Baltic Dry Index. 1984 +07 Brent Crude 95.80
Spot Gold 1879
Coronavirus Cases 02/04/20 World 1,000,000
Deaths 53,100
Coronavirus Cases 15/02/22 World 414,050,800
Deaths 5,845,365
“A society becomes totalitarian when its structure becomes flagrantly artificial: that is when its ruling class has lost its function but succeeds in clinging to power by force or fraud.”
George Orwell.
The good news this morning, a new European war hasn’t broken out yet. The last day of peace?
The bad news this morning, the Washington war party and Kiev say it’s going to start tomorrow. Russia continues to deny it’s going to attack anyone.
In response, “Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday called on the country's people to fly flags and sing the national anthem in unison on Feb. 16, a date that some Western media say Russian could invade.”
Well,
it’s an old trick and it just might work and scare off the Russians I suppose,
but that’s not the way to bet. It might just fool the Russians into thinking they've come up against the Welsh.
The better news, Russia and the west both say they will work diplomatically to defuse the crisis, but both would say that, wouldn’t they. Hitler and Chamberlin said something like that at Munich.
In the stock casinos a nervous foreboding. In commodities, both gold and crude oil seem to be betting on war.
Starting a new European war while eastern Europe is still mired in a Covid-19 pandemic doesn’t seem a sensible thing to do, but then threatening to advance NATO into the Ukraine to directly threaten nuclear armed Russia, creating this crisis, doesn’t seem a sensible thing to do either.
Still, Washington and London haven’t done many sensible things since Bush and Bliar decided to invade Iraq looking for non existent weapons of mass destruction.
Below, a phony peace or a phony war?
Asia-Pacific stocks mixed as Russia-Ukraine tensions keep investors cautious
SINGAPORE — Shares in Asia-Pacific were mixed in Tuesday trade as investors in the region continue to monitor tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Japanese stocks struggled to return to positive territory, with the Nikkei 225 down 0.6% while the Topix index declined 0.55%.
Japan’s economy expanded 5.4% on an annualized basis in the final quarter of 2021, according to government data released Tuesday. Still, the quarterly annualized gross domestic product growth was below a median market forecast for a 5.8% gain, according to Reuters.
Mainland Chinese stocks, on the other hand, were higher. The Shanghai composite gained 0.4% by the afternoon while the Shenzhen component advanced 1.401%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index traded 0.7% lower.
Elsewhere, South Korea’s Kospi dipped 0.55% while the S&P/ASX 200 in Australia declined 0.22%.
MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan traded 0.15% lower.
Global markets have been kept on edge amid fears of a Russian attack on Ukraine, with the U.S. closing its embassy in Kyiv.
Overnight on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average declined 171.89 points to 34,566.17 while the S&P 500 slipped 0.38% to 4,401.67. The Nasdaq Composite was little changed at 13,790.92.
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Ukraine president calls for 'day of unity' for Feb. 16, day some believe Russia could invade
February 15, 2022 3:26 AM GMT
MOSCOW/KYIV, Feb 14 (Reuters) - Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Monday called on the country's people to fly flags and sing the national anthem in unison on Feb. 16, a date that some Western media say Russian could invade.
Ukrainian government officials stressed that Zelenskiy was not predicting an attack on Wednesday, but responding skeptically to the foreign media reports.
"They tell us Feb. 16 will be the day of the attack. We will make it a day of unity," Zelenskiy said in a video address to the nation.
"They are trying to frighten us by yet again naming a date for the start of military action," Zelenskiy said. "On that day, we will hang our national flags, wear yellow and blue banners, and show the whole world our unity."
Zelenskiy has long said that, while he believes Russia is threatening to attack his country, the likelihood of an imminent invasion has been overstated by Western allies, responding to Moscow's efforts to intimidate Ukraine and sow panic.
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Zelenskiy's chief of staff, told Reuters the president was responding in part "with irony" to media reports of the potential date of the invasion.
"It is quite understandable why Ukrainians today are skeptical about various 'specific dates' of the so-called 'start of the invasion' announced in the media," he said. "When the 'start of the invasion' becomes some sort of rolling tour date, such media announcements can only be taken with irony."
Zelenskiy's office released a decree calling for all villages and towns in Ukraine to fly the country's flags on Wednesday, and for the entire nation to sing the national anthem at 10 a.m. It also called for an increase in salaries of soldiers and border guards.
