DARPA looking for battery that could power a laptop for months

Forget recharging or swapping out disposable AAs every day. What if you could power energy-hungry devices for months or even years at a time from a single, reasonably-sized battery? A Washington state-based fusion energy startup is helping to make that dream a reality for DARPA, which wants higher-power radioactive batteries for space. 

Avalanche Energy, which differentiates itself from the rest of the fusion sector by working on portable fusion reactors, announced on Wednesday that it had earned a $5.2 million contract from DARPA through the latter's Rads to Watts program. Begun last year, Rads to Watts' aim is to develop a method for turning "high-power nuclear radiation into kilowatts of electrical energy."

Radioactive batteries already exist, and have for some time, by capturing the decay particles of radioactive isotopes and converting them to electricity. They have the ability to last for decades, centuries, or even millennia, but they ...