Making a Nuclear Battery

[MikeD99]

I have a strong (for me) Beta source from a Russian DP-2 Geiger Counter. Is there a particular kind of scintillating plastic that I could obtain to use with a photocell to try to make some electricity? I think I need something called a wavelength shifter to make the light into visible light for the photocell. I saw that a guy on the Internet make a battery out of tritium vials and was able to measure a small voltage. The Tritium vials use Beta radiation to create visible light. What chemical is in the inner coating of the vials? If I could get that maybe I could make some light, right?

I realize that I am not doing anything new or revolutionary. I am just playing around with the things that I have on hand. I am not trying to make an appreciable amount of current. Just some that I could measure with my Scope or Fluke 115. I will never have the ability to make a fusor.

Also, if I am asking too many questions or being annoying, please let me know and I'll stop. I am a technically oriented retired microprocessor programmer with nuclear physics interests. I am particularly fond of Neutrons.

Thanks,
Mike Driscoll
Leesburg, Virginia USA

[NuclearPhoenix]

Hi Mike, welcome to the forum!

I'm really not sure if using a scintillator would be the right tool for this task, especially since it's optimized for far more things other than just emitting light. But I'm sure others on here can tell you more about that.

Concerning the tritium vials, what's used to convert the radiation to visible light is some kind of phosphor material. It's essentially a very thing layer on the inside of the vial where the electrons can bump into and transfer their energy, which then gets released as photons by a process called phosphorescence. There is a great wikipedia page on this topic if you want to read more about it. I'm not sure, though, what exact material you'd use in this case nevertheless where to get it.

Don't worry about "being annoying", we all had to start from somewhere. And there are certainly many things we don't know as well, so feel free to ask and discuss!

[MikeD99]

Hi,
Thanks for answering.

Do you know how I could find out what the phosphor material is inside the Tritium tubes? It seems exactly what I would need to get visible light from Beta radiation.

Mike D.

[NuclearPhoenix]

I have no idea, actually. Maybe you can get some references from wikipedia that could help you out. Or possibly someone in this forum here knows more about that.