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

"Can be" recycled, doesn't mean it's easy or cheap

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

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.

Re:You don't say

[Aighearach]

Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, are piling up around the world

What a bullshit article.

In their defense, they did find a Cadbury chocolate wrapper stuck to one of the solar panels, and it is an easy mistake to make when the words are that big.

Also, every panels has multiple leads. That means it is leaded, right?

Re:You don't say

[LynnwoodRooster]

Ok, I have PV solar at home. However, it contains none of the bad things described in the report.

Apparently, it does. And the higher performing cells (like Gallium Arsenide) have even more bad stuff in them...

Re:You don't say

[mpercy]

Environmental Progress is almost certainly not affiliated with Koch brothers or big oil.

Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and Green Book Award-winning author and policy expert. For a quarter-century he has advocated solutions to lift all people out of poverty while protecting the natural environment.

Michael is coauthor of visionary books and essays including "The Death of Environmentalism," Break Through, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, "Evolve," and Love Your Monsters. He writes for publications including Scientific American, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

His research, writings and talks challenge the idea that rising energy consumption is bad for the environment. Michael has made the intertwined moral and scientific case for energy and environmental justice in "An Ecomodernist Manifesto," written with 17 other leading scholars and scientists, in "Why Energy Transitions are the Key to Environmental Progress," coauthored with Rachel Pritzker, and a TEDx talk, "How Humans Save Nature."

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."

Michael's 2007 book with Ted Nordhaus, Break Through, was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. Michael is co-founder and Senior Fellow at Breakthrough Institute where he was president from 2003 - 2015 and advisor to MIT's "Future of Nuclear Energy" task force.

Michael has been profiled in the New York Times, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, the National Review, The New Republic, and on NPR. His research and writing have appeared in The Harvard Law and Policy Review, Democracy Journal, the PLOS Biology, The New Republic the Wall Street Journal; and cited by the New York Times, Slate, USA Today, Washington Post, New York Daily News, The New Republic.

Michael has been an environmental and social justice advocate for over 25 years. In the 1990s Michael helped save an old-growth redwood forest, and helped force Nike to improve factory conditions in Asia. In the 2000s, Michael advocated for and helped realize an expansion of federal investment in renewables and energy efficiency.

The two authors from Environmental Progress of the article cited from the OP's National Review article:

Mark Nelson, Senior Analyst
Mark Nelson, Senior Analyst, oversees EP's ground-breaking Energy Progress Tracker, the most comprehensive review of nuclear power plants planned, under construction, and at-risk of premature closure.

Mark's research into the environmental impacts of nuclear closures in Germany and California has been cited in the New York Times and other publications.

Mark completed his graduate work in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Tony Roulstone, and studied aerospace and mechanical engineering at Oklahoma State University. Mark is a competitive runner, musician and photographer.

Jemin Desai, EP Fellow

Jemin Desai is a student studying electrical engineering and computer sciences, and nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where he is a staff member for the introductory computer science course. He will receive both B.S. degrees in 2020. He was born in Mumbai, India, and raised in Singapore, Vancouver, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Re:You don't say

[MrL0G1C]

FTS:
"a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy. "
So, not biased then, I'm sure they didn't go looking for 30 years old technology in a cherry picking manner. Never mind that 30 years ago, hardly anyone had solar, most solar isn't even installed yet, it'll be installed in the next couple of decades as the price continues to plummet and as battery storage finally becomes affordable which is happening right now.

Article and summary are pure flame bait.

Re:You don't say

[angel'o'sphere]

Actually, no.

Gallium Arsenide cells, e.g. have the Arsen inside of the 'gallium glass', there is no real way for it to get out.
OTOH you simply can/should recycle them instead of depositing them somewhere.

Your Wikipedia article is a summary about various technologies. The main technology used is Silicium, so: no again, no dangerous materials included. Considering that they are basically 'glass' everything 'inside' can not really get out easily anyway.

So that leaves CdTe (Cadmium Tellerium) based thin film cells.

If you throw that on a land fill you are an idiot. The Tellerium in those is worth a furtune.

Re:You don't say

[LynnwoodRooster]

Recycling of PV cells is regulated by the EPA. The EPA only gets involved if there are nasty things involved... And heavy metals, cadmium, lead, and others (which are controlled by RoHS but of course PVs are exempt from RoHS regulations) are present.

Re:You don't say

[angel'o'sphere]

That does not change the fact that silicon based PV cells don't contain any heavy metals ...

