> capacity “2-3X higher” than conventional lithium-ion
Is this per unit weight? per unit space? per dollar?
Is this per unit weight? per unit space? per dollar?
No, not particularly- the energy stored in an li ion cell is only a small amount of its potential energy. The cathode (eg cobalt oxide) and the organic electrolyte act as an oxidizer and fuel, >10x more energetic than the energy stored in the lithium.
Solid state batteries carry far less energy than a normal battery.
I wasn't saying they couldn't work, just that if they did fail they'd have the potential to fail spectacularly. Same is true for a gasoline tank.
A bomb requires way more than just energy, it needs to have a mechanism to release quickly. Li ion has a mechanism like that, but solid state batteries don't.
Ordinary matter contains about 90,000 terajoules of energy per kg. But that hardly makes everything a bomb. There needs to be a way to explosively release the energy for it to be a bomb, and for some types of energy storage there isn't such a mechanism.
That number is an upper bound, I don't believe any process is known to convert matter into a useable form of energy with reasonable efficiency and yield. Neither fusion nor fission count as they only "convert"/release a tiny fraction.
My point is that energy density doesn't make a bomb, it's also necessary to have a mechanism for the spontaneous and rapid release of that energy. Ordinary matter has a very high energy density (the highest), but as you point out it takes special processes to release that energy.
Similarly, I can have a soda can filled with Lithium-Deuteride (a fusion fuel) and that can have a very high energy content (terajoules per kilogram) but it's not a bomb unless it's connected to a system that can actually release the fusion energy in that fuel all at once. It's not something that could even remotely happen spontaneously without those other components that make it a bomb.
Another example would be Potassium. Naturally occurring Potassium contains about 400 megajoules of radioactive energy per kilogram, which is about 100x as much as TNT. Even in the form of, say, a Potassium salt that would avoid the issue of the chemical energy of Potassium metal, that material would still have enormous energy density. And there's nothing you need to do for the energy release to happen, it'll happen automatically. But it's still not a bomb because it will take over a billion years for just half of that energy to be released, and there's no known way to substantially speed up that release of energy (without inputting even more energy) to make a bomb.