Comment by Traubenfuchs
Comment by Traubenfuchs 17 hours ago
How about drones with a solar panel case? Would require a sunny day to work at all though.
Tiny nuclear reactor?
Comment by Traubenfuchs 17 hours ago
How about drones with a solar panel case? Would require a sunny day to work at all though.
Tiny nuclear reactor?
While not reactors, how about nuclear batteries without heavy shielding?
Nope.
Betavolatics can be just about anything that emits an electron. Could be tritium. Low power due to long half life and low decay energy, but not because it is low-Z.
RTGs can be anything that gets hot from its own radiation. Loads of things with a short half-life and high decay energy, so phosphorus-32 would be a low-Z option, and polonium-210 (which still isn't transuranic) if you're completely disregarding safety.
Big part of the mass budget is shielding, not source. This gets proportionally worse for small sources, as you need a certain thickness (proportional to r^2), while the emitter power is proportional to volume (r^3).
On the scale that useful nuclear reactors operate, a "tiny nuclear reactor" is the size of a shipping container.
Even a tiny RTG is in the same range as a dumbbell.