U.S. officials said they were not predicting an assault ordered by Russian President Vladimir Putin on a specific day, but repeated warnings that it could come at any time.
-----Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Washington, which has already sent most of its diplomats home, was moving its remaining diplomatic mission in Ukraine from Kyiv to the western city of Lviv, much further from the Russian border. He cited a "dramatic acceleration in the buildup of Russian forces".
Blinken said Washington was offering Ukraine up to $1 billion in sovereign loan guarantees to calm markets. read more
The State Department issued a travel advisory recommending that U.S. citizens leave Belarus, which borders both Russia and Ukraine.
---- Russian political leaders deny Western accusations that it is planning to invade, but say it could take unspecified "military-technical" action unless a range of demands are met, including barring Kyiv from ever joining the NATO alliance.
Russia suggested on Monday that it would keep talking to the West to try to defuse the security crisis.
In a televised exchange, Putin was shown asking his foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, whether there was a chance of an agreement to address Russia's security concerns, or whether it was just being dragged into tortuous negotiations.
Lavrov replied: "We have already warned more than once that we will not allow endless negotiations on questions that demand a solution today."
But he added: "It seems to me that our possibilities are far from exhausted ... At this stage, I would suggest continuing and building them up." read more
---- Moscow says Ukraine's quest to join NATO poses a threat. While NATO has no immediate plans to admit Ukraine, Western countries say they cannot negotiate over a sovereign country's right to form alliances.
ECONOMIC DAMAGE
Ukraine has already suffered economic damage from the standoff. A surge in the price of 5-year credit default swaps on Ukrainian sovereign bonds suggested that markets gave Kyiv a 42% probability of defaulting.
Ukraine International Airlines, the nation's biggest airline, said its insurers had terminated coverage for some of its aircraft. read more
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz held talks with Zelenskiy in Kyiv. Scholz is due to fly to Moscow on Tuesday, following visits by French President Emmanuel Macron and two British ministers went last week. read more
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Analysis: Aviation fears grow over Russia fallout from Ukraine crisis
February 15, 20225:54 AM GMT
PARIS/MONTREAL, Feb 15 (Reuters) - Airlines and the leasing companies that control billions of dolllars' worth of passenger jets are drawing up contingency plans for a freeze in business with Russia if the standoff on Ukraine's border boils over into a military conflict.
U.S. officials have warned that Moscow could launch an attack on Ukraine after amassing more than 100,000 troops close to its neighbour's border, with the West preparing heavy sanctions.
Aviation bosses are worried about the impact on dealings with Russian companies. Sanctions could disrupt payments to leasing firms, and any retaliatory move by Moscow to restrict access to Russian airspace might throw east-west trade into chaos.
"We are expecting an asymmetrical Russian response," said a Western source involved in drawing up scenarios, adding the West was unlikely to restrict its own airspace first.
Air corridors between parts of Europe or North America and Asia stretch across Russia, making its 26 million square km (10 million square miles) of airspace a vital trade intersection.
Cargo is particularly active. U.S. carrier FedEx (FDX.N) said on Monday it was making unspecified contingency plans.
Without access to Russia's airways, experts say airlines face having to divert flights south while avoiding areas of tension in the Middle East - adding significant cost at a time when airlines are reeling from the pandemic.
According to some reports, the crisis has resurrected the Cold War prospect of European jets heading over North America to refuel in Anchorage, then dropping down to destinations such as Tokyo, pushing the economics of such flights to the limit.
---- But the scenario is a reminder that Russia's size and position on the aviation map gives it leverage not available to the Soviet Union when economies were less integrated, according to Elisabeth Braw, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
"So far, Moscow hasn't threatened to revoke overflight rights, but knows it has a phenomenal weapon at its disposal," Braw wrote in a column in Defense One last month.
Even short of formal retaliation, experts say the impact on crucial Russian overflights is hard to predict.
"Every one of those operations requires advance clearance and that's not always routinely granted. And there's every reason to believe that if things got serious some of those requests could just go unanswered," analyst Robert Mann said.
Russia's 8,000 air traffic controllers handled 194,296 transit flights, or 532 overflights a day, on average in 2021.
That's up 16% from coronavirus-depressed levels in 2020 but still 37% below pre-crisis traffic in 2019, according to the Federal Agency for Air Transport.
More
Next a little harsh European reality for the warmongers in Washington and London. In pushing for a new European war in the Ukraine, eastern Europe as whole will pay the heavy price. Cui bono?
