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I'm not a battery expert, but I have looked into Na-S before. While it's a great rhetorical bludgeon in arguments about what batteries can do in theory — we'll never run out of sodium or sulfur — actual costs of Na-S installations are consistently much higher than lithium or other battery types. For example, this review cites a present system cost of over $400/kWh:

https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/13/13/3307

A new scientific development can be cool, but it won't directly reduce costs, since it's not actually an industrial process. A lower operating temperature might simplify construction. But all that remains to be seen.

EDIT: if you read the original paper in TFA you will find that molybdenum, an extremely rare metal, is key to the cathode, though only at 1.2% by weight. Interpretation unclear.



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