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Comment by teuobk | Hacker News Reader

Medtronic made some nuclear-powered implantable pacemakers in the 1970s. Supposedly, they worked fine, but adoption was hindered by the word "nuclear."

My biggest concern is disposal. I don't like the idea of millions of these things ending up in landfills, even though I'm sure there would be an aggressive recycling campaign associated with their introduction.

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> My biggest concern is disposal. I don't like the idea of millions of these things ending up in landfills

Why not? You can replace 1 million regular batteries with a single one of these.

The radioactivity is not a problem, it's well enclosed in the device, and when the device is spent the radioactivity is probably close to background levels.

A landfill is the perfect place to put them and let them decay into passivity.

> The radioactivity is not a problem, it's well enclosed in the device, and when the device is spent the radioactivity is probably close to background levels.

It depends on how efficient the device is. That said, the problem if 'nuclear waste' is largely created by ourselves. All of that 'nuclear waste' is still useful, we are just too lazy to utilize it.

A good portion of that waste has completely spent its radioactivity. There is a portion of it that is useful as medical isotopes. There is still more that can be put to other uses. We just need to find applications for the waste rather than spend all of our time trying to find a way to store it.

Tons of radioactive waste is put in landfills all of the time. Usually, it just has to decay down to background radiation levels before it is allowed to be dumped there. Most US landfills have radiation detectors where the trucks enter. If your industrial trash sets off the alarms, they will usually ship it back to you and make you deal with whatever is setting off their alarms. This happens , for example, to hospitals sometimes, as they generate a lot of radioactive waste from nuclear scans, etc.

> adoption was hindered by the word "nuclear."

This is exactly why NMR machines are now called MRIs.

"NMR and MRI are essentially the same technique, except MRI is used to analyze the contents of humans instead of what is in a test tube. The name change is to alleviate patient fears associated with `nuclear'in NMR." -- http://www.princeton.edu/pr/pwb/98/1123/nmr.htm

Oh great so I had radiation blasted at my abdomen. And I thought it was just magnets.

I'm not sure why you were getting downvoted; I have a few family members with pacemakers, and the first thing I thought of when I saw this was pacemaker batteries. Right now they have to get surgery every 7 to 9 years just to replace the unit due to dead batteries. I didn't know that Medtronic (who is still the big pacemaker company) had already tried that idea out before.

Pacemakers from the 70s were huge too; they were around the size of an Altoids tin (not quite as long). Now they're about the size of 2 silver dollars stacked together. Maybe a little thinner.

At the risk of being very cynical, which do you think makes more money for the pacemaker manufacturer (and doctor and hospital, etc): a pacemaker with an eternal nuclear battery, or one that has to be replaced every few years?

I'm sure the up-front cost of the pacemaker is greater when it has a nuclear battery. As far as doctor and hospital? I doubt that they factor into the equation when Medtronic makes their business decisions.

I completely disagree with your second point. The manufacturer necessarily markets almost exclusively to the doctor. Most patients will happily go with whatever their doctor says is the best device on the market. And health insurance is probably paying for it anyway, so it's not like the vast majority of people receiving pacemakers actually have to make the decision based on the cost of the device.

Any differentiation between product lines will have to do with ease of implantation, ease of servicing or other clinician-facing features.

That would make way more sense if the average age of a pacemaker recipient was much younger. I don't get the feeling that they'd be eliminating that many units for sale - figure the average age of a first time pacemaker recipient is in their 60s or 70s; you're talking 2 or maybe 3 units in total.

That number rises of course with people who get them much younger (which is the case in my family), but even then you're not talking about a gross amount of units. Maybe 7 or so in a lifetime.

Adoption was hindered by the word "nuclear."

I propose we change the term from 'nuclear' to 'fusion' in all future nuclear (fusion) marketing copy.

fusion is not at work in these batteries

'Happy Fun Atom' then. Who wouldn't want a device powered by 'Happy Fun Atom?'

What about Mr. Fusion?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeLorean_time_machine#Mr._Fusio...

It's got to be true if it was in the movies.

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