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."

Comments

You don't say

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not all toxic waste is equal

[goombah99]

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

Unmitigated bullshit

[Geoffrey.landis]

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,

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Baloroth]

These kinds of studies are almost never peer reviewed. They don't explore scientific questions, all they do is accumulate a series of facts and present them. The important question is whether the data used is true, and peer review doesn't even attempt to answer that, it only looks for methodological errors in experiments, observations, or calculations. Pointing out that it isn't peer reviewed is meaningless, because you wouldn't expect it to be peer reviewed, any more than you'd expect this comment to be peer reviewed.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[postbigbang]

And in the absence of peer review, let's look to the poor monopolistic electric utility companies, who are the ostensible direct beneficiaries of the study, just like Kellogg and Post sponsored studies on sugar and carbohydrates.

Not many solar panels have been taken out of service, to start with, and more installed each and every day. They have a pretty long life, and so the pool of "spent" solar panels seems mysterious to me. Comparing them to nuclear waste, volume for volume, is designed to evoke horrors in those that believe that somehow, solar panels will kill for thousands of years, and they won't.

YES, e-waste needs great attention, but this is far more a hatchet job designed to slow down the implementation rate of solar panels. Do you smell the Koch Bros, AES, or Duke Energy in this one? I'm just not sure, only to follow the money.