Batteries

Everyone hates batteries, right? They're heavy and bulky and they keep going flat at the most inopportune times. Mobile phones these days seem to be not much more than a case around a battery!

Enter Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. When Tritium decays, it emits an electron. Sounds pretty darn good for a battery, right? Right? There are plans to make batteries that might last 10-12 years without recharging. See this Wikipedia article for a little more info.

There's an article with a lot of discussion about this on slashdot.

A summary of the posts in favor of these batteries seems to be:

Tritium batteries are already used in pacemakers

They are very easy to shield and give off almost no harmful radiation at all

Even if they're punctured, the results are less harmful than the contents of most chemical batteries

A summary of the posts against seem to be:

Ooohhhh... nukular... bad. Bad nukular!

And a word from the cynics:

Battery makers won't invest in this because they like making us buy lots and lots of disposable, short lived batteries

I say bring it on!