Re:You don't say

[rtb61]

Solar panels actually represent just a small range of concentrated minerals. Dead panels could be quite readily industrially recycled, to get those quite expensive elements back into raw form by the mineral refining industries. Would not need that many global plants and it would be profitable and cheaper than digging those minerals out of the ground and than refining that and all those associated waste (hundreds of times more waste than in the panels themselves). It would take some time for sufficient panels to hit the waste cycle to justify those refining plants, they would need quite a bit of sustained volume to justify their existence. So yeah, not much of a problem at all.

Re:You don't say

[Maxo-Texas]

Project it 20 years forward to when "BIG SOLAR" is the equivalent of big coal and nuclear now.

The EPA will be bought off to ignore pollution issues.

If it even still exists after the mockery it's being made now.

Re:You don't say

[LynnwoodRooster]

You're wrong. Crystalline silicon panels contain heavy metals.

Re:You don't say

[angel'o'sphere]

I don't care what the wikipedia article says and I'm to lazy to read it.

Silicium cells _don't_ contain heavy metals. They don't contain _any metal at all_.

The only metals are outside in the _panel_ and _wiring_

So: super easy to recycle. And if you had physics in school: you damn would know that.

Then we have cells with a mirror on the back side, which again is on the outside! That is in most cases silver, and silver is counted as a precious metal, not as a heavy metal. Even chemically it is a heavy metal. Perhaps you meant that ...

So: all metals in a panel can be super easy recycled, they are not a threat on a land fill. And bottom line I assume that the whole cell gets recycled as the silicium is besides the fact that it is doted, still super pure!

Re:You don't say

[LynnwoodRooster]

I don't care what the wikipedia article says and I'm to lazy to read it.

Thank you for at least being honest about your intellectual laziness and unwillingness to learn. A perfect example of the tolerant environmentalist!

Re:You don't say

[angel'o'sphere]

Thre is nothing to learn.
Grasp it.

A Solar cell neither contains heavy metals nor does it contain any metal.

The only metal is the interconnect of many cells creating a panel and the frame around that panel.

And usually they don't contain heavy metals, and for the sake of the discussion it is irrelevant as they are easily recycled by simply heating the cells to the melting point of the metals (copper, usually): so there is nothing to worry at all about how to recycle a solar panel, solar cell, or how ever yo want to call it.

AGAIN: learn something instead of bombarding people with links which are obviously to complex for you to grasp.

Sorry that I'm angry, but this is 7 grade knowledge, or grade grade. It can not be that adults with voting rights are running around and have no clue at all!!!! Pisses me off, sorry, it really pisses me off.

Re:You don't say

[LynnwoodRooster]

Yes, I understand. Education - reading and learning about what is actually in a silicon cell - is hard. Better to stick with your pre-conceived notions. I fully understand. After all, apparently 7th grade is good enough for you!

Re:You don't say

[angel'o'sphere]

Yes, I understand. Education - reading and learning about what is actually in a silicon cell - is hard.
Yes.
Obviously.
As you seem not to understand the difference between a cell and a panel.
And you seem not to understand that all metals, heavy or not, dangerous or not: are outside of the cell.

Why don't you read the article you linked?

7 grade or 8 grade physics is a good start, and you seem t have missed that.

Otherwise you would not write such nonsense.

Re:You don't say

[Verdatum]

Right; it's worth a fortune in sufficient quantity. CdTe is a thin-film technology. The deposited layer is on the order of 150nm; 1/500th of a human hair. It'd be kinda nice if the cadmium also had value; it's a byproduct of the zinc industry. Some argue that this is a good thing to do with cadmium; much safer than just burying the surplus in a concentrated manner.

Re:You don't say

[Verdatum]

The organization wouldn't be Koch Brothers or big-oil, that'd be silly. Environmental Progress exists to promote nuclear energy; and is almost undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. The nuclear industry is frustrated by wind and solar, because it allows nuclear to continue to be rejected as a solution, despite having advantages over both in certain situations; namely for industrial power and high-density areas; places where you need lots of power, and you don't need to transport that power very long distances. But getting those plants built requires fixing the PR problems with nuclear, and casting doubt on solar doesn't hurt either, so we get funded propaganda "studies" like this.

Re:You don't say

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You're wrong. Crystalline silicon panels contain heavy metals.

Read what you linked again. Is crystalline Si CIGS or CdTe? No, it isn't either of those, so it doesn't contain cadmium. Does it contain lead? Well, maybe from *some* manufacturers, but it doesn't have to and many countries in fact prohibit import of those so it's clearly not a necessity when lead-free panels can be manufactured and imported. In fact, the very last sentence reiterates this point. So I suggest that you read what you link before you link it.

