source for
this isotope on the planet! The K40 produced as a byproduct
in commercial nuclear reactors is thoroughly contaminated
with heavier isotopes, and produced only in tiny quantities.
We've got 6+ grams of the stuff, and it's almost perfectly
pure!"
One of the reasons that McDonnough is so excited about
the production capability of Potassium40 is due to the sheer
energy storage potential of the isotope. He tells me that
"A kilogram of K40 has the same energy content as 35,000
gallons of gasoline"....assuming, that is, that it
can be made to release that energy using the proprietary
Betavoltaic technologies. Michael McDonnough insists that
this is not only theoretically possible, but that its been
demonstrated in the lab, "Ted Gagnon has already reached
200% stimulation using a very initial and inefficient frequency
envelope, and he is currently conducting research on our
behalf to create a much more efficient envelope for commercial
use."
The PlasmaVolt almost looks like a tall, skinny blender
in appearance -- it consists of a long, thin quartz tube
that rises up from a square-black base containing control
electronics. A coil of wire is wrapped around the upper-most
portion of the tube, and obscures the interior of the otherwise
transparent container from view. Located underneath the
coil of wire, out of sight from my prying eyes, is the cathode
at which transmutation occurs and energy is created. McDonnough
tells me that the PlasmaVolt is impossible to replicate
without knowing the shape of the cathode and composition
of the anode.
Functionally, the PlasmaVolt operates in many ways as a
conventional low-pressure plasma-reactor. The elongated
tube is pumped full of Hydrogen, and the pressure is then
reduce with a vacuum-pump to the desired operating pressure
to maximize energy production. A unique electromagnetic
charge is used to stimulate the hydrogen into a rotating
column of energetic plasma, and the exterior coil is then
used to reclaim that energy to prevent excessive loss. The
energy input and reclaimed through the electromagnetic coil
apparatus wound around the tube occurs nearly without loss,
because the low-pressure of the gas allows energy input
and extraction from the kinetic rotational energy of the
hydrogen without many of the normal friction problems occurring
in a higher-pressure container.
Main power from the PlasmaVolt is drawn from the cathode
at the top chamber. Obscured from view by the coil apparatus,
the cathode facilitates low-energy transmutation of Hydrogen
into K40 by a unique and innovative method. What McDonnough
claims is occurring inside the device is that Hydrogen molecules
are first split from H2 into single atom by the high-voltage
ionizing charge, and are then reduced even further by having
the same ionizing energy strip the electron from the Hydrogen
atom -- leaving only a single proton, which is all that
an ionized Hydrogen atom consists of. The transmutation
process is supposed to involve these single protons descending
into the seed-material of the cathode to build it up, which
eventually results in the production of K40. Most people
are aware that the heavier elements consist of both protons
and neutrons -- from what I've been able to gather protons
are added easily via the addition of ionized hydrogen to
the cathode structure, and the neutrons are supposedly created
through an extra reactive-step in line with Santilli's low-energy
transmutation theory.
The idea behind the PlasmaVolt seems similar in a very
general sense to what is believed to occur during the infamous
Pons and Fleischman "Cold Fusion" process so rigorously
investigated during the 1990's. While the scientific community
in general remains very skeptical about the Cold Fusion
concept, a growing body of scientists is now convinced that
putting Hydrogen-ions in close proximity with heavier metals
can allow low-energy transmutations to occur that release
energy in the process. In the case of Cold Fusion, the method
involves immersing an anode and cathode in a body of water
made conductive through the addition of specific salts -
the PlasmaVolt takes this idea one step further by allowing
the effect to happen in a plasma chamber, where the higher
energy-levels of the ions and increased reactance should
facilitate the production of larger amounts of power.
The PlasmaVolt is currently patented under both US and
international patenting authorities, and Betavoltaic is
in the process of having both of those sets of patents assigned
from the current holders to themselves prior to the launch
of their initial product offerings.
McDonnough indicated that the PlasmaVolt technology will
reach the market much sooner than the K40 Betavoltaic technology
will, mostly because Betavoltaic Incorporated plans on recycling
used PlasmaVolt cells as their primary base for obtaining
K40 for the Betavoltaic cells. It's a two stage process:
McDonnough expects commercial PlasmaVolt systems to begin
going on the market in early 2004. The K40 isotope that
these cells produce as a byproduct will be extracted during
recycling for use in powering the Betavoltaic power-cells
that BVI intends to launch commercially within the next
18 months.
The initial product launch utilizing the PlasmaVolt power-cells
is targeted towards the computer-industry - more specifically,
McDonnough tells me that the best market segment to target
is Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) systems for commercial
computers. He believes that the 400-watt PlasmaVolt will
serve in this capacity well, as it should be capable of
providing continuous operation producing 400-watts of power
for up to 2 years. "The Plasmavolts will look like
oversized vacuum-tubes", he tells me, "They're
going to look really cool....imagine the engine-core from
the Starship Enterprise, and you start to get the idea."
