I’d prefer something that isn’t as dangerous as Lithium-Ion.

There are several different lithium ion chemistries, each with different safety profiles.

The spicy pillow bulge comes from delamination, which can be prevented with more rigid cell containers. Delamination itself is dangerous because it changes the electrical characteristics of the battery in a way that increases the risk of thermal runaway, where the increased heat speeds up the reaction that causes more heat, in a feedback loop.

Another related danger is the actual flammability of the electrolytes and cathode/anode materials. Several of these chemicals can react with oxygen, especially when hot, to cause intense fires or explosions. And these batteries tend to already contain their own oxygen, so that the fires can’t be quenched.

So the engineers needs to design cells that are more physically resistant to physical deformation, to implement safety features like current interrupt devices (that disconnect the internal cells when certain conditions are met), use chemistries that don’t have as high a risk of thermal runaway to begin with, and use chemistries that don’t rely on flammable components.

Many lithium ion chemistries already accomplish most of these. In recent years, lithium iron phosphate batteries (LFP) have been taking over on car batteries, because they’re much safer on all these fronts: they can withstand much higher temperatures before hitting thermal runaway, and the characteristics of thermal runaway in an LFP battery are more subdued (the oxygen in an LFP battery is more tightly bound in a crystalline structure so that fewer oxygen molecules jump out to feed an ongoing fire).

And as it turns out, LFP is cheaper than the other common Lithium Ion battery chemistries. So the incentives to use this chemistry has caused it to jump ahead in market share in vehicles.

People are working on it. Safety is obviously important. But lithium itself isn’t necessarily any more dangerous than anything else.

but there’s no need for a sensationalist headline.

First time with this publication, Interesting Engineering?

If you were already going to use the heat later in the day when fossil fuels are burning again, then whatever you can do to reduce that future consumption, through storing some thermal heat produced now, can still reduce that fossil fuel consumption overall. Water heaters, warming any living spaces that might need to be heated at night, etc.

It doesn’t even have to be efficient when prices are literally negative. All it has to do is be somewhat effective at reducing later consumption.

Solar needs active maintenance, including personnel of varying skills. All projects have ongoing costs, especially if they’re gonna sit outside in the weather.

Better to just compare all costs, across the projected lifespan, and compare replacement costs if one source lasts longer than the other.

Doing all that tends to show that building new nuclear isn’t cost competitive. Not big reactors, not small reactors.

nuclear does better for utilities level power than solar.

Define “better.” Personally, I think nuclear is too expensive to be a current solution. Let all the existing nuclear plants continue out their useful lives, and extend them as feasible, but constructing new nuclear plants is probably not worth the cost, even compared to solar + enough grid scale storage to cover multiple nights of demand even when days are cloudy.

Terrapower just got approval to build their $4 billion, 345-MW reactor. That’s $11.6 million per MW.

NuScale canceled their 462 MW project in Utah when it became clear that the total cost was going to exceed $9 billion. That’s $19.5 million per MW.

Solar plants are about $1 million per MW. Grid scale 4-hour batteries are about $750,000 per MW.

And the costs of solar/batteries keep dropping, while nuclear tends to increase in cost over time.

It might be cheaper in some settings.

For certain food styles, I buy bulk spices sometimes because I don’t like to pay for an entire jar I won’t use, knowing that most of it will go stale by the time I’m through the jar. Being able to buy tiny quantities is sometimes way cheaper.

I’m also mismatched in my conditioner and shampoo remaining where I can buy the matching set and let the difference persist, or I can try to buy a single catch-up bottle of whatever I have excess of, to hope that they even out by the time I get to the bottom of a bottle.

Basically, I can imagine where it might be preferable (for both cost and convenience) to buy an arbitrary amount of something rather than buy a fixed factory container of that thing. I know I already do it for certain things.