The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) has awarded £1.34 million to Bristol.

The project, Energy and the Physical Sciences:Beta-enhanced thermionic energy converters and nuclear batteries employing nanostructured diamond electrodes, brings together a strong interdisciplinary team from four different departments, and the facilities housed in the new interdisciplinary Nano Science and Quantum Information (NSQI) Centre in Bristol. The team will be able to make major material advances in the field of diamond thermionics and nuclear batteries for applications in civil, military and space-borne power generation.

The project will re-use neutron irradiated graphite, a waste material provided by Magnox and the Nuclear Decommissioning Agency, from its decommissioned reactors, as a source of beta radiation to radically improve the operation and performance of lithiated diamond-based thermionic energy converters.

Since C14 can be viewed as a stored energy source, a thermionic device operating without solar input may be regarded as a form of scalable nuclear battery technology.

The research team is headed by Dr Neil Fox, with Dr Tom Scott, Dr Peter Heard, Dr Peter Flewitt, Professor Martin Cryan and Professor Neil Allan.