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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."
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.
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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
Chalk up an own goal! Voyagers 1 and 2 are powered by RTGs, not solar panels. Nothing that is destined to operate much beyond Mars orbit is powered by solar panels. Inverse square law of solar radiation intensity and all.
And with that your credibility is gone. Thank you for playing the "I don't know what I'm talking about but will push my agenda anyway" game.
Wrong. Silicon plate panels, i.e., the ones nobody wants to purchase anymore because they're ungodly expensive in comparison to alternatives, degrade at 0.5-0.7% of power capacity per year.
Thin film panels, i.e., the ones everyone is currently buying due to cost advantages, degrade at 1-1.5% of power capacity per year.
After you've lost 20% of your capacity and can no longer satisfy your design load, you're not going to be happily touting how you can still get power out of your panels.
Who says? The NREL, based upon about 1700 data points (Fig. 2 of linked report).
Don't sell me bullshit either.
Notice that weasel word--materials "like" lead. Solar panels don't contain lead. Period.
Actually, uh, yeah, they can. They're called Perovskite solar cells. They can also contain chromium.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
If we can extract lead and cadmium from rocks, then why not from old solar panels ?
I'm not an expert here, just taking an educated guess based on what I know of how semiconductors are made and a quick reading on how cadmium and similar metals are refined. The problem is that they are different chemical processes. Cadmium in the environment exists mostly attached to a sulfur atom. Cadmium in a PV cell is attached to tellurium. Separating the two would involve a different chemical process, one that no one has figured out how to do yet at a price lower than digging up from the ground.
Turning old PV cells into new PV cells is not trivial either since the stuff must be deposited down in layers. If the PV cells are just crushed and melted down then you get a mess. It's like taking a peanut butter sandwich, putting it in blender and trying to pick out the pieces of bread from the peanut butter to make another sandwich.
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Perovskite panels aren't "piling up around the world" like the study says, because none of them have reached commercial use. Their operating life is too short, so they are still an item of research. For that matter, silicon solar panels, the most common type by far, are not piling up anywhere, either (except maybe warehouses and solar farms). That's because they have a useful life of ~30 years, and practically no solar panels are that old yet. Silicon panels contain silicon, obviously, and aluminum (the frame), glass (cover sheet), usually plastic for the back sheet, copper (wiring) and trace amounts of silver (electrical contacts on the cell itself). All of that is eminently recyclable and none of it is dangerous.
Solar *farms* as opposed to just the panels, also contain concrete and steel (the panel mounting structures), more wiring, and transformers at the point where the power goes to the transmission lines. But those are no different than what you find at any other power plant.