Two weeks ago a large oil refinery in Irbil (northern Iraq) caught on fire, injuring 14 people with burns and smoke inhalation [1].

This is regrettable. I feel sorry for the people, and their families, who have been injured and killed in these accidents. Industrial activities are dangerous. We should recognize this. We do these activities because we want energy. This is news because battery factories are new, whereas other forms of energy have been around for over a hundred years. An oil refinery catching on fire may make the news, but it won’t get sensationalized or be editorialized as signs of a worrying new trend.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-ph/news/world/firefighters-battle-mas...

These are apparently not large EV-type rechargeable lithium batteries, as I immediately assumed.

From the article: "Aricell makes lithium primary batteries for sensors and radio communication devices". A "primary battery" is non-rechargeable; and given the use-cases mentioned I expect each individual battery is fairly small.

Of course, when there are 10s of 1000s of them together that's still a lot of energy to burn.

Very much more than likely just a coincidence borne of a widespread industry dealing with a hazardous product, but it's strange to me that this happens alongside a major fire incident at a Scottish lithium recycling plant and so soon after the Russia/North Korea defence pact.

Given what's happening in Ukraine, lithium-powered drones of various types are clearly changing the game over there. It would, to me, make sense to 'cause problems' in that production pipeline.

*removes lithium-foil hat

Not much enlightening I can add to such a story, but I am thankful to the many people who work dangerous jobs that are needed to support the modern world.

I remember seeing a video of someones work at a battery factory, and their job was putting out fires. Every 10 minutes or so, one of the batteries on a test/charging station would catch fire, and they had a special set of grippers and fire resistant gloves to pick that battery up and drop it in a bucket of sand.

Sometimes there were so many batteries on fire at once the fire started spreading to neighbouring ones and they couldn't keep up and their bucket (and the spare) got full before they could empty it out.

It was eye-opening...

We need sodium batteries for safety reasons. Unfortunately their performance so far is sub par

Perhaps 35 years ago I thought to replace an alkaline battery pack for a PC's CMOS memory and RTC with a 3v coin cell. The first step was to solder leads onto it. The second step was to leave the room in a hurry. The cell blew its end cap off and smoked vigorously for a while but no real damage was done.

What’s the procedure for even putting out a fire like that? Just wait it out?

Very unfortunate. I’m really rooting for South Korean battery manufacturing.