[mitakeet]

Benf, thanks for the link!

[mitakeet]

Thanks for the feedback!

I haven’t been able to find much on the Rogowski coil, unfortunately. I have found this patent, though:

“Apparatus for direct conversion of radioactive decay energy to electrical energy” (4,835,433)

but haven’t figured out yet how to get Firefox to install the image viewer. I found some smaller images elsewhere on the ‘net (for instance http://www.scribd.com/doc/8929973/Nuclear-Battery on page 9), but in any case, I would wonder how economically practical it is as it looks very complicated and thus expensive to build.

If anyone knows of something that is actually in-use to capture as electric energy the movement of the alpha particle please speak up, but I am getting the impression that, just like the promise of fusion energy, theoretically trivial often turns out to be extremely non-trivial in practice.

[mitakeet]

Hello Zap!

I understand the whole thing about alphas (I worked with radiation extensively back in college), just not how to capture the energy from the things. I can sort of visualize the coil you are talking about, but if you know any detailed drawings that would be very helpful. I have read about the ‘venetian blind’ bit, but just words (Googling finds way too much noise to be useful), no schematics or anything. Your explanation that the idea really isn’t mainstream does help me understand my lack of success in finding information. I have been reading up on the alpha battery concept, the use of semiconductors to capture the energy (largely unsuccessful because the energy of the alpha destroys the crystal structure of the semiconductor) as well as the idea of turning the alpha’s energy into photons (rather than electrons) and then capturing the energy via photovoltaics. I guess having read so may blithe assertions that the alpha’s energy could be captured at 90+% efficiency I assumed that was based on people having actually done it economically as opposed to theoretically.

Thanks for your info!

[Author]

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