I don't wish to quibble on the science here, but the electron emitter is essentially a single-pixel CRT gun. It is no more "radioactive" than a tube TV. In fact, the voltages are likely to be far lower due to much less impressive distances these electrons need to travel.
It's also obvious, as has been written here by myself and others many times before, that all this stuff takes much longer to come to market than people would like. There has never been a "burst upon the scene" technology in displays and there likely won't ever be one.
Keep that in mind when someone tells you what's coming up "next year". They are quite likely to be overly optimistic in that belief.
It has taken something on the order of 2+ years to come close to commercial mass production of a 40" or greater LCD, when LCD is already a proven technology. In light of this, it seems especially silly when there was the hype about Motorola's alleged carbon-nanotube displays a few months back that were going to bring up $1000 50" flat panels by next year.
I will say that the principles in SED are not -- in my mind -- at all questionable. And the decade (or perhaps closer to two ) of research in FEDs -- a close cousin to SED -- makes the claims all the more believable. FED failed because it ultimately proved nearly impossible to manufacture cost effectively. SED is already in trouble on the same score due to another year of delay -- they only recently discussed mass production in 2005.
The moving target of lower pricing is the challenge that ultimately has done many pretenders to the throne and makes things like iFire's interesting inorganic EL display all the more unlikely to ever reach market. It means things like OLED not only have to reach big sizes (which is years away as recent hype was around a Casio 2" OLED for TVs!); not only have to reach 30,000+ hour lifetimes (which is likely to be achieved, but not yet close to real); but also have to come in cheaper than incumbents to push them out. That's a mammoth challenge, especially when the incumbents are reaching true scale economies.
I remain interested in SED and think it could be very important. But on this news, I'm a lot less interested. By 2006, there'll be real 50+" LCDs coming off of 7G fabs and increasingly inexpensive plasmas, quite possibly incorporating a next generation of technology. A 40" display, no matter how thin or low power, is going to have to be awfully special -- and awfully inexpensive -- to garner much notice and to justify selecting it over the competition.