Just curious, what's your background in batteries? From my understanding, sodium based batteries are safer than lithium, but I would defer to anyone with real expertise in the subject.
Replace your Sodium Or Lithium by petrol or gas, and your comment would have been typical in the beginning of the 20 century.
We are all sitting on ‘minibombs’ since we developed cars and personal devices with batteries. That is the point of those objects, to carry an extremely dense storage of energy in order to operate. And indeed, that is the basic premise of a bomb, concentrate high amounts of energy in a small volume, but similarities stop there. Human development has made those devices extremely safe to use, fortunately.
Vapor. Which is convenient for fire fighting in all sorts of ways. Just because you put the fire out does not mean you've discharged all the stored energy and re-ignitions are a serious concern in lithium battery systems, whereas with fuel, you actually can make the fuel inert and then you can remove it, separately from the vehicle.
