Chinese scientists create nuclear battery with 3x better efficiency

Chinese scientists have developed an advanced nuclear battery featuring strontium-90 radio-photovoltaic cells (RPVCs) that deliver three times the energy efficiency of conventional designs and can operate reliably for at least 50 years. Led by researchers Haisheng San and Xin Li, the team addressed the limitations of traditional power sources—such as chemical batteries and fuel cells—that struggle with durability, maintenance, and continuous operation in extreme environments like space or deep-sea infrastructure. Their novel RPVC design uses a waveguide light concentration (WLC) structure combined with multilayer-stacked Cerium-doped gadolinium aluminum gallium garnet (GAGG: Ce) scintillation waveguides to convert radioactive energy into light, which is then efficiently converted into electricity by photovoltaic cells. Performance tests showed that a single RPVC unit achieved an efficiency of 2.96%, significantly surpassing existing RPVCs, with an output of 48.9 microwatts and multi-module setups reaching