Threat of runaway battery meltdown causes "renewables will save us" advocates to abandon batteries.

[NNadir]

This is too funny for words.

I'm reading an article in The Journal of Power Sources (Ronald A. Guidotti a,∗, Patrick J. Masset b, Journal of Power Sources 183 (2008) 388–398) which contains the following text:

There is also the possibility of the Ca²⁺ participating in doublesalt formation in the presence of K⁺ , as shown in Ca²⁺ +K⁺ +3Cl⁻ → KCaCl₃(sol) (2) The high melting point of the KCaCl₃ of 752 ^◦C can cause salt precipitation at the anode–separator interface, increasing the cell impedance <8>. At the same time, the CaLi₂ that forms immediately reacts with the dissolved chromate to form a dark green Cr(V) compound that serves as the separator for the battery <9>. This is shown in 3CaLi₂(liq) +4 Cl⁻ +17Ca²⁺ +12CrO₄^-2 4Ca₅(CrO₄)₃Cl(s) +6 Li⁺ (3) Thus, both chemical as well as electrochemical reactions occur during discharge of such batteries. The chemical reactions must be controlled during discharge as they are exothermic and cause the battery to heat. Uncontrolled, they can lead to a thermal runaway where the battery destroys itself. Maintaining this delicate balance made the design of Ca/CaCrO₄ thermal batteries challenging.

.

The bold is mine.

The abstract is here: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6TH1-4SH6BB4-2&_user=10&_coverDate=08%2F15%2F2008&_alid=768673092&_rdoc=1&_fmt=high&_orig=search&_cdi=5269&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_ct=10&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=a2912c9b7a5580970076c7da33223df8">Runaway Molten Salt Battery Meltdowns.

I can't wait to see the look on the faces of the first yuppie brat who watches his $100,000 Tesla car explode into flames, by the way, although one hopes it doesn't happen in the 8 car garage on Mom's estate.

[Name removed]

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[phantom power]

2. Maybe we can dispose of them in ocean-bottom subduction zones.

[NNadir]

3. Chromate stays toxic forever.

[phantom power]

6. Then Congress better get busy deciding what symbol to spraypaint on the Chromate repository.

[NNadir]

7. How about this one?

[bananas]

17. How about this one?

Oh wait - you don't like bunnies.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2007/10/nuclear_waste_a_warning_sign_t.html


Nuclear Waste: A Warning Sign to Last 10,000 Years

Filed under: Links From the Show

Nukes here. Stay away.
Brandon Alms

Those cute bunnies on the left are meant to warn future people -- really future people -- away from a nuclear waste dump. Created by Brandon Alms, the artwork was a winning entry in the Desert Space Foundation's contest to design a universal warning sign for a radioactive repository planned for Yucca Mountain.

As part of our series on the renaissance of nuclear power, we're looking at the problem of nuclear waste.

One challenge: What kind of warning sign would still say "stay away" to humans living 10,000 years from now? Host Alison Stewart suggested something in red, to which I would counter, "Christmas." You?

[tom_paine]

27. I like that one, and it actually could communicate something to people 10,000 years in the future

Ys, I know the three-eared bunny picture is satirical and not practical, but I'll be damned if ti doesn't symbolically convey danger fairly well.

Only problem with looking 10,000 years into the future, is that people would have to have some basic knowledge of science and radiation to understand that warning of the three-eared bunny.

Problem is, if there's even human beings still left in 10,000 years, it is unlikely (but still possible though remotely so) that human beings will be as technically advanced as we are today.

We'd better calibrate that sign to communicate to people who know nothing of science...just in case.

[XemaSab]

4. Maybe one of the cars will burn all the way to China

:D

[NNadir]

5. "China Syndrome" on the LA freeway?

We need a stupid movie with Jane Fonda to point up the risk of electric cars.

[XemaSab]

8. Just going down the LA freeway period is scary enough

:scared:

[Name removed]

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[AdHocSolver]

10. Then we better abandon the gasoline powered car immediately.

Several years ago my uncle bought a new Chevrolet. A few months later, he drove it to the store to go shopping. When he came out a while later, he saw that his new car was surrounded by fire trucks and flames were shooting out of the engine compartment.

Since the car was under warranty, and he had taken it to the dealer earlier because he had smelled gasoline fumes, he asked GM to replace the engine. They refused, saying that since the dealer couldn't find the problem, they weren't responsible for fixing the car.

Fast forward several years. A neighbor owned a Ford Escort. While driving home one day with her three kids in the car, she saw some smoke coming out of the engine compartment. She stopped the car and got her kids out a few minutes before the car went up in flames.

Then there is the problem of the Ford Pintos with the exploding gas tanks.

This is proof that the gasoline engine is a menace to the world and should be abandoned immediately.

[NNadir]

12. Cars are pretty dangerous devices. I don't recommend them.

[DCKit]

31. A friend and I were driving to the beach a few decades back...

and passed a burning car off to the side of the road. Always incredibly snarky, he quipped "Y'know, I always wanted a Cadillac with a fireplace."

