Lithium grid batteries are a non-issue for safety, in practice. They’re LFP (which is really forgiving heatwise, as lithium batteries go) and adding a ton of passive cooling isn’t a big deal since weight isn’t a problem when it’s stationary. And sodium-ion will only be better in this regard.
Recycling is overblown as a problem. Like any industry, recycling needs scale to be economical, and every new tech isn’t recycled at scale until 1) it’s produced at scale, and 2) that generation produced at scale reaches EOL and needs to be recycled.
In practice, recycling lithium batteries is a non-issue because a lithium battery contains an entire battery’s worth of lithium (it’s ~10%+ lithium - and that lithium is a liquid that, when drained out, is >99% lithium!), whereas lithium brine is like 0.1% lithium. It’s not hard to recycle most of the battery, and the other parts will only be learned after we have mountains of free dead batteries to practice on, not before.
Lithium grid batteries are a non-issue for safety, in practice. They’re LFP (which is really forgiving heatwise, as lithium batteries go) and adding a ton of passive cooling isn’t a big deal since weight isn’t a problem when it’s stationary. And sodium-ion will only be better in this regard.
Recycling is overblown as a problem. Like any industry, recycling needs scale to be economical, and every new tech isn’t recycled at scale until 1) it’s produced at scale, and 2) that generation produced at scale reaches EOL and needs to be recycled.
In practice, recycling lithium batteries is a non-issue because a lithium battery contains an entire battery’s worth of lithium (it’s ~10%+ lithium - and that lithium is a liquid that, when drained out, is >99% lithium!), whereas lithium brine is like 0.1% lithium. It’s not hard to recycle most of the battery, and the other parts will only be learned after we have mountains of free dead batteries to practice on, not before.