Portable nuclear batteries? We’re closer, but there’s a small problem [Video]

The phrase “nuclear battery” might sound impossibly futuristic – but it’s a theory that was proven more than a century ago, was first put into practice seven decades ago and has just come a step nearer everyday usage… although there’s still a way to go yet. 

The first atomic battery (it means the same thing) was created in 1912 by Henry Molesey, a brilliant young physicist whose death during World War I was described by Isaac Asimov as “the most costly single death of the war to mankind generally.”

Molesey’s battery harnessed beta particles emitted from radium. If that sounds a bit like a nuclear reactor in a power station, it partly is, except that it doesn’t cause a chain reaction. 

World War II truly kickstarted the atomic age, with the 1950s bringing attempts to use the new power source for applications ranging from car engines to hearing aids and …