So 1 gram of perfectly pure carbon-14 would produce theoretically 4mW essentially continuously, or 35Wh per year.
I think that’s pretty neat. There are bursty low energy communication devices which could perhaps work with that power budget?
The problem is, nothing in the world actually needs to stay on for 5,000 years. So the alternative of using a 100x cheaper battery that just lasts 6 months or something is going to be hard to beat.
For more human-scale applications, you're probably looking for something that has a half-life of ~650 years -- that gives you > 90% original power for 100 years.
I think that’s pretty neat. There are bursty low energy communication devices which could perhaps work with that power budget?
The problem is, nothing in the world actually needs to stay on for 5,000 years. So the alternative of using a 100x cheaper battery that just lasts 6 months or something is going to be hard to beat.