Ok, but we like the lights on, don't we?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a species we bleat and whinge about this, but our behaviour remains the same. So, noted. What's next?

Re: Ok, but we like the lights on, don't we?

[Rakarra]

You managed to do both you illiterate cuntfaced fuckwit. Nothing worse than a grammar nazi who doesn't know words.

Everywhere outside of the UK, the word is "whine," not "whinge." Whinge is a british colloquialism.

is it the panels or...

[afaiktoit]

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.

Re:is it the panels or...

[blindseer]

It's both and more.

E-waste has been a problem for a long time now which has only been addressed around the edges in the past few years. Manufacturers of cellphones, coffeepots, and on and on have caved to pressure from consumers and regulators and created products that use less lead, mercury, and other heavy metals but solar panels do not work without some heavy metals in them. The cases of these small electronics, household appliances, and more now usually have recyclable cases made of plastic, glass, and metal, but the silicon chips inside are a lot like those solar panels, they are made of difficult to recycle material.

If we intend to use PV solar then this e-waste problem is going to get large quickly. It's adding to the problem of small electronics many times over because the non-recyclable parts in a cell phone is small compared to the rest but with a solar panel the non-recyclable portion is large.

Perhaps the sunny side of this is if we can solve this PV recycle problem then maybe we solve the larger e-wast problem with it. One solution I like is pyro-processing, get the stuff hot enough that any dangerous chemicals get broken down to it's elements. The problem is finding something that can get hot enough. Turns out that molten salt nuclear reactors work great for this.

Re:is it the panels or...

[afaiktoit]

yeah, its something that needs a solution for sure. I'd think the electronics waste problem is easier to solve than the nuclear waste problem.

Re:is it the panels or...

[religionofpeas]

It's adding to the problem of small electronics many times over because the non-recyclable parts in a cell phone is small compared to the rest but with a solar panel the non-recyclable portion is large.

If we can extract lead and cadmium from rocks, then why not from old solar panels ?

Re:is it the panels or...

[blindseer]

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.

Re:is it the panels or...

[ganv]

This is a normal e-waste issue. The original post comparing it to nuclear waste is just badly reasoned sensationalism. The e-waste problem is easily solved. In fact it is much easier to solve than the energy supply problem that solar PV is attempting to address. The solution is to require recycling costs to be included in the purchase price. The cost of recycling silicon solar PV panels is a tiny fraction of the purchase price. (CdTe panels are a different issue...and maybe a bad idea because of the recycling problem just like nuclear power is a bad idea because of nuclear waste.) If suppliers have to include recycling costs in what they charge, then they will start making even more easily recyclable panels But including recycling costs in the purchase price requires planning 20 or 30 years into the future and writing careful regulations. Most governments around the world seem to be inept at planning and regulating, largely because many voters seem to believe that the future is not their problem. But no matter what governments do, I can assure you that coal and petrochemical pollution will still be a much bigger problem than unrecycled solar panels and even nuclear wastes for at least the next 100 or 200 years. The real problem is that these poorly reasoned articles confuse people and keep them from making the switch to renewable energy that humanity has to make it we intend to keep 7 to 10 billion people living with modern comforts on planet earth over the next 100 years.

Re:is it the panels or...

[angel'o'sphere]

Cadmium, Lead and the other stuff you are freaking out about are 'metals'!!!!!

You simply heat what ever you want to recycle and then one metal after the other is melting (like ice in a glass of your favourite drink).

We do that since about 6000 before christ, I really wonder how dumb you are and why there are idiots that are even dumber and mod you +4 informative.

You should really consider to let more foreign workers into your country, the IQ or knowledge level seems to be absurdly low in the 'ingenious' population.

Re:is it the panels or...

[blindseer]

Cadmium, Lead and the other stuff you are freaking out about are 'metals'!!!!!

Of course cadmium and lead are metals. I'm quite certain that English is not your first language so I can understand your use of words like "silicium" but I'm pretty sure that "metal" is something that translates well to many other languages. If cadmium and lead are not metals then what are they? They are not gasses, I'm sure of that.

You simply heat what ever you want to recycle and then one metal after the other is melting (like ice in a glass of your favourite drink).

How much does that cost? How much energy does that take? No one is arguing that they cannot be recycled, only that the means we know of today are too expensive to be worth the effort. If we heat this PV mess up and distill out the different elements then that would separate everything out but that is a very expensive process.

