Two years ago, sodium-ion battery pioneer Natron Energy was busy preparing its specially formulated sodium batteries for mass production. The company slipped a little past its 2023 kickoff plans, but it didn't fall too far behind as far as mass battery production goes. It officially commenced…
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Kinetic energy of a body in orbit, I suppose. Like, you want to accelerate the Moon, you get a bigger orbit. We pull energy out of it via tidal generators, and in theory, we could speed its orbit up, increase its altitude.
I mean, it could theoretically smack into something, but it’s not gonna hit the Earth very readily, and the speed of an object that isn’t in Earth orbit, like an asteroid or something that hasn’t been captured by Earth’s gravitational field, is probably more of a factor in a collision than the speed of something that is.
At a smaller scale, I expect that thermal energy storage can be pretty safe, as long as you keep it within bounds. Like, if you wanted to insulate a lake and crank its temperature up or down ten degrees, probably not a lot that it could do even if the insulation was penetrated. The rate of energy release is gonna be bounded by convection.
The orbital one sounds interesting. That’s a lot of energy, and it could do a lot of damage, but it seems very stable if left untouched.
My gut suspicion is that with something more safe/stable, you would also be dealing with a low quality/potency source and/or low efficiency.