GetElectrified

In another project, Yee’s group is using nuclear waste to produce electricity — minus the reactor and sans moving parts. Funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and working in collaboration with Stanford University, the researchers have developed a technology that is similar to photovoltaic devices with one big exception: Instead of using photons from the sun, it uses high-energy electrons emitted from nuclear byproducts. photo - miniature man with yellow hardhat, standing in field Betavoltaic technology has been around since the 1950s, but researchers have focused on tritium or nickel-63 as beta emitters. “Our idea was to revisit the technology from a radiation transport perspective and use strontium-90, a prevalent isotope in nuclear waste,” Yee said. Strontium-90 is unique because it emits two high-energy electrons during its decay process. What’s more, strontium-90’s energy spectrum aligns well with design architecture already used in crystalline silicon sol...