Poland prepares to accept Ukrainian refugees in case of war
WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland, the largest European Union nation to border Ukraine, is making preparations to accept Ukrainian refugees in the event of another Russian attack on that country. But the Polish government hopes that worst-case scenario can be averted.
Similar preparations are being made across the region, particularly in those nations which share borders with Ukraine.
As other countries draw down their diplomatic missions in Ukraine, Poland says it is for now keeping its diplomatic operations in place in case they are needed to facilitate a large-scale exit of Ukrainians.
Poland, which has welcomed large numbers of Ukrainian economic migrants in recent years, particularly after Russia’s incursions into Ukraine in 2014, has been making plans for weeks to accept refugees if it comes to that, said Marcin Przydacz, a deputy foreign minister.
While Poland has an image of being staunchly anti-refugee, that opposition is largely based on not wanting to take in large numbers of people of different religious and racial backgrounds.
Ukrainians — who like Poles are a Slavic people with a similar language and customs — have filled gaps in the labor market and have been largely welcomed in Poland in recent years.
Przydacz said in a radio interview on Monday that Poland hopes the situation in Ukraine won’t escalate, but that the country was preparing for any possibility, including the possibility of large numbers of refugees.
“In this worst-case scenario, we are not talking about hundreds or thousands, but much larger numbers,” Przydacz said on Radio Plus.
He added that the Interior Ministry has been preparing “internal scenarios, infrastructure and plans” for many weeks.
The plans would include housing refugees in hostels, dormitories, sports facilities and other venues.
----Ukraine, which is bordered by Belarus to the north and Russia to the east, also shares borders with the EU nations of Poland, Slovakia, Hungary and Romania, as well as the non-EU state of Moldova.
Hungary’s nationalist prime minister, Viktor Orban, warned Saturday that a Russian invasion of Ukraine could send hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees fleeing across the border into his country.
Meanwhile, Slovakia is also preparing for a wave of refugees in the case of a conflict. The government has prepared a plan what to do in such a scenario, but it is classified.
“According to the existing studies and analysis, I can say that even a limited Russian military attack on Ukrainian territory would mean tens of thousands of refugees crossing our border,” Slovakian Defense Minister Jaroslav Nad said.
Nad said those fleeing a war would receive refugee status.
“From the European continent’s perspective, the current situation is the most dangerous since World War II,” Nad said.
Czech Interior Minister Vit Rakusan has offered to send police officers to help Slovakia in the case of such a conflict.
Finally, it’s boom time in chips but not the kind you eat. But will there be enough for all?
Global chip sales hit record in 2021, will grow 8.8% in 2022 -SIA
February 14, 2022 10:08 AM GMT
Feb 14 (Reuters) - The Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) on Monday said that global chip sales hit a record in 2021 at $555.9 billion, up 26.2% on the year, and it forecast 8.8% growth for 2022 as chip makers continue to build up production capacity to meet demand.
"It’s still really trending very strongly towards increased demand. We're just not going to get this kind of slingshot effect that we had in the pandemic," said SIA CEO John Neuffer of the much slower growth projected for 2022.
Sales in 2020 grew 6.8% over the prior year, while 2021 was the first year since 2018 that the number of chips sold exceeded 1 trillion, he said.
While major semiconductor manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (5425.TWO), Samsung Electronics Co (005930.KS), and Intel Corp have announced tens of billions of dollars in investments for new factories in the past year, Neuffer said the digitalization trend ramped up by the pandemic would continue to drive demand higher.
“We think in the foreseeable future that there’s going to be plenty of demand for us to do very, very aggressive plant construction,” he said.
In 2021 1.15 trillion semiconductors were sold, with the biggest growth among auto-grade chips that can withstand heat and other physical challenges, Neuffer said. Sales for that segment rose 34% over the prior year at $26.4 billion. Unit sales rose 33%, he said.
China remained the largest individual market for semiconductors, with sales totaling $192.5 billion in 2021, an increase of 27.1%, the SIA said.
Global Inflation/Stagflation Watch.
Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians, inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
ECB faces backlash over green strategy 'distraction' from inflation fight
February 14, 2022 5:44 PM GMT
FRANKFURT, Feb 14 (Reuters) - European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde faced a backlash in the European Parliament on Monday from conservative lawmakers criticising the ECB's green strategy as a "distraction" from its duty to tame inflation.
