My nephew gained his Phd with Lithium battery research, he was one of the first way back that manged to crystallize Lithium into a semi stable condition. In doing this he blew himself up in the Lab several times!!.
We used the early Lithium batteries in our underwater seismic streamers, the units that maintained depth were powered by them. They did not like crush damage if they went deep and used to heat up and catch fire when back on the surface. We were told that one D cell lithium battery could have the same explosive power as a stick of dynamite in the right ( wrong conditions ).. Needless to say there are quite a few old D cell lithium batteries at some depth in the varous oceans!! The saying was to " deep six" them if they were hot when recovered onboard!..