This from a guy who, at a friends very Catholic funeral, was doused with Holy water and cried softly "It burns! It burns!"

[Wilms]

11. Whoa! Sounds serious.

How does it compare to this meltdown?

[NNadir]

13. No stupid graphics by illiterates are in the scientific journal.

Any idea what the unit of Beq m² means?

No?

Why am I not surprised?

[Wilms]

24. Oh. Sorry. I guess something else got to all the Chernobyl victims.

My bad.

[NNadir]

29. Your bad indeed. You couldn't care less what got to all of the coal victims in the Ukraine

because you can't think and you expect to be treated with credibility when you claim that the only victims of energy disasters ever were Chernobyl victims.

Do you know the ratio of coal victims to nuclear victims in Ukraine?

Couldn't care less?

Why am I not surprised?

Your fetish is full of shit because it's arbitrary and ill informed.

Nuclear energy doesn't need to be perfect to be better than everything else. It merely needs to be better than everything else.

Now.

Got a fucking clue what the population of Kiev is?

No idea?

Why am I not surprised?

It's about 2.7 million.

This may come as a surprise to a producer of stupid meaningless graphics, but Kiev, which is about 50 km from Chernobyl was not wiped out by the accident so celebrated by dumb fetishists.

In fact, Ukraine is planning on building <em>more</em> nuclear reactors, because, in fact, they know more about Ukraine than you do.

I know more about the number of people who died from the dangerous fossil fuel waste in 2002 than you do, because you couldn't fucking care less:

http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/countryprofilesebd.xls

I note, with contempt, that you don't know shit from shinola about Chernobyl in particular, nor the study of life cycle analysis and risk in energy in general.

Thanks for your ignorant and rote responses. Heckuva job. You must be very proud of your record, I bet. No go back to watching television and eating cheese doodles.

[Wilms]

40. Who said anything about coal?

You. Not me. Put it in your Christmas stocking. I'm not buying it, let alone selling it.

Be content in promoting your scheme. Use all the fossil fuel you want digging and processing your favorite energy source and then use that to fuel all the other forms of planet destroying fetishes you protect with that bankrupt plan.

And in your spare time, tell me what I do and don't care about.

[kristopher]

14. Those interested in a bit more substantive discussion

may go to http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=39 and read what Tesla says about their batteries.

With the extended comments that follow the blog entry it is much more informative than anything brought to you by the employees of the Nuclear Energy Institute (the propaganda division of the US nuclear industry).

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[kristopher]

18. Says the paid shill of the Nuclear Energy Institute

[NNadir]

20. Don't use ice, coal boy:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9095169106222751499&q=battery+fire&ei=5kuDSOe5No3YqQLswLziCA&hl=en

http://www.avtoday.com/asw/categories/commercial/2802.html

I don't know anything about your finances. I couldn't care less, either. What I know about you is that you don't know shit from shinilo about a single techical subject and like the rest of the whiny anti-nukes on this website, try to avoid your pathetic lack of insight using a red herring about <em>me</em>.

The anti-nuke cult - whether paid (off) dangerous fossil fuel workers like Amory Lovins and Gehard Schroeder, or credulous little twirps with poor educations and little intellectual iniative - are working to perpetuate the status quo.

I did what I could change the world - it's now too late as ignorance has done it's worst - and you did what you did to keep it unchanged by appeal to sweet dopey fantasies in the face of ravaging disaster.

I am the liberal thinker.

You are the conservative.

The deaths attributable to your appeal to wishful thinking and your moral vapidity can be found here:

http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/countryprofilesebd.xls

Heckuva job fundie. Heckuva job. You must be very proud.

[madokie]

33. I feel comfortable in saying that I would bet that I, yep, little ole me,

has done more for the co2 problem already than you ever will. I've been using a carbon neutral source of heat, that is or was a waste product, since the winter of '91 '92, way before it was cool and due to my lead have turned several of my family and friends on to doing the same. I constantly try to get the message out here on the DU too that there is a better to heat than burning fossil fuels or cutting down our trees.

wood pellets.

Now that I'm disabled and don't work I have all the opportunity to travel around to visit with family and friend or just to sight see but I chose not too because we don't have mass transit and I find unnecessary trips in an auto as an unacceptable use of fossil fuels. In other words I stay home a lot where I could well afford to be going here and there. Yes big guy, my actions support my convictions.

what have you done?

I also have a wood burning stove design that I've built many of, lost count but somewhere in the twenties for myself, in my case in my shops and homes before the pellet stove, and friends that uses the gasifier principle and will heat a home on less than half of the wood it takes to heat in a regular wood burning stove no matter the brand. No two of my stoves looks alike but they all work on the same principle, I design them to fit the place and people who are going to be using them. My stove design creates no creosote either no matter how low the burn needs to be. There is no, and I mean no visible smoke coming from any of the chimneys either other than for the time it takes to get the fire started.