We do that since about 6000 before christ, I really wonder how dumb you are and why there are idiots that are even dumber and mod you +4 informative.

I just think you are jealous that I got modded to +4 and you did not.

You should really consider to let more foreign workers into your country, the IQ or knowledge level seems to be absurdly low in the 'ingenious' population.

You said you are from Europe, right? I read the news and I've seen what your recent immigration trends have been doing there. I do not believe that America should be taking advice from Europe right now on immigration policies. I think we are doing quite well by comparison.

Re:is it the panels or...

[Maxo-Texas]

So the obvious question...

Why can't we use solar to do the melting making it essentially "free"?

Re:is it the panels or...

[blindseer]

Because the materials, land, labor, etc, to build and operate a facility that can collect and concentrate the sun to melt the PV waste costs money. This is far from "free".

Also, how do you propose building such a facility? Silicon melts above 1400C, and boils above 3200C. Even the hottest solar concentrator plant or molten salt nuclear reactor top out around 1000C. Collecting the solar power with PV panels and using arc furnaces or something to melt this PV waste has got to have a lot of losses in it. How much land would this facility take to get enough sun?

Obviously we can build furnaces to reach these temperatures since we refine silicon in much the same way but to do so we burn a lot of coal. I don't just mean burning the coal to produce the electricity, coal is a feedstock to the chemical process.

Re:is it the panels or...

[Maxo-Texas]

Good information, thanks.

It does look like we can reach 1400C easily and can reach 3500C at some facilities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The solar furnace at Odeillo in the Pyrénées-Orientales in France can reach temperatures up to 3,500 ÂC (6,330 ÂF)

By free I meant without using fuel. The thing about solar facilities is that they wear very slowly compared to most traditional facilities.

This is a fairly small facility (like the size of a 17 story building)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

It's been in operation since the 1970s.

This energy is used in numerous ways, including the generation of electricity via a steam turbine, making hydrogen fuel, testing reentry materials for space vehicles, or performing high-temperature metallurgic experiments. The massive maximum temperatures Odeillo achieves even allow for the production of carbon nanotubes and zinc nanoparticles via solar induced sublimation.

A good chip fab can cost a billion dollars.

If the Odeillo facility cost 100 million dollars, imagine what a 1 billion dollar solar furnace facility could do.

Re:is it the panels or...

[Maxo-Texas]

So I looked up steel mills and they cost from 400 million to 5 billion dollars.

And saw some really cool videos of huge machines working with slugs of titanium magma the size of office chairs.

Re:is it the panels or...

[Verdatum]

Much much easier. Handling e-waste is an infrastructure problem. Handling nuclear waste is a lingering social issue.

Re:is it the panels or...

[Verdatum]

Right, this is why solar is not a panacea, and no one knowledgeable has ever said it was. Industrial plants like this should be located near other energy sources such as large hydroelectric dams, or nuclear plants; this way you can get high volumes of inexpensive energy and no need to fiddle with battery-storage; so you can run 24/7. If you look at modern smelting operations, they are always near a cheap source of power like this. In the thin-field realm, you don't necessarily harvest the metals by throwing them in a crucible/still. You may use a chemical process with acids to dissolve metals, you might use electrolysis, or you may use electricity to produce a plasma-beam.

We've still got more to learn in the realm of efficient handling of solar waste, but they are solvable in ways that should eventually leaves us with a net energy gain. And until then, it still results in massive savings in energy that is otherwise lost to transport along the grid; and it shields those using locally produced solar energy from any unexpected changes in the energy market.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one topic at a time, eh?

TL;DR ...

[CaptainDork]

... stopped at:

... a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy ...

Re:TL;DR ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since you didn't spend more than two seconds on the topic, let's explore:

Are you against nuclear energy?

Are you against nonprofits?

Are you against nonprofits that advocate for nuclear energy?

Or is there a brain tumor that is causing you to spend no time thinking about an issue before commenting?

My guess - you stopped because your Facebook app let you know someone liked your post on Jello and you couldn't be bothered to read an article to advance your knowledge.

Re:TL;DR ...