Lagarde has made joining the fight against climate change a key goal and the ECB pledged last year to take greater account of the environment in core policy decisions, such as which bonds to buy in its multi-trillion-euro stimulus programme.
But ahead of a vote on the ECB's annual report on Tuesday, lawmakers from the European People's Party were taking exception to what they saw as a foray into a policy area beyond the ECB's remit, especially when inflation is running high.
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U.S. detects highly lethal bird flu in Tyson Foods chickens
Mon, February 14, 2022, 4:20 PM
CHICAGO (Reuters) -A flock of about 240,000 chickens owned by Tyson Foods Inc in Kentucky tested positive for a highly lethal form of bird flu, government officials and the company said on Monday, widening an outbreak that threatens the U.S. poultry industry.
Infections in the chickens being raised for meat triggered more restrictions on U.S. exports, with China blocking poultry products from Kentucky. Last week, buyers like China and Korea limited poultry purchases from Indiana due to an outbreak at a commercial turkey farm there.
The broiler chickens in Fulton County, Kentucky, located near the border with Tennessee, were infected with the same H5N1 strain of highly pathogenic avian flu as the turkeys in Indiana, Kentucky officials said.
They said it is Kentucky's first outbreak of the highly lethal bird flu, which killed more than 50 million U.S. chickens and turkeys in 2015.
Birds from the infected flock will be culled and will not enter the food system, state officials said.
---- Wild birds are thought to be spreading the virus, after dozens tested positive along the U.S. East Coast.
The United States is the world's largest producer and second-largest exporter of poultry meat, according to the U.S. government. Kentucky said it is the seventh biggest chicken-meat producing state. Almost 18% of U.S. poultry production is exported, and the industry is a major user of feed grains.
The disease is hitting the market as poultry supplies are down due to strong demand and labor shortages at meat plants during to the COVID-19 pandemic. Government data showed U.S. frozen chicken supplies were down 14% from a year ago at the end of December while turkey inventories were down 23%.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/usda-reports-highly-lethal-bird-162018576.html
Dry winter drains reservoirs, ruins crops in Spain, Portugal
ACEREDO, Spain (AP) — Roofs peeking out of the water have become a common sight every summer at the Lindoso reservoir in northwestern Spain. In especially dry years, parts would appear of the old village of Aceredo, submerged three decades ago when a hydropower dam flooded the valley.
But never before has the skeleton of the village emerged in its entirety in the middle of the usually wet winter season.
With almost no rain for two months and not much expected any time soon, the ruins of Aceredo are dredging up a mix of emotions for locals as they see the rusted carcass of a car, a stone fountain with water still spouting and the old road leading to what used to be the local bar.
“The whole place used to be all vineyards, orange trees. It was all green. It was beautiful," said 72-year-old José Luis Penín, who used to stop at the bar with pals at the end of a day's fishing.
“Look at it now,” said Penín, who lives in the same county, pointing at the cracked, yellow bed of the reservoir. ”It's so sad."
While the arid zones of the Iberian Peninsula have historically experienced periods of drought, experts say climate change has exacerbated the problem. This year, amid record levels of low or no rainfall at all, farmers in both Portugal and Spain, who are growing produce for all of Europe, are worried that their crops for this season will be ruined.
In the last three months of 2021, Spain recorded just 35% of the average rainfall it had seen during the same period from 1981 to 2010. But there has been almost no rain since then.
According to the national weather agency AEMET, in this century, only in 2005 has there been a January with almost no rain. If clouds don't unleash in the next two weeks, emergency subsidies for farmers will be needed, authorities said.
----“The past two, three years have been dry, with the tendency toward less and less rain,” said Andrés Góngora, a 46-year-old tomato farmer in southern Almería.
Góngora, who expects the water he uses from a desalinating plant to be rationed, is still better off than other farmers who specialize in wheat and grains for livestock feed.
“The cereal crops for this year have been lost,” Góngora said.
Other areas in central and northeast Spain are also feeling the burn.
The leading association of farmers and livestock breeders in Spain, COAG, warns that half of Spain’s farms are threatened by drought this year. It says if it does not rain heavily in the coming month, rain-fed crops including cereals, olives, nuts and vineyards could lose 60% to 80% of their production.
But the association is also worried about crops that depend on irrigation, with reservoirs under 40% of capacity in most of the south.