Despite the look of the device, he figures that the 400-watt
PlasmaVolt should measure about 19x14x4 inches - small enough
to fit inside a suitcase sized device, and weighing in at
only 8 pounds. This is important for products like backup
power-supplies, as space is at a premium, and McDonnough
hopes to also come up with a rack-mountable version of the
device for direct storage in data-center server-racks. In
the rack mountable version of this concept, he envisions
the tubes being pluggable into the rack, meaning that by
simply opening the rack and removing the tubes one at a
time you can maintain constant power and still swap out
old Plasmavolts.
Soon to follow on McDonnough's product list is the planned
development of a self-powered "luggable" supercomputer.
"This would be great for military applications",
I told him, keeping in mind the news footage of server-farms
and remote power-stations currently being toted around the
Iraqi countryside by US personnel. He envisioned something
like a machine incorporating a 19-inch TFT-LCD monitor,
8-gigs of RAM, 500-gigs of hard-drive space, and twin 2.6
gigahertz Xeon processors. "With the PlasmaVolt providing
power for up to 2 years continuously," he tells me,"
power-intensive computing device like this suddenly become
much more portable." I guess that he has a point -
in my experience with the Mil-Spec "toughbooks"
that AT&T Wireless relied on for field-operations computing,
a lot of performance ends up being sacrificed in order to
get every once of use out of the ever-too-small battery
packs.
Non-Stimulated Nuclear Batteries
Betavoltaic's two-stage approach isn't the only approach
to providing electrical energy directly from beta-decay,
although admittedly it may be the safest. In December 2002
I had the opportunity to find out about conventional nuclear
beta-decay batteries during a call to inventor and scientist
Bob Lazar, formerly of Area 51 fame. Bob became a media
sensation when he went to the press in 1989 with a story
about being an employee at Area 51 hired to reverse-engineer
captured UFO's - Lazar now runs the United Nuclear company
in Arizona, which specializes in (among other things) manufacturing
Geiger counters for use by the government and several commercial
organizations. The United Nuclear website features a collection
of naturally-occurring radioactive rocks on the front page
that Lazar has collected from trips to the desert, which
prompted me to ask Bob if he'd ever considered building
a nuclear battery with any of them. "Sure," Lazar
replied, "using a piece of radioactive rock to build
a simple nuclear battery is easy. You simply get a glass
vial and run a wire into the glass until it touches the
rock - this is your positive potential. You then suspend
another wire inside of the glass vial, but not touching
the rock - current will flow between these two wires, although
it won't be a large amount, and you can't use it for much."
Lazar told me that he'd actually built two or three batteries
like this, and it's a relatively simple and inexpensive
process to do (assuming that you have a radioactive rock
to start with). A nuclear battery built in this manner is
a non-stimulated device, and has several drawbacks. The
major drawback is that they don't produce an appreciable
amount of power, and use a substantial amount of isotopic
rock in the process. Another drawback is that the naturally-occurring
radioactive isotope that Lazar had used emits not only electrons,
but also a fair amount of neutron and proton radiation -
which means that its probably not suitable for a cell-phone
battery, even with shielding. The final drawback is something
that Lazar mentioned to me nearly on accident. "You
know," he said, "I can send you one of them. I
can send you one of the nuclear batteries that I've built
- I think that you might get at least a couple of milliamps
of high-voltage current from it. But now that I think about
it, the major problem with mailing it to you is the fact
that you can't turn these things off.....it'll be producing
a high-voltage trickle of charge all the way through the
postal system, which will set off all sorts of alarms."
Biefeld-Brown Applications
My interest in Betavoltaic cells began primarily with regard
to the Lifter technology. The Biefeld-Brown effect levitation
technology requires a high-voltage direct-current electrical
output, which just happens to be the native-output for Betavoltaic
cells. Under stimulated decay conditions, electrons are
emitted from the isotope at extremely high-voltages, and
as they build up on the gold-plated internal collectors,
the resulting charge is also a high-voltage electrical potential.
The conventional power-source for Lifter technology is
based on a Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier, which literally
just an array of high-voltage diodes and capacitors that
are charged and discharged cyclically by a flyback-transformer.
The 50,000 volt power-supply that I use from Information
Unlimited utilizes an almost textbook approach to a Cockroft-Walton
voltage multiplier: a two-transistor multi-vibrator provides
250-watts of power to a heavy-duty flyback transformer,
which converts the electricity from an initial voltage of
115 VAC to 3,000 VAC out of the flyback. It also increases
the frequency of the charge, from the normal 60 Hz of the
power-line on the input side to 13,000+ hertz on the output
side of the flyback. This is because flyback transformers
are designed to operate more efficiently at higher frequencies
- the overall result is a 3,000 volt, 13 kilohertz waveform
that comes out of the flyback and is pumped directly into
the Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier.
As I mentioned before, the Cockroft-Walton voltage multiplier
is a very basic array of diodes and capacitors, connected
to the output of the flyback. During the positive (+) cycle
of the flyback's output, the CW multiplier charges the internal
capacitor-bank in parallel - perhaps 16 capacitors charging
at 3,000 volts each. On the output side of the duty cycle,
the CW multiplier then discharges the entire array of capacitors
in series - which steps up the voltage from 3,000 volts
to 48,000 volts. The only drawback to this process is that
the output current of the CW multiplier is reduced by a
multiple at least equal to the increase in voltage - hence,
voltage is multiplied sixteen-fold, but the output current
is 16-times weaker.
