TIL:

In a classic classroom demonstration, alpha particles can be blocked with material as thin as a piece of paper. This means that shielding batteries based on alpha-decay is relatively easy. In the past this allowed plutonium-238 nuclear batteries to power pacemakers, until they were superseded by lithium-ion batteries.

I’ve often thought, “You know, our landfills just don’t have enough nuclear by-products in them.”

/s

Interesting article, I’ve never read about how nuclear batteries work.

In general, nuclear batteries produce just microwatts or even nanowatts of electricity.

Seems like you could use energy harvesting techniques here and not have to worry about the (probably small amount of) nuclear waste left after 20 years. Especially now that we have Wi-Fi networks everywhere now giving off free energy.