[Verdatum]

I'm not the person you were asking, but he shares my concern. I'm for nuclear energy. I'm a huge fan of it and I would happily have a new nuclear plant "In My Backyard". But I'm not gonna concern myself too much with a carefully framed cherrypicked set of information from an advocacy group undoubtedly funded by the nuclear industry. "300 times the waste" is comparing apples and oranges. No one is concerned about nuclear because it creates a great mass of waste. The concern is that the waste it produces is extremely difficult to deal with and does not currently have a permanent solution. And it mentions lead cadmium and chromium as scary metals, but doesn't give any numbers on it....because those numbers are *extremely* low. The contributor to the mass of waste produced in solar is things like glass and concrete; they are benign. Nuclear has a major problem because people are afraid of it, even though they shouldn't be. This study is an attempt to up nuclear's ranking at the expense of fear, uncertainty and doubt at solar. And that's a shame because it's a blatantly obviously deceptive technique, and it shouldn't be necessary. There are perfectly good and valid reasons why both solar and nuclear are appropriate energy solutions that should be able to operate harmoniously. But that narrative isn't shocking, and it doesn't go viral like this sort of claim tends to do. So I'm for nonprofit groups, and I understand the need for corporately funded nonprofit advocacy groups. But I also know to scrutinize the propaganda (word used in it's neutral, non pejorative sense) that comes from them critically, keeping their agenda in mind; _especially_ when they chose deceptive organization names like "Environmental Progress" as opposed to a more descriptive organization name, like "Berkeley Institute for the promotion of nuclear energy".

Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[careysub]

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.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[El Cubano]

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.

It is preposterous. Good thing that is not what they compared. From the article:

To make these calculations, EP estimated the total number of operational solar panels in 2016 and assumed they would all be retired in 25 years â" the average lifespan of a solar panel. EP then estimated the total amount of spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would be generated over a 25 year period. EP then divided both estimates by the quantity of electricity they produced to come up with the waste per unit of energy measure.

So, you say that they equated 1kg of solar panel to 1kg of nuclear fuel. They say they equated the solar panels it took to create x GW of electricity to the amount of nuclear fuel it took to create y GW of electricity. Based on what their stated methodology, it would work out to something like "300 kg of nuclear fuel can be used to generated 300 GW of electricity over 25 years, but 300 kg of solar panels can only be used to generate 1 GW of electricity over 25 years." Or something like that.

Now, you could argue that the analysis was incomplete because it does not account for the impact refining the nuclear fuel or manufacturing the solar panels, building the reactors, or installing/maintaining the solar panels. You could even argue that their methodology for estimating quantities of solar panels and nuclear fuel was flawed or that they don't account for the differing impact of handling spent nuclear fuel versus old solar panels (I can stack old panels out in the open, but that is not a good idea with nuclear fuel). But those are different matters altogether.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[religionofpeas]

"300 kg of nuclear fuel can be used to generated 300 GW of electricity over 25 years, but 300 kg of solar panels can only be used to generate 1 GW of electricity over 25 years."

It still equates 1 kg of nuclear waste with 1 kg of solar panel waste in terms of environmental impact. That's crazy, since most of the solar panel waste is from the glass front panel and the frame, which are harmless materials.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[dunkelfalke]

It is still wrong, because they only compare actual nuclear fuel as in Uranium. Not the whole rods, that are much larger. Not the control rods that have to be replaced regularly because they get irradiated.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[Anonymous Coward]

Sadly the nuclear waist is far, far more dangerous per kg.
And, on top of that, it stay's dangerous for thousands and thousands of years.
Frankly - even comparing the two only on toxicity and no other factors is simply idiotic.

So yeah - The overwhelming majority of solar panels is not even in the neighborhood of the hazard that comes from the majority of nuclear waist.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[gweihir]

That is pretty funny, as 1kg of burnt nuclear fuel is enough to make a city like New York uninhabitable for a few 1000 years, while 300kg of old solar panels are pretty harmless as all the "bad" metals are fused in the silicon and it is minuscule amounts in addition. Unless you, you know, put them in a river for the water to grind down over a few decades, that is exactly where these metals will stay.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[LynnwoodRooster]

CdTe panels are 5.1% of the global market and growing rapidly.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[AmiMoJo]

assumed they would all be retired in 25 years Ã" the average lifespan

Odd assumption considering that the standard warranty is 25 years, with quality brands like Sharp and LG now at 30 years.

The panels are pretty simple devices really. They just need to be sealed properly and made of reasonably durable materials, and fortunately we have figured out how to make building materials that last more than 30 years quite reliably.

Oh, and of course you have to add in the reduction in wear on the roof.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[emj]

assumed they would all be retired in 25 years Ã" the average lifespan

Odd assumption considering that the standard warranty is 25 years, with quality brands like Sharp and LG now at 30 years.

The solar panels we bought 30 years ago still give us enough power to warrant being mounted on our roof, I have no idea what the warranty was then or how the quality has changed since then..

