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Study Claims Discarded Solar Panels Create More Toxic Waste Than Nuclear Plants (nationalreview.com)
Templer421 shares an article from National Review:
A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants. Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, are piling up around the world, and there's been little done to mitigate their potential danger to the environment. "We talk a lot about the dangers of nuclear waste, but that waste is carefully monitored, regulated, and disposed of," says Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress, a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy. "But we had no idea there would be so many panels -- an enormous amount -- that could cause this much ecological damage." Solar panels are considered a form of toxic, hazardous electronic or "e-waste," and according to EP researchers Jemin Desai and Mark Nelson, scavengers in developing countries like India and China often "burn the e-waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled."
A spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association argues that the study is incorrect, and that in fact solar panels are "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life."
A spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association argues that the study is incorrect, and that in fact solar panels are "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life."
Are more of an actual problem/threat.
Can we talk about real solutions to that instead?
mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life.
Sure, you can recycle almost anything, including toxic nuclear waste. The question is whether or not it's worth it.
Why would I pay $15k for a recycled solar system when a normal one is $10k? Right now it's not even worth it to pay for the cheaper $10k version because by the time I hit ROI and the panels are dead I will barely break even from the initial cost. Might even lose money in the process. No thanks!
Huh, something distributed across a wide area for which proper recycling facilities may or may not exist is more problematic than something that is concentrated, isolated, and sealed off? Gee, next you'll be telling me that coal smog is also worse than nuclear.
Sarcasm aside, I don't think this is necessarily an argument against solar per se, so much as it is that we need to consider the whole life cycle, from mining and production to reprocessing, when it comes to solar. Nuclear gets so much scrutiny, while it seems like a lot of people assume that solar is without environmental cost. This is clearly not the case. In the rush to promote solar and wind over the nuclear power that we should have been running years ago (thanks for the climate change, you greenie assholes), it seems like the entirety of the systems are not often considered, like we do with nuclear.
I guess I will avoid tossing my roof full of panels in the garbage.
Good thing they figured that out...otherwise.... I would have just tossed 15k of cells out.
push solar. They hate the planet. They don't make economic sense. People only buy them because of the propaganda.
Which is why nobody is buying these new "hybrid" cars.
As a species we bleat and whinge about this, but our behaviour remains the same. So, noted. What's next?
Oh wait so many people actually did. They were just shouted down by fanatics.
all the electronics surround the panels? if so, electronic waste like that has been a problem for some time now. and you cant fault solar for certain countrys that burn stuff to get the copper wire.
I'm absolutely not buying it, dude. It's a lot of "well, we counted this, but none of these". And nothing about actually currently manufactured planels, either. Nor recycling. Which isn't possible for nuclear plants (remember, the entire building and a lot of the soil nearby is part of the waste, none of which is counted).
So, yeah, calling BS on this.
... stopped at:
... a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The "300 times more toxic waste than nuclear power" requires considering one kilogram of solar panel as being toxic waste equivalent to one kilogram of spent reactor fuel. This is a preposterous comparison.
Furthermore it treats all solar panels as being as being the same source of hazard. Cadmium telluride panels are a special concern for disposal, but they are 2.5% of the global market and only used in special situations, whereas 95% of production is silicon panel and not toxic at all.
The disposal of solar panels is a valid concern that must be addressed, like the disposal of all electronics, and solid waste generally, but this framing is wildly deceptive.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
Notice the difference between a headline that destroys the liberal agenda and a conservative agenda:
Conservative agenda headline: Nuclear plants are toxic!!!
Liberal agenda headline: Allegedly there's a study that appears to possibly claim that solar panels *might* be worse that nuclear, but it's probably false.
...the inevitable story where we find out the Orwellian named "Environmental Progress" is a thinly disguised lobbying group for the nuclear industry.
Copper wire? Like what's been done for years. Which is why copper theft has been such a big problem.
How do you defend the indefensible?
Simple.
Lie!
While solar panels do pollute a little if not properly disposed of, as far as I know, lead, cadmium and chromium are all pretty easy to recover by melting down the panels. If you are stupid enough to burn plastic, you get what you get, but as a kid we burned plastic from time to time and we didn't suffer any ill effects.
