'The fact that there is so much soda ash available in the US is probably the primary reason to pursue sodium-ion technology..''The United States accounts for over 90% of the world’s readily mined reserves for soda ash. According to the
New York Times, beneath the southwestern Wyoming desert there is a vast deposit of soda ash that was formed 50 million years ago. For centuries, it has been mined to meet the needs of America’s glass manufacturing industry.
..
Sodium is an attractive alternative to lithium because it costs only 2 to 3% as much as lithium. Imagine what that price difference could mean to the price of new electric vehicles! It is also largely immune to the decrease in performance that bedevils lithium-ion batteries today. But sodium-ion technology is about where lithium-ion technology was a decade ago.
That doesn’t mean it won’t get better over time, but it does suggest there are a lot of things that can happen in the meantime. For instance, the price of lithium could continue to decline as new sources are discovered and the fruits of the IRA begin to kick in.
The fact that there is so much soda ash available in the US is probably the primary reason to pursue sodium-ion technology. If America wants to decouple from China when it comes to batteries, sodium may be the route to go..'
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The Sodium-Ion Battery Is Coming To Production Cars This Year. April 22, 2023
Context (Global Healing 2020 - 2050)(Fusion Energy) - Total Transformation - '..the elimination of want.'(IEA)(EU)(2021-2030) - '..net-zero emissions..' - 'Towards Zero Pollution for Air, Water and Soil'(WHO air quality)(2021-2030) - '..by 2030 .. a complete ban on wood burning would be necessary, as would less livestock farming and less air traffic.'(Hydrogen rail projects) - Canadian Pacific Railway to ‘significantly expand’ hydrogen train project(Make flying green) - Denmark to make domestic flights fossil fuel free by 2030(Restore Biodiversity) - “A resilient and net zero world is not possible unless the ocean and its biodiversity are protected”'Volvo .. going leather-free..'WHO: Air pollution is worse than we thought - but there's hope we can fix it(Phase out fossil-fuel extraction) - Climate change: Fossil fuels must stay underground, scientists say'..if we can cut global emissions in half by 2030 and reach net zero by the middle of this century, we can halt and possibly reverse the rise in temperatures.'(EU)(2021-2030) - '..net-zero emissions..' - '..to End Combustion-Engine Era in Autos.'(Rapid Energy Transition 2021 - 2030)(Fusion) - '..Helios could soon produce clean hydrogen that’s cheaper than oil .. abandoned immediate plans to develop its LNG sector in favor of hydrogen..'Estimate: October, 2025 – Safire Plasma (beyond fusion) Reactors commercially available – Abundance'A company called Helion Energy thinks it can deliver that Holy Grail to Microsoft by 2028. It announced a power purchase agreement with Microsoft this morning that would see it plug in the world’s first commercial fusion generator to a power grid in Washington.'
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Microsoft just made a huge, far-from-certain bet on nuclear fusion, May 10, 2023