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[DanielRavenNest]

Solar panels typically degrade at 0.5% per year from their original rated power. By their nature, they are exposed to solar UV all their lives. The high energy photons damage the relatively thin semiconductor junction layers in the cell. Other parts of the panel, like the aluminum frame, are likely to degrade faster than the cells themselves, and once the panel is no longer weather-tight, they can fail fairly fast. But then, so do houses, once the roof isn't weather-tight any more.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[angel'o'sphere]

and assumed they would all be retired in 25 years Ã" the average lifespan of a solar panel.
Considering that a solar panel usually comes with a 30 years warranty, it is absurd to assume its _average_ live span is only 25 years.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[Maxo-Texas]

Also, solar panels are frequently used well past 25 years. They decline in production but produce useful levels of electricity for long past their warranty periods.

http://energyinformative.org/l...

        A 33W solar panel (Arco Solar 16-2000) actually outperformed itâ(TM)s original factory specifications 30 years after it was manufactured.[2]
        World`s first modern solar panel still works after 60 years.[3]
        Kyocera has reported several solar power installations that continue to operate reliably and generate electricity even though they are nearly 30 years old.[4]

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[drinkypoo]

Other parts of the panel, like the aluminum frame, are likely to degrade faster than the cells themselves, and once the panel is no longer weather-tight, they can fail fairly fast.

The aluminum frame will outlast the panel by far if it's actually Aluminum. Unfortunately, most frames I've seen have used steel screws. They need to be welded or riveted. Hopefully that's how it's done now. Aluminum forms a protective oxide layer, which is why it lasts so long in the elements. But if you mix it with steel, you'll get galvanic corrosion. You can use tin or zinc as an intermediate layer to prevent it, but that never works perfectly.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[lars_stefan_axelsson]

Well, while I agree there are problems with the article, in fairness 1kg of "spent" nuclear fuel won't magically develop wings and spread it self out to make a city the size of New York uninhabitable either. (And spent fuel isn't that dangerous to begin with. )

If you leave it alone, it will pretty much leave you alone as well. And a 1kg cube of spent fuel just sitting there won't be that dangerous. We store them in pools in our plants for the shortest lived, most active daughters to decay before sending them on after all.

That's not to say that just leaving it laying about is a good disposal strategy for spent nuclear fuel, of course. Far from it. And, equally obvious, neither does 300kg of solar panels present nearly as much of a hazard as nuclear fuel when dealing with the aftermath.

Re:Solar Panel Not Equal to Spent Fuel

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Given the scaling limitations of tellurium-based panels, "growing rapidly" is a very short-sighted description of what is happening.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Z00L00K]

It's also hard to compare different types of waste, and that includes how easy it's to recycle the stuff - and how much any non-recycleable parts of it has to be contained when deposited.

Waiting for...

[Anonymous Coward]

...the inevitable story where we find out the Orwellian named "Environmental Progress" is a thinly disguised lobbying group for the nuclear industry.

Re:Waiting for...

[blindseer]

If the study has even a hint of being true then it would seem to me that nuclear power advocacy is also advocacy for the environment. I like lobby groups that say "yes" once in a while. Those environmental groups that just go around saying no to nuclear (because the make BOMBS!), no to coal (OMG the SMOG!), no to windmills (think of the BIRDS!), no to burning wood (you can't chop down a TREE! they have feelings too!), or solar power far from the city centers where no one even knows they are there (the TURTLES! the desert turtles won't see the sun!). To many of them don't have solutions, only more screaming about problems.

Saving the environment is fine, so long as that includes people living int it. People are part of the environment and we need to find a balance with it. Part of that is finding energy so our soft pink (and increasingly large) bodies don't turn red in the sun, blue in the cold, get torn to pieces by predators, and get enough food to survive (which is not much of a problem it would seem).

I like seeing people that actually sat down to do some math to see what our impact on the environment is based on how we do things and finding ways to reduce the suck we create. I won't say reduce our impact on the environment because things like proper hunting and fishing means populations have grown. Improved farming and ranching means more food, more trees, and generally a greener world.

I said "hint of truth" at the beginning because even if they are off by two orders of magnitude then solar power still creates three times the waste as nuclear. This certainly sounds like something worthy of further study. This study also said nothing comparing the costs of nuclear to solar (which is approaching parity as time passes) or reliability (nuclear has 90+% availability, solar has about 30%).

Re:Waiting for...

