A Mountain of Sulfur and a Heap of Concerns

Reno’s New Gigafactory Stirs Debate

When a new enterprise sets its sights on a place–it comes wrapped in the finest promises of prosperity, only to be met with the grimacing squints of those who must live beside it. Such is the case with Lyten, a green energy upstart from San Jose, which plans to raise a mighty fortress of industry just north of Reno.

Their dream? The world’s first lithium-sulfur gigafactory. Their pledge? A billion-dollar investment and a thousand jobs–if all goes as they reckon.

The grand facility, sprawling across 1.25 million square feet, will birth batteries that boast of being 40 percent lighter than their lithium-ion cousins, promising greater efficiency, fewer rare earth minerals, and less dependence on that far-off kingdom known as China.

“Sulfur,” says Lyten’s chief battery wizard, Celina Mikolajczak, “is as common as dust in a desert wind.”

Why, she declares, there are such mountains of the stuff that one can spy them from space! An observer might wonder if the company intends to mine batteries or dig a sulfur-scented throne among the gods.

Yet, while Lyten dreams of a luminous, electrified future, the folks in North Valleys find themselves less enchanted. Unlike Tesla’s grand factory, which looms comfortably far from the nearest porch swing, Lyten’s behemoth will rise just a stone’s throw from Lemmon Valley and a hearty holler away from Silver Knolls.

Longtime residents have spent their evenings conjuring up visions of an industrial inferno, which recently befell Moss Landing, Calif. There, a battery plant took to burning with the enthusiasm of a Fourth of July bonfire, spewing forth such ominous plumes that 1,700 folks fled. Officials, ever the optimists, assured the public that no hazardous air conditions were detected, though it was little comfort to those who preferred their lungs unseasoned by chemical smoke.

Mikolajczak waves away such worries like a woman brushing gnats from his sandwich.

“Battery manufacturing,” she says, “is a different beast than it was in the dark ages of—oh, a few years ago.”

She is, she notes, one of the very people who wrote the book—quite literally—on new fire codes. Her confidence is stout, her assurances firm.

But Reno’s citizens, a pragmatic breed by nature, have heard such serenades before. They have seen grand visions rise and watched the consequences settle, often in the form of traffic, pollution, and regrets.

The coming months will tell if Lyten’s mountain of sulfur leads to a golden age of industry or if, as some fear, it merely lights a match in a powder keg.