The problem with these articles is they assume the worst case for the disposal of panels while assuming the best case for nuclear waste. It is relatively trivial to recycle lead, cadmium and chromium into new solar panels, and they require no more than respirators and proper gloves and ventilation/filtration to work with, whereas spent nuclear fuel is quite difficult and dangerous to work with and there is no real east way to recycle spent nuclear waste. Alternatively, you could bury the worlds entire supply of solar panels in a landfill and it would be pretty harmless, assuming the landfill was modern and properly lined and isolated from the ground water (the lead, cadmium and other heavy metals are usually laminated between layers of glass, so even breaking the panels only exposes a small fraction of the total heavy metal content).
As first world societies, if we are really concerned for the environment, we should slap a recycle fee onto every panel sold and then require that they be recycled in a first world country with felony prison time for exporting un-recycled e-waste to the third world (we already do this more or less for many other things that need to be recycled).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Read it. Makes lots of really bad assumptions, all designed to push a specific political agenda.
1) Assumes they have a really short lifespan. Basically they are using manufacturer's estimated lifespan of 25 years, when in truth, these things do not stop working. No moving parts, hermetically sealed so no water, insects, or even air gets in, low electrical voltage. The most common cause of destruction is something hitting them - lightning bolts, hail, baseballs. They can theoretically last for centuries, not 25 years. NASA's Voyagers 1 and 2 are both going strong after 37 years exposure to micrometeorites in space.
2) When they do stop working, it assumes they will be recycled, rather than land filled (not a guarantee), and that they will be recycled in the cheapest, most environmentally horrible method - burning. Yes, that is the most common method for ewaste, but we are more likely to bury than to recycle them
3) They compared it with nuclear rather than coal or petroleum. Nuclear creates a SMALL amount of toxic waste that people are unreasonably scared of, while coal and petroleum create massive amounts of toxic waste that people ignore.
Don't sell me bullshit and expect me to eat it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
The issue is all electronic waste. The answer is recycling.
This is a far cry from a 5000 year half-life.
In the immortal words of Van Jones....."This story is a nothing burger"
Its what all the politicians are doing.
Try Recyling Nuclear waste. The stupid article simply says 300 times as much toxic waste as a nuclear power energy unit. In what units? volume, molarity, mass, rads, toxicity, ease of neutralization?
the article is Right wing rubbish.
No it's not like there isn't a grain for truth to be gleaned here but such glib quantifications are . give away that this article itself is utter crap
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
mdsolar's not going to like this...
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
^^ that's why the block of text you "quoted" says "easy-to-recycle" and not "can be recycled"
calling all destroyers
Clearly someone here is anti-American, and anti-America.
What did the egg mcmuffin do to you that you had to downvote the parent?
no one cares about the future of the hybrid cards and the 1000s of tons of Lithium manganese/cobalt/alum/etc oxides and other cyanide/lead/etc going into landfills
its about the now and how your saving the planet this week
same with solar panels and the tons of crap going into the ground and the 1000s of tons of same crap from hybrid car battery's that they use
you could recycle it at the cost of spending 100x the energy to do so ..ruining the savings from buying or using the original product in first place
This is a total hit-piece from a pro-nuclear shill. The fact that the article was published in National Review should be the first clue that this is nothing but junk science intended to spread FUD.
Any true freedom loving American calls it ham, not Canadian bacon
Last I heard, the major problem with 'e-Waste' recycling was that, to put it bluntly, on a good day it is just 'shipped to the 3rd world to be burned for the copper'--and apparently the heavy metals also can be leeched out of the panels by rainwater & end up in the soil, which has its own problems because not all solar farms are on land actually owned by the people running the solar farm. (Good damn luck figuring out who's legally responsible for the hazmat site!)
Really, I'm not going to trust anybody in the solar panel industry telling me that I basically shouldn't worry my little head about these problems, expecting honesty from them on potential environmental harm from solar panels. They've got a vested interest in denying everything, because the main selling point for solar power is that it's 'environmentally friendly.' This is an essential problem with any product where its key selling point is how (allegedly) environmentally-friendly it is--there is simply too much incentive for those profiting off the whole green movement for them to cover up any hint that their products might not be 100% harmless to the environment.