[Verdatum]

They aren't required to say it, but if you dig through the website, it's pretty clearly almost certainly funded by the nuclear industry, yeah. It probably wouldn't take too terribly much googling to track down an explicit link. I'm all for nuclear advocacy, but I wish they wouldn't use poorly made deceptive arguments like this. I guess they're more concerned about saying something sensational so that the story can spread then they are concerned about reasonable arguments.

Re: And this is why Republicans...

[stooo]

>> I was told my panels and batteries would pay off in about 20 years

There's your problem. Why storage and a 'ROI of 20 Years, when you can have a ROI of 8 Years without storage and battery hassle?

Slanted Article is Slanted

[LeftCoastThinker]

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).

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[whoever57]

The problem with these articles is they are written by a "think tank" that will misrepresent and lie in order to promote a predetermined point of view.

FTFY.

We all need to be aware that big money interests are using every means at their disposal, including fake think tanks, to fool the public into supporting them. This is just another example of that. In this case, the bias and factual misrepresentation are quite obvious for anyone who is slightly skeptical, but still, many people will be fooled.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[WindBourne]

That is not true. Most of the Chinese panels have plenty of lead.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[blindseer]

So a new iPhone every year produces less e-waste than my 8-year old Garmin GPS?
I don't think so.

My 8 year old iPod Touch says you are an idiot for buying a new iDevice every year.

After I cracked the screen on my iPod, ran my old cell phone through the wash, and my Tom Tom died I finally decided to get an iPhone 7. I expect this to last nearly 8 years. This should not be too much to ask given how long my last iDevice lasted, I got a rubber case for it, and the screen is much stronger. If the waterproof claims are true it might even survive an accidental washing.

Oh, and when one of my alarm clocks died I started to use my iPhone to wake me. So with four devices replaced by one I'll be making no more e-waste even if I get a new iPhone every couple years.

(Yes, I said "one of" my alarm clocks. I'm a heavy sleeper and I'll set two alarm clocks about 15 minutes apart to make sure I wake up on time.)

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[LynnwoodRooster]

Photovoltaic panels are exempt from RoHS. Consider yourself better informed now...

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[LynnwoodRooster]

RoHS exempts photovoltaic panels.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[blindseer]

ROHS compliance just means that if thrown in a hole the stuff won't leach hazardous chemicals into the ground. It does not mean it is recyclable. We'd still have to deal the the pile of trash PV creates.

With nuclear waste we can vitrify it keep it from leaching stuff and throw it in a hole for 300 years. After that we can dig it up and recycle the now radiologically inert elements. We might be able to toss PV cells in a hole and dig it up 300 years later after we figure out how to recycle it but that pile would be 300 times larger than the pile of nuclear stuff.

This just tells us that solar is not ready yet for wide deployment, but nuclear power is. Let's do nuclear now, while we keep working on the solar stuff. Maybe in 300 years solar will be competitive.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[CrimsonAvenger]

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.

Note, by the by, that melting down nuclear fuel rods isn't actually that difficult either. Or wouldn't be if not for the NIMBY's who wet themselves when they hear the word "nuclear". Note that we were doing it in 1945 with what passed for technology at the time....

And you might want to be aware, when considering the long half-life of some radio-isotopes, that lead has a nearly infinite half-life....

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[epine]

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.

One extra cancer at age 50 out of a hundred home-alone firebrand toddlers cosplaying Legoland Nero counts as an "ill effect" in my ledger.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[blindseer]

RoHS exempts photovoltaic panels.

I'm sure the oil and coal lobby is to blame.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[WindBourne]

china uses lead in all of their soldering. That is why each of those panels also has a statement from California that lead causes issues with pregnancy, child birth and kid rearing (or something to that effect).

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[WindBourne]

yup. Sadly, with Chinese gov, things are a joke. The only group that lies more than trump is the Chinese gov.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[angel'o'sphere]

whereas spent nuclear fuel is quite difficult and dangerous to work with and there is no real east way to recycle spent nuclear waste.
Well, it usually is recycled into anti tank rounds for the A10 Gatling gun, or anti tank ammunition for hu hom, tanks.
In Germany we use Wolfram instead.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[angel'o'sphere]

You are an idiot.
For what would the lead be good for?
Hu?

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[angel'o'sphere]

If you want to recycle PV cells, you simply heat them up.
First the lead will melt, if there is any.
Then copper.
And in the long end silicium (which is 99% of the PV cell)

Why are you repeating this nonsense about PV cells not being recyclable and being dangerous? I gave you enough links and explanations that you are an idiot to believe they are a) dangerous and b) not recycleable.

