{"id":235064,"date":"2026-04-12T22:05:27","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-nuclear-batteries-could-speed-the-race-to-fusion-power"},"modified":"2026-04-12T22:05:27","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:05:27","slug":"how-nuclear-batteries-could-speed-the-race-to-fusion-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/how-nuclear-batteries-could-speed-the-race-to-fusion-power","title":{"rendered":"How nuclear batteries could speed the race to fusion power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/how-nuclear-batteries-could-speed-the-race-to-fusion-power.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fusion reactions release tremendous amounts of energy by fusing two lighter atoms into a heavier one. But harvesting that energy has proven challenging. The most common approach is to heat water and spin a steam turbine, but that approach isn\u2019t terribly efficient, harnessing at best <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencedirect.com\/science\/article\/pii\/S2214157X24003757\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">around 60%<\/a> of the power.<\/p>\n<p>Avalanche Energy thinks it can capture more of that energy by developing new materials known as radiovoltaics. Radiovoltaics are similar to photovoltaics \u2014 traditional solar panels \u2014 in that they use semiconductors to transform radiation into electricity. They\u2019ve been around for a while, but they\u2019re not very effective. Existing radiovoltaics are easily damaged by the very radiation they harness and don\u2019t produce that much electricity.<\/p>\n<p>Today, Avalanche was awarded a $5.2 million contract from DARPA to develop new radiovoltaics, the company exclusively told TechCrunch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Fusion reactions release tremendous amounts of energy by fusing two lighter atoms into a heavier one. But harvesting that energy has proven challenging. The most common approach is to heat water and spin a steam turbine, but that approach isn\u2019t terribly efficient, harnessing at best around 60% of the power. Avalanche Energy thinks it can [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[873,48,1633,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nuclear-energy","category-particle-physics","category-solar-power","category-sustainability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235064\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}