Today I ran across a battery in DIP (breadboard friendly) packaging. The surprising thing is it’s powered by tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen. I first heard of nuclear batteries decades ago (tiny ones vs. large nuclear plants used in deep space exploration).

There can be obvious benefits to use in aerospace, defense, medical, and other industries. They can operate in harsh environments (-55°C to +150°C) and operate for 20 years or more. They use a semiconductor and beta decay to generate a voltage.

NanoTritium™ batteries are used to keep encryption keys alive in static random access memory (SRAM) for more than 20 years in digital processors, such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). These keys are maintained in SRAM volatile memory while the FPGA or processor is powered down. The NanoTritium™ battery maintains power to the SRAM even in harsh temperature environments. This is a benefit over conventional batteries that are chemical based (e.g., lithium, NiCad, etc.)

Yes they are radioactive but sealed. The shocker, really is the price – they start at US $5,250 per battery and go up based on size.

You can read more at citylabs.net. Via Bluesky.