- "Battery makers have been working on sodium-ion batteries for many years, but the United States may have a long-term advantage in the technology. Almost all o

- "Battery makers have been working on sodium-ion batteries for many years, but the United States may have a long-term advantage in the technology. Almost all of the world’s naturally occurring geological deposits of soda ash, the raw material for sodium-ion batteries, are in southwestern Wyoming." That's a really odd-sounding claim. Is there any basis to it? Sodium is dirt-cheap and it doesn't seem plausible it for to be a major factor in battery economics. It's even odder that when I look into the statistics, China is actually the world's #1 producer of soda ash[0]. With the caveat that they don't mine it from geology, like the NYT is focused on; they synthesize it (meaning the carbonate salt, Na₂CO₃) from salt brine[1,2] (i.e., from NaCl). edit to add: According to [3], the prices in China are below $300 a ton, for context. [0] (.pdf) https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-soda-ash.pdf https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2024/mcs2024-soda-ash.p... ("China produced an estimated 29 million tons of soda ash in 2023 (most of which was synthetic) and was the leading producing country followed by, in descending order, Turkey and the United States") [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solvay_process [2] https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/synthetic-soda-ash-survive/101/i7 https://cen.acs.org/business/specialty-chemicals/synthetic-s... ("Can synthetic soda ash survive?" (2023)) [3] https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/07/11/new-soda-ash-factory-in-china-to-reduce-solar-glass-prices/ https://www.pv-magazine.com/2023/07/11/new-soda-ash-factory-... ("New soda ash factory in China to reduce solar glass prices" (2023))