I just worked on a circuit board (the one I need the SRAM for) and had a
very unusual thing happen.

While soldering on the vias, and on a couple of the SRAM chips, with the
board entirely removed from the system, I had several instances of what
appeared to be explosions as I heated the joints.  These were NOT any kind
of bubbling, these were bright noisy POPs, which threw red and yellow
sparks.  The board has a couple of 100uF caps, and a bunch of 0.1uF, but had
not been powered in months, and in any case, I was only touching the one
point, no possibility of a short.

The lithium coin cell had leaked over this area, which had a number of lead
solder joints, and copper traces of course.
I am wondering if there's a possible chemical reaction there that leads to
an explosive?

Never saw anything like it before.

-- 
Feel the power of the dark side!  Atmel AVR
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