Solar panels last DECADES, I have a hard time believing that they are being thrown into landfills on mass presently. While they are no doubt made of of a few toxic substances in tiny quantities that can be said for a LOT of electronics. Solar panels unlike other electronics though are easily reused in other projects, or broken down into at least some of their components, and likely are easily recyclable once we hit the point where it becomes reasonable. This "study" is also being pushed by a conservative rag and done by a pretty obviously pro-nuclear (which does deserve a niche in our power grid) group so I am betting the numbers are being cooked more than a little.
nationalreview.com makes extremely disingenuous arguments and I'm not talking about just this article. Please no more from nationalreview.com.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
"but that waste is carefully monitored, regulated, and disposed of" - BECAUSE THEY SPEND THE MONEY.
There is no need to single out solar panels. This is the same problem as recycling computers, phones, tablets, and everything else electronic. Shipping this stuff to the People's Republic of Onga-Bonga to be vainly pulled apart by starving children is a worse solution than just letting it pile up locally. We need to develop specific technology for separating the exotic metals that make up e-waste. We will need those materials again to make new devices.
We are as gods, and had better get good at it.
When the author of an article, or an editor of the publication agrees likes, where the study's implications lead, the title begins with "Study Suggests", or "Study Shows", or even "Study Proves".
On contrast, the disapproval causes the authors to start planting doubts in the readers' minds by using "Study Claims".
Just say "Study Says" next time, Ok?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Environmental Review is a front. It's a pro-solar pressure group, and their concern for accurate science is secondary to that aim.
Not that nuclear power is a bad thing - it's clean, it's dependable, it's free of troublesome political dependencies. But Environmental Review take it too far - just look through their website. It's nothing but glowing praise of nuclear power and total condemnation without exception of everything else.
Did they account for all the waste from nuclear plants. They have a awful lot of control systems and plumbing systems. Many moving parts.
I bought some cotton rope with polyester filling from Walmart and it had one of those California hazard warnings on it. It's on everything and it's getting ridiculous. If people are dumb enough to pile and burn e-plastics to get copper wire, let Darwinism do its work for once.
A LOT is TWO words, genius.
On a related note, there are menu items at McDonald's that have American style bacon!
Ba Da Ba Ba Bah, I'm Lovin' It!
Egg McMuffins!
They always like to say "located in Berkeley" because it gives the impression that they're somehow leftist and edgy. They are neither of those things. They're an advocacy group for nuclear energy.
I'm not anti-nuclear, by the way. I just tend to be suspicious when an advocacy group goes to such lengths to pretend they're something else.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
I hate to say it, but this is (1) not a "study"-- it's an opinion article, and
(2) the opinion expressed is unmitigated bullshit.
From the purported "study": "Solar panels contain toxic metals like lead, which can damage the nervous system, as well as chromium and cadmium, known carcinogens.
Notice that weasel word--materials "like" lead. Solar panels don't contain lead. Period. But the "study" didn't actually say they contained lead, did it? It said they contain materials "like" lead. What does that actually mean? Uh, I don't think it actually means anything whatsoever.
Likewise, solar panels don't contain chromium (you'd think this guy would go after cars, wouldn't he? They actually do use chromium.). And, while one type of panel does use cadmium (albeit in micron thicknesses)-- the vast majority of low cost solar panels sold are silicon solar cells, which do not contain cadmium.
Overall conclusion: this is not a "study," this is bullshit, pure and simple,
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Make shit up about solar panels which are stealing their jobs.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
But what about in 10'000 years? Or in 100'000? Or the few 100 Million years that anything containing Plutonium will take to become somewhat less dangerous?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
since it's from a Nuclear Industry think tank, but they might have a point. Nuclear power produces very little waste. The trouble isn't the amount, it's that it's insanely dangerous and that companies have a long history of not caring where they throw their waste so long as it's cheap. You'd need a population that super pro-regulation and government oversight to make it work. Otherwise sooner or later some asshat will come along, buy off a few Senators (or whatever your local equivalent is) and toss the waste in some poor community (probably one with a disenfranchised minority of some sort, every nation's got at least one).
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
How is "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials" in any way informative? No one said they were 50%+ cadmium.
I can assure you, the best way to get rid of dragons is to have one of your own.
Let's face it, people are short term planners. Nobody see's the long term effects. One has to wonder plenty about alternative energy's. Do people really save money and the Earth? Or is this just another industry scam, like ethanol, bio diesel, and wind farms. Many wind farms sit idle more then they should and it begs the question. Did we need them?
Springsteen is an insightful artist for canceling shows in states he doesn't agree with but bakers are considered homophobes for not offering to bake cakes for people they don't agree with.