As you can see, Cockroft-Walton based high-voltage power-supplies
have some very definite limitations. In addition to low
output current, these devices are a bit on the heavy side
for Antigravity research - my 'lightweight' GRA-50 supply
contains at least 5 pounds of parts and shielding. Finally,
the kiss of death for the CW-based power-supplies is the
fact that they require a "wall-socket umbilical cord"
at all times - in other words, unless you have a really
lightweight 115 VAC battery your CW multiplier won't be
very useful unless you have a really long extension cord.
While experiments such as Saviour in Belgium have been experimenting
with building stripped down "ultra lightweight"
versions of the CW multiplier for use in Lifters, the entire
concept has some glaring limitations - perhaps limitations
that Betavoltaic technology can readily overcome.
Unlike a CW multiplier, Betavoltaic cells produce a high-voltage
stream of electrons as a natural by- product of the stimulated
decay process. Betavoltaic cells are also readily adaptable
to producing a variable amount of current, and have the
possibility of readily exceeding the limitations of the
CW multiplier in terms of power. By simply varying the amount
of energy that's put into the feedback loop through the
stimulation-circuitry, it may be possible to produce all
the high-voltage direct-current that you would ever need
for an onboard Lifter power-supply.
Michael McDonnough isn't waiting around for Biefeld-Brown
technology to mature before beginning his aerospace efforts
- in fact, he already has a tentative plan for a high-output
plasma drive based on the PlasmaVolt technology. "You
know", he said, "We can scale these things up
to a Gigawatt without any real difficulties." A gigawatt
of power is substantially greater than the largest plasma-drives
that NASA has experimented with, which are bulky and generate
only kilowatts of energy.
McDonnough's vision of the PlasmaVolt as a tool for space
exploration involves connecting the device to an acceleration
chamber to create a stream of Plasma out the back end of
the device. Therefore, whether or not the Lifter is the
tool that the PlasmaVolt ends up powering, it seems doubtless
that this device will make its way into space in one way
or another.
Conclusion
Certain nuclear isotopes emit electrons when they break
down - these are called "beta-emitting" isotopes.
The electrons that are released during this natural decay
process can be collected to provide a useable stream of
electrical energy. According to the research of Dr. Ruggero
Santilli, the rate of the decay process can be increased
to provide electrical energy on-demand. The experimental
work of Ted Gagnon has further shown that by providing an
'envelope' of harmonic electrical impulses into a liquid
medium, this process of stimulated decay can be further
increased to provide useable power from isotopes that would
otherwise have a very low rate of decay.
Building a nuclear battery isn't hard to do - Bob Lazar's
comments indicate that generating electricity in this manner
can be as simple as putting a rock inside a glass jar, but
doing this safely is another thing entirely, and that has
prevented the commercial marketing of nuclear batteries
for commercial applications up until now.
Over the course of the last year, the Betavoltaic Corporation
has moved from a theoretical approach to a successful prototype
for a unique power-generation process. They don't have the
only technology to deliver electricity from nuclear isotopes,
but they do have what appears to be the safest process.
Electron-emitting beta-isotopes are capable of storing
incredible amounts of energy in a tiny package - this makes
them suitable for a variety of applications that require
the delivery of electrical power over a long-term period
of time without interruption or recharging. In addition
to applications such as microelectronics that require conventional
power, the high voltages inherent in beta-decay make them
suitable for Biefeld-Brown technologies, or at least allow
the possibility of high-voltage energy production with lighter-weight
apparatus than the Cockroft-Walton voltage-multipliers currently
popular among experimenters.
Time will tell as to the commercial viability of this product.
With a non-stimulated half-life of 1.7 billion years, it
would appear that that the K40 solution under development
by Betavoltaic is the 'perfect' process for liberating energy
in a controlled manner from the breakdown of this material.
Whether the PlasmaVolt devices that generate the K40 isotope
can penetrate the market enough to successfully launch the
large-scale generation of this isotope remains to be seen,
but the Betavoltaic Corporation is doing excellent work
both in the short- and long-term planning for commercialization
of this technology. They've succeeded admirably in the first
step towards commercialization, which is demonstrating that
the PlasmaVolt can generate power and create the K40 isotope
-- the next step requires demonstrating that the K40 can
actually power a Betavoltaic cell.
Once Betavoltaic makes it work, they'll be holding the
key to an entirely new energy technology that has the potential
to revolutionize our world through an inexpensive and efficient
method of creating and storing electrical energy.
References
Betavoltaic Industries, http://www.betavoltaic.com
United Nuclear, http://www.unitednuclear.com
Pons & Fleischman Cold Fusion,
http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_fusion
Dr. Ruggero Santilli, http://www.i-b-r.org/santilli.htm
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