[MH1]

19. Would a melting battery affect my safety like when my transmission went out at 55mph?

Bad things happen to conventional autos. Bad things will also happen to battery powered stuff.

Luckily, when my transmission decided to go on strike while I was driving down the highway, traffic was light and I was able to maneuver to the shoulder without causing an accident. It could have ended much differently.

Anyway I did find your post and the subsequent chatter amusing. As I usually do with your posts. :D

[NNadir]

21. Please see post #32 for films of burning lithium batteries in airports and in FAA films.

Looking at the film, I would expect that a runaway melting battery at 55 mph would leave bits of molten burning metal in a stream under the car. The biggest risk would be having your tire roll over one and have the tire melt or catch fire.

Lithium containing alloys are often group I and group II metals, and often, as shown in the film (about 8 minutes in) halon extinguishers only make things worse, and even ice, makes it worse. Under these conditions, when hot, lithium reacts with water to give hydrogen and can reignite.

(Lithium is the least reactive group I metal, though.)

Thanks for your kind words.

[tinrobot]

25. A battery melting destroys one laptop.

A nuclear plant melting destroys one city.

[NNadir]

26. And wishful thinking by illiterates ignoring the status quo destroys one planet.

The fact is fundie, that nucleear power need not be perfect to be better than everything else.
It merely needs to be better than everything else.

One city in the entire history of nuclear energy, Priyapat, needed to be abandoned. The loss of life was trivial on a scale of energy disasters.

I note with contempt that you couldn't care less about the number of cities destroyed by renewable energy at Banqiao. You are, in fact, ignorant of the whole affair.

The number of people killed by nuclear power in the 50 year history of nuclear power is trivial if one does not arbitrarily exclude the number of deaths from all other forms of exajoule scale energy.


The number of people killed while anti-nuke dilitantes dicked around with their selective attention in 2002, when they were already here with their "renewables will save us" crap is not zero:

http://www.who.int/quantifying_ehimpacts/countryprofilesebd.xls

More than 2.3 million dead in 2003 alone. Heckuva job. You must be very proud.

You don't care about cities. You never have. You never will. Decca could go under water and still you'd be here talking about windmills in 2050. You care only about your provincial paranoia.

The entire class of anti-nuke cultists chants the same drivel over and over and over and over without any concept of meaning. Oh well, at least it's Sunday.

[tinrobot]

28. Boy, you're really angry.

Why is that?

[Indenturedebtor]

34. You quitting smoking or something?

I am actually - started yesterday. I'm making it go easier by eating lots of icecream and chocolate. I went out and spent 20 bucks on icecream last night.

Maybe you should do the same?

I don't think that anyone here is disputing that nuclear is better than coal, but mega-scale renewables are better than nukes. And the exploding battery thing you're talking about doesn't happen very often. Besides - what kind of false comparison is that? For a cabon neutral future we'll likely have to use batteries in some form or another on a massive scale.

We can of course use mechanical batteries for large scale operations (like pumping water uphill), but we'll need something like lithium cells or hydrogen to store juice for our cars and whatnot.

Now what do we do wih all that spent nuke-juice if we switch most of our power over to nuke?

[madokie]

36. Thats what the end times is for

you know when Jesus comes back and saves everyone or at least the believers, I guess the ones who are worth saving that is. Hey they know hes coming so why worry about a little something like nuclear waste. just being a smart ass, ok :-)

Peace

[Name removed]

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[Name removed]

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[lfairban]

30. EXCUSE ME!

The Tesla Motors Roadster uses Li-ion batteries NOT Molten Salt Batteries:

http://www.teslamotors.com/blog2/?p=39

Your eloquent criticism is, of course, unfounded.

Molten Salt Batteries in a Tesla Roadster?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

[DCKit]

32. The very definition of a "Hot Rod".

Can you get them in "D" size?

[lfairban]

37. No, but maybe "C" size.

http://www.batteryspace.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWCATS&Category=490

Be careful, they are 3.6 V, not 1.5 V.

[Fledermaus]

35. No one is abandoning new battery technologies.

It has been well understood that ever increasing energy densities would eventually lead to this type of problem.

The only thing you have managed to point out is there should be an energy density limit of personal items allowed on passenger planes.

FYI this is what happens when gasoline reaches thermal runaway.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5M9tQFCDOA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLYqVl-riWU

[NNadir]

38. I don't think that the "only" thing I've pointed out has something to do with computers on aircraft.

The Journal of Power Sources is hardly a journal about computer power.

In fact, these fuel cells are mostly being discussed for use in automobiles and in homes and offices and other buildings.

I note that the Tesla is essentially a huge pile of computer batteries though, and I am willing to bet that this car will indeed catch fire in a grand way.

[napoleon_in_rags]

39. Yeah, that would be a hell of a look on his face...

...though I'm not sure it would fully wipe off the smile from laughing his ass off at everybody who's pay in to these gas prices. ;)