Yeah, execute a Jew-killing Nazi, and you're a hero. Put on a condom? You're a murderer!
The utility conglomerates are worried about local generation of electricity - and they're getting help from Rick Perry. https://arstechnica.com/tech-p... Look for a lot more "stupid" like this.
If you want eliminate all affects of mankind on the planet and climate, you have to kill off mankind. No c02 polution. No climate change. No people. Dead planet. Happy liberals.
Conservatives unlike liberals luv people and want more people on the planet. We are anti abortion and condom usage but pro sex. The conservative platform calls for increased use of coal to speed up global warming. There is an entire continent that isn't being used because too cold. We can melt that ice with green house gases
I understand that solar panels don't match up to nuclear. I also think I understand that nuclear would be one of our (if not THE) cleanest [known] way to produce the energy needs we have today, and that this is fairly common knowledge among those who care to educate themselves.
Solar hasn't even taken over as the main source of power. So why is it being directly compared against nuclear like this? Like it's something bad and we should just keep mainly sucking up oil. It baffles me. I mean maybe a few nuclear skeptics will read this and go "Wow! Maybe nuclear is really the solution." But to downplay solar energy at the same time?
I tend to rant.
recycling a solar panel wont kill you with radiation...
Would you rather sleep on an unshielded 1 cubic meter pile of nuclear waste or a 1 cubic meter pile of solar panels?
This is the sort of information (fake) that caused our current political crisis.
This was written by Jemin Desai. He's a "student at Berkeley". That's the whole of his credentials (aside from being a "fellow" of the glorified blog he posted it on). Look at this:
http://www.environmentalprogress.org/who-we-are/
"He will receive both B.S. degrees in 2020." Setting aside the implausible optimism of this statement, this is literally sophomoric work. The "study" is a bit of googling and napkin math by an ignorant child.
It's not a "study". It's a blog post. Look at it. It looks like they're reporting on a study, but that page is the totality of what they're publishing. There's no bibliography, the sources are buried in the ridiculous infographics, the calculations aren't laid out.
Environmental Progress itself is just a blog for a kook author and his friends. They manufacture talking points for idiots.
/. article a few days ago. And, /. fell for it.
One glaring hole in the whole ":the utilities made me do it". If you look towards California which currently has a glut of solar power, the majority are industrial solar plants benefiting the utilities. So much so that they have to pay Arizona to take the excess off their hands.
Recycling the materials used to make a solar panel does not imply that the recycled materials will be made into solar panels.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
So is butt sex, but you didn't pick up on that one, did you? Probably because you're a FAG. A gay gay gay faggot. HA!
... presents "study" showing that nuclear power is cleaner than solar. Color me not the least bit surprised. BTW, I do believe that nuclear power should be an important part of our energy supply, but bullshit is bullshit and should not be consumed as if it's not bullshit.
Environmental Progress is a front for nuclear power companies. Check out their website.
What "passed for the technology" in 1945 was nothing to sneeze at. On the other hand, both military and civilian safety remained on (cold) wartime footing for a long while thereafter.
Just think. Heisenberg and Einstein were old hat. Turing and von Neumann were new hat. While 1945 did lack for the transistor, the laser, the quark, and the structure of DNA, it didn't lack for the rocket, the atomic bomb, the jet engine, penicillin, general relatively, quantum mechanics, the Reynolds number, the intercontinental undersea telegraph cable, radar, a generalized theory of computation, or the Mk. XV Norden bombsight.
That would make for a very heavy "Ancient Technology 101 for non-implants" even by the highly accelerated standards of 23rd century Starfleet Academy.
Compare to what passes for clue in 2017.
I can't find any discarded nuclear power plants so I guess in a way the article is correct. However just how toxic and just how long does the material keep killing? Can it be dealt with? Nuclear looses big time.
Air travel is so much safer than driving that untrained children randomly chosen from the passengers will be assigned as air crew for their respective flights.
Requiem for the American Dream
That, and since it violates leftist & environmentalist orthodoxy, there are smears of "fake" all over.
Perhaps coal isn't too bad after all.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Standard solar panels are made from Silicium, like computer chips.
They don't contain any of the elements mentioned.
In rare cases the copper conducts on them, might have a thin layer of lead below.
Bottom line they are meant to be recycled and not to be dropped on a land fill.