----Neighboring Portugal has also seen little rain since last October. By the end of January, 45% of the country was enduring “severe” or “extreme” drought conditions, according to the national weather agency IPMA.
Rainfall from Oct. 1 through January was less than half the annual average for that four-month period, alarming farmers who are short of grass for their livestock.
Unusually, even the north of Portugal is dry and forest fires have broken out there this winter. In the south, crickets are already singing at night and mosquitoes have appeared — traditional signs of summer.
The IPMA doesn’t forecast any relief before the end of the month.
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/dry-winter-drains-reservoirs-ruins-073112772.html
West megadrought worsens to driest in at least 1,200 years
The American West’s megadrought deepened so much last year that it is now the driest in at least 1,200 years and is a worst-case climate change scenario playing out live, a new study finds.
A dramatic drying in 2021 — about as dry as 2002 and one of the driest years ever recorded for the region — pushed the 22-year drought past the previous record-holder for megadroughts in the late 1500s and shows no signs of easing in the near future, according to a study Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.
The study calculated that 42% of this megadrought can be attributed to human-caused climate change.
“Climate change is changing the baseline conditions toward a drier, gradually drier state in the West and that means the worst-case scenario keeps getting worse,” said study lead author Park Williams, a climate hydrologist at UCLA. “This is right in line with what people were thinking of in the 1900s as a worst-case scenario. But today I think we need to be even preparing for conditions in the future that are far worse than this.”
Williams studied soil moisture levels in the West — a box that includes California, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, most of Oregon and Idaho, much of New Mexico, western Colorado, northern Mexico, and the southwest corners of Montana and Texas — using modern measurements and tree rings for estimates that go back to the year 800. That’s about as far back as estimates can reliably go with tree rings.
More
https://apnews.com/article/climate-science-west-megadrought-f02449c2db4f0ebeb1557bb39504c62d
Covid-19 Corner
This section will continue until it becomes unneeded.
How strong is your immunity against Omicron?
Mon, February 14, 2022, 3:13 PM
For months, scientists, public health officials, politicians and the general public have debated whether prior SARS-CoV-2 infection — touted as “natural immunity” — offers protection against COVID-19 that is comparable to vaccines.
The answer to that debate is complicated, but studies show the best way to protect yourself against the Omicron variant of the coronavirus is to get vaccinated and then boosted. An infection on top of that, while not desirable, offers even more protection.
Recent evidence suggests that “natural” COVID-19 protection depends on many factors, including when the infection happened, the variant involved, whether someone has been boosted or not, and the overall strength of their immune system.
“The question about natural versus vaccination immunity is an important one,” Monica Gandhi, an infectious disease specialist and professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, told Yahoo News. “The CDC showed that up to the Delta surge, no doubt, natural immunity is likely as protective or more protective even than your two-dose vaccines,” she added.
Gandhi was referring to a study published two weeks ago in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. It is the same study that GOP lawmakers pointed to this week when introducing the “Natural Immunity Transparency Act,” arguing that the CDC data “demonstrated natural immunity was 3-4 times as effective in preventing COVID-19 compared with vaccination.”
More
https://www.yahoo.com/news/how-strong-is-your-immunity-against-omicron-151320307.html
Taiwan says needs to re-open, eyes March cut to COVID quarantine
Mon, February 14, 2022, 6:24 AM
TAIPEI (Reuters) -Taiwan aims to ease its strict COVID-19 quarantine policy from next month as it needs to gradually resume normal life and re-open to the world, the government said on Monday.
Since the pandemic began two years ago, Taiwan has succeeded in keeping reported cases of COVID-19 below 20,000, having enforced a blanket two-week quarantine for everyone arriving on the island even as large parts of the rest of the world have ditched theirs.
Speaking at a meeting with senior health officials, Premier Su Tseng-chang said that even though there could be further domestic infections the government was "quite confident" in its anti-pandemic measures.
"The government must also take into account livelihoods and economic development, gradually return to normal life, and step out to the world," his office cited him as saying.
On the precondition that there are sufficient medical supplies and preparations and that the vaccination rate continues to rise, Su said he had asked the Central Epidemic Command Centre to "consider whether reasonable and appropriate adjustments" should be made to the quarantine policy and entry of businesspeople.
Health Minister Chen Shih-chung, who leads the command centre in charge of fighting the pandemic, told reporters they were aiming to cut quarantine to 10 days before the middle of March, confident they can detect any infections within that period with testing.
