On December 4, the British Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) announced that it had successfully produced the world's first carbon-14 diamond battery with Bristol University. It is said that the battery can last for thousands of years and can provide very lasting energy power.

According to Sarah Clark, the head of the UKAEA tritium fuel cycle, this diamond battery is an emerging technology, which is made by wrapping a small amount of carbon-14 with artificial diamond. It can be made in a safe, A sustainable way to provide continuous megawatt-level power (microwatt levels of power).

The working principle of carbon-14 diamond battery is to use carbon-14 radioactive decay to generate low-level electricity. Its function is similar to that of solar panels, which converts light into electric energy, but Diamond batteries do not use light particles (photons), but capture fast moving electrons from inside the diamond structure.

The half-life of carbon 14 is as long as 5700 years, so the service life of diamond battery is almost as long as that of carbon 14, which makes diamond battery replace battery perfect power supply for inconvenient equipment. It can be used for medical devices such as eye implantation, hearing aids and cardiac pacemakers, which can minimize the need for replacement and the pain to patients; It can also be used in extreme environments related to space or Earth Aviation, in the past, it was impractical to use traditional batteries in these fields. For example, when it is necessary to identify and track Earth or equipment in space (such as spacecraft or payload), these diamond batteries can power active radio frequency (RF) marks for decades, thus, the cost is reduced and the service life is prolonged.

In addition, it is worth noting that the carbon 14 used by these diamond batteries is extracted from the by-product graphite block of the nuclear fission reactor. This technology reduces nuclear waste and creates valuable energy by reusing radioactive materials. It is reported that Britain alone has nearly 95000 tons of this graphite block.