So there is no issue anyway.
Who publishes such nonsense studies? What is next? The oil in an old car is a hazard to the environment if you just drop the car into a river?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Check out the organization's website: it's a shill for the nuclear power industry founded by a "famous environmentalist." Oh and you can download a high resolution photo of him!
Wow - undergrad social science study on Slashdot!
Amazing what a boost from PR money does.
Kind of a pity they didn't run this past a chemist or toxicologist of some kind before splashing it all over the internet.
The vast majority of the nuclear waste problem is secondary materials (pipework, handling equipment etc) exposed to strong neutron emitters and not the actual fuel rods. There is just so much volume of it. It's not so active and not so difficult to store, but separating out bits is not going to give you anything other than separate groups of radioactive things. I imagine you are thinking of fuel re-processing, if so the rejected parts of the fuel rods are still very radioactive and still need to be treated with care so it still doesn't "solve" the waste problem.
Just about every process has a waste problem of some kind, nukes just have that one.
Obviously you were jealous and want to have a man's penis in your mouth and ass. At the same time if you can so you can be the cum soaked filling in a meat cake.
I am always surprised that many people on these forums do not understand that their ideology has become a religion. Religions are based on articles of faith and can't be questioned. To do so is commit heresy, which is a high crime. Unfortunately, this is exactly what is going on in this entire thread. People are angry. They are defensive. They can not accept the simple truth that solar panels do cause pollution in there creation and degradation.
As a scientist, a teach that science, when practiced well, is dispassionate. The data is not good. It is not bad. It is not a moral question. If you are feeling strongly about the data, then you are probably warping the analysis. Scientists weigh the facts and come to conclusions based on those facts. A scientist should actually be happy when errors are found, because this means that their hypothesis can be improved and the world can be explained a little better. This is not what is happening here. Because for many topics on these forums, people have forgotten these principals. They so want certain outcomes to be true, that they go to great lengths to discount any questions or questioners, or even any notion that challenges assumptions. This takes things from the realm of science to the realm of faith.
A simple test. If someone challenges an idea, and you find yourself angry, then that is a matter of faith for you.
If you think that this challenge is interesting, and then you examine to see how it can improve your understanding, then you are still in the realm of science.
It is painful when articles of faith are challenged. For many people, they can't handle the thought their beliefs may be flawed. Because if the faith is flawed, then their entire world view may be based on a house of lies. Few have the courage to examine their faith. The above postings show this.
For example, this is a forum filled with people from various tech fields. Most are aware of how semi-conductors are made. The processes involved in CVD and other such processes are not what anyone would call environmentally benign, no matter how much Timmy Cook tries to sugar coat this. We tend to ignore this, because lets face it, tech is cool. Similarly, I know that some icky stuff happens at the butcher, but I choose to ignore it because I like steak. But no matter how much I like steak, it never, ever means that the terrible things at the butcher didn't happen. Same with micro-electronics.
If you can take a step back and be intellectually honest, you understand that all these electronic doodads made with heavy metals and other interesting materials are not terribly good land fill material either. So, its really not a stretch to think that all those un-upgradable imacs, your smart phone that you replace every year, and yes, even those solar panels are not degrading in a green way.
We can all agree that this study may have some holes in it. It may be wrong on some of the specifics. Maybe comparing it to nuclear waste was for shock value. The amounts reported to create environmental damage may contain some hyperbole. Sure. But, the bald truth is these things ARE toxic. As you mass produce them, this problem will only grow. It is an interesting question to ask questions about the environmental impact of solar, instead of merely assuming it is non-polluting. If this is done right, then we can compare it to other energy sources, such as wind, nuclear and even fossil fuels and see what is less damaging in the true sense..
Now, if you can overcome your faith and except this, you are finally at a point where an honest discussion can be had. One where we look at each solution attempt to weigh the pro's and cons. In doing so, solutions can be found. This is was the Enlightenment was about at its core, and by extension modern civilization. We seem to be getting away from this. That is not good.
Please note, we can have this discussion without demonizing each other. See I am conservative, and lets face it, these forums allow and often encourage
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Environmental Progress is not a true science journal, and this was not a peer review study. It was a hatchet piece by a paid nuclear industry shill organization. I can spot several major flaws with this study right away:
1. They assume panels will cease to be used at the end of their rated lifespan. In truth, panels continue to work well beyond their rated lifespan. They will typically continue to produce 80% or higher of their rated capacity even after 25 years and will degrade only very slowly.