"Basically, we can relax epidemic prevention" measures, he said.
----About 30% of Taiwan's 23.5 million people have now had a booster dose, a figure that is gradually rising, and the government has said it wants to get that to 50% before easing entry requirements.
Taiwan has never gone into full lockdown during the pandemic and has never closed its borders, though arrivals have generally been limited to citizens and foreign residence permit holders.
Chen said business travellers will be able to come again, and will have to do the same 10-day quarantine, but he could not offer a timeframe on allowing tourists back in.
Taiwan is currently dealing with a handful of new domestic COVID-19 cases a day, all as a result of the more infectious Omicron variant. Officials have said they are confident they can contain those outbreaks.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/taiwan-says-needs-open-look-062442807.html
COVID-19 in Israel: Serious cases drop back down below 1,000
By SHIRA SILKOFF Published: FEBRUARY 14, 2022 10:58 Updated: FEBRUARY 14, 2022 11:02
A total of 31,167 new coronavirus cases were recorded in Israel on Sunday, bringing the number of currently active cases to 268,274, according to a Monday morning Health Ministry update.
The number of serious cases has dropped down below 1,000 for the first time since late January, standing at 994 as of Monday morning, with 268 intubated patients within that number.
128,307 PCR and antigen tests were taken throughout the day on Sunday, with a positive return rate of 24.3%.
The R-rate continues to decline, currently standing at 0.72.
To date, 9,544 coronavirus-related deaths have been recorded in Israel since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
https://www.jpost.com/health-and-wellness/coronavirus/article-696404
Next, some vaccine links kindly sent along from a LIR reader in Canada.
NY Times Coronavirus Vaccine Tracker. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/science/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker.html
Regulatory Focus COVID-19 vaccine tracker. https://www.raps.org/news-and-articles/news-articles/2020/3/covid-19-vaccine-tracker
Some other useful Covid links.
Johns Hopkins Coronavirus resource centre
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
Rt Covid-19
Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
The Spectator Covid-19 data tracker (UK)
https://data.spectator.co.uk/city/national
Technology Update.
With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section. Updates as they get reported.
Amprius ships first batch of "world's highest density" batteries
Loz Blain February 13, 2022
Californian company Ampirus has shipped the first batch of what it claims are the most energy-dense lithium batteries available today. These silicon anode cells hold 73 percent more energy than Tesla's Model 3 cells by weight, and they take up 37 percent less volume.
Tesla's current Model 3 cells serve as a state-of-the-art comparison, and hold around 260 Wh/kg and 730 Wh/l, according to Enpower. The new Ampirus cells are a significant step up, both in specific energy and energy density, holding 450 Wh/kg and 1,150 Wh/l – and the company says that the undisclosed number of cells just delivered to "an industry leader of a new generation of High-Altitude Pseudo Satellites" give it bragging rights for "the highest energy density cells available in the battery industry today."
Ampirus says the batteries' impressive performance is due to its silicon nanowire anode technology. When you charge up a lithium-ion battery, you're effectively pulling an electron off each lithium atom sitting happily at the cathode, and moving them across to the anode via external wiring, since electrons can't pass through the electrolyte or separator between the anode and cathode. Their negative charge pulls the positively-charged lithium ions across through the electrolyte and separator, where they each find an electron and become embedded in what's typically a graphite lattice at the anode.
Ampirus has replaced that graphite lattice with silicon nanowires. Silicon can store some 10x more lithium than graphite, but it tends to swell and crack, drastically reducing cell life. Ampirus says that when you form the silicon into porous nanowires, arranged as a kind of forest of longer wires with shorter ones in between, the silicon is able to tolerate swell and resist cracking, extending the life of the cell to the point where silicon anodes can become a competitive technology.
The company says the silicon nanowires are rooted right into the substrate of the anode, so conductivity (and thus power) is high. It says the cell cycle life is "excellent" and "continually improving," although it doesn't put any numbers on it, and it also says the anode is the only part of the battery that changes; the rest can be produced using existing manufacturing methods and components.
Obviously, the world is ready and waiting for next-gen battery cells that can store more energy in less size and weight – everything from smartphones to electric vehicles would benefit either from a weight or space reduction, and emerging technologies like electric VTOL aircraft are crying out for batteries that can improve their range and capabilities.
More
"On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.”
George Orwell.
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