2. They also assume all panels will just be thrown away, rather than being refurbished or recycled.
3. The toxic chemicals that go into panel production tend to be bound into stable structures that do not easily break down even if they were discarded in landfills.
4. Newer panels use far less of these compounds than the generation of panels than they used in their study.
In short it was a hatchet job, not a legitimate study... but what would you expect from an organization called Environmental Progress that seems to only put out pro-nuclear articles. I'm actually pro-nuclear... but I'm against propaganda masquerading as science.
The Bolachek Journals
Lol. You need to go back to school and learn math. ROI on most solar PV systems is achieved in 10 years, the useful life is 25+ and the components typically have 15 - 20 year warranties. If you're losing obey, the problem isn't the ROI, it's you.
...and slap a recycle / decommissioning fee on every nuclear power station that already exists, and then we'd shut the fuckers down so fast your head would spin - they are not, never have been, and never will be economically viable, cradle to grave.
by the way, we're all clearly NOT concerned for the environment, but it's a frog boil problem at the heart
we care about bread and circuses, and pay little attention to the environment in our daily choices
living a truly low-footprint lifestyle is VERY hard in today's consumer society
A spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association argues that the study is incorrect, and that in fact solar panels are "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life."
Just because the materials *can* be successfully recovered and reused doesn't mean those materials *are* being successfully recovered and reused.
Sounds like a very specifically-worded statement.
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/featured-news/the-clever-electronic-inks-rewriting-our-energy-future
Printable cells are pretty safe.
I would chop them up and put the pieces in the recycle bin of your favorite electronic supply store. They have recycle bins for batteries, so just treat the sliced up pieces as you would batteries.
From the BIO of the President of Environmental Progress: "Michael is a leading pro-nuclear environmentalist. Michael was featured in "Pandora's Promise," an award-winning film about environmentalists who changed their minds about nuclear. He appeared on "The Colbert Report," and has debated nuclear on CNN "Crossfire" with Ralph Nader, and at UCLA with Mark Jacobsen. His 2016 TED talk is on "How Fear of Nuclear Hurts the Environment." Solar pails in environmental impact to, say, lead-acid batteries from cars. Selective science is, in many ways, worse than no science at all..
"a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy."
1) Does non-profit mean they don't take a penny from those who DO make a profit?
2) How do they quantify the chemical toxicity of lead with the radioactivity of nuclear waste?
3) How do they factor in the duration of the harmful effects (e.g. long half-life of some radioactive waste).
4) Have they researched ways to MANAGE solar waste as a means of addressing the problem? Or is their agenda too narrowly defined for this?
Bla bla bla no pollution after thousands of year... Bla bla bla... Perfectly safe and containable... Give me a break!!!
Perhaps coal isn't too bad after all.
Only to a shithead like you.
I can't believe this zombie story is back again. It originates in 2012 in a the now-dead blog called http://thingsworsethannuclearpower.com, run by two MIT grads with plans to take over the world with small nuclear reactors. The article was so obviously bogus that of course it was spread around the blogosphere.
Now here we are five years later and the same basic story is being refreshed. The most basic problem is that they compare THE FUEL of one system to the CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS of the other, and if that's not totally obviously bogus to you then give up now.
In any event:
https://matter2energy.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/does-solar-generate-more-waste-than-nuclear-no/
People in general have to remember that using ANY alternative energy ALWAYS has a trade-off. Replace nuclear waste for e-waste, or replace air pollution with ground pollution. Replace millions of fossil-fuel powered cars with cars powered by batteries, and you no longer have air pollution (from cars) but increased pollution from whatever is charging those car batteries, and now those used rechargeable car batteries must be disposed of properly. There is no silver bullet. Lose one thing, and get another. It's like taking medications—you may get this nice thing, but at the cost of some other "no-so-nice" thing.
Instead of trying to attack the author, what do you have to say against the message?
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
He's a cigarette?
Nobody makes perovskite solar cells. They are one of MANY technologies that are being touted as the next great thing. Right now, their very high humidity sensitivity makes them not commercializable, but maybe someday.
But the article we are discussing was talking about today's technologies, not some other technology maybe possibly could be used in the future.
The article we are discussing is bullshit.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com