What exactly do you want to recycle from 300 year old atomic waste is beyond me btw ...

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[blindseer]

Why are you repeating this nonsense about PV cells not being recyclable and being dangerous?

Because I just read the articles linked to from this website called Slashdot. Perhaps you've heard of it?

What exactly do you want to recycle from 300 year old atomic waste is beyond me btw ...

Fissionable fuel like uranium and plutonium. After 300 years almost all the elements that produce heat and gamma will be gone. It'd be like a new fuel rod on it's own but with minimal processing it'd be a "super fuel".

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[LeftCoastThinker]

That is "a" method of disposal, but not all that great. In 20 years those rounds will still be radioactive, and any tank battlefields will be more or less radioactive depending on the number of rounds fired, hits/misses and any cleanup.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[LeftCoastThinker]

Melting down the actual fuel rods is only part, you also have to deal with the irradiated and often contaminated coolant, and you can't just melt down all of the spent fuel in one go and pour it into a lead container. Also, during the melt process, some small amounts of fuel will vaporize, and now you have a highly radioactive cloud of gas that you need to filter out and deal with.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[angel'o'sphere]

Exactly.

And that is one reason why the USA are so hated in the "middle east".

Malformed children are born since decades in Iraq.

No one is cleaning up there, and no one knows how to actually do it.

The problem is less the radioactivity but more that Uranium is super poisonous. Ofc. that goes hand in hand, as soon as it is inside the body its radioactivity becomes a problem, too.

Re:Slanted Article is Slanted

[Verdatum]

Metalworker here. It's massively more complicated than that. Thin films must be separated from the plastic substrate, meaning a whole nasty solvent process; or a filthy incineration process, chromium is extremely difficult to melt with simple radiated heat, like in a crucible, chormium and cadmium need to be worked under special conditions to prevent evaporation and health risks, Lead doesn't just magically burst away from things like circuitboards; even when molten. That means you're doing things like grinding, and centrifuging, and then you got to deal with the leftover fiberglass resin mess. The big problem is that it's a process that currently costs more money than the value of the extracted materials; especially if you want to do it in an enviornmentally friendly manner. As a result, no one wants to do it.

It's a solvable problem. And there's no reason not to continue to roll out solar. By improving the specific process used, and improving the infrastructure needed to harvest the panels and transport them to a facility, and by implementing regulations regarding how dead panels must be handled, the costs can drop to a point where they can be factored into the purchase price of the panel.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[WindBourne]

Soldering. China always uses lead in their solder.

Re: Slanted Article is Slanted

[angel'o'sphere]

For the panels they export to Europe?

Hu?

And how is that relevant anyway? The soldering is outside of the cells, and can easily be recycled/retrieved/removed.

Push study.

[gurps_npc]

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.

Re:Push study.

[DRJlaw]

NASA's Voyagers 1 and 2 are both going strong after 37 years exposure to micrometeorites in space.

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.

Re:Push study.

[Anonymous Coward]

Voyager 1 and 2 are powerd by Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators, not solar panels.

Re:Push study.

[DRJlaw]

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.

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.

Re:Push study.

[bagofbeans]

The gentleman has a history of pushing nuclear power beyond reason. Somewhat angry article about him:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2016/05/09/lost-in-bonkers-the-latest-episode-in-pro-nuclear-quackery/

Re:Push study.

[Anonymous Coward]

At oblique angles (morning and late afternoon), the panels no longer put out any power at all sooner in the day than they did when new.

I don't think that gets talked about enough. My charge controller has a serial port, and I've recorded the output from my panels and to/from my batteries at one minute intervals for nearly eleven years. I feed that to MRTG to create pretty graphs. The peak output from my panels is down by about 60% as compared with new, but the hours per day the panels provide power is only about half of what it was new. Peak output is not a good measurement. We need a measurement that takes into account power produced at less direct angles to get a better estimate of what you can expect your panels to output over an entire day.

Re: Push study.

[gweihir]

No. Works on a different principle.

Re:Push study.

[thegarbz]

And with that your credibility is gone.

And with that is yours. You have just now decided to discredit statements based entirely on the source without analysis of the statement itself. Just because he said one stupid thing (a subset of one point mind you) doesn't invalidate the rest of his points, or even the point he was originally making.

Focus on the discussion, not the people.

Re:Push study.

[blindseer]

1) Assumes they have a really short lifespan.

Voyager? Go read a book.

They also assume that nuclear technology will not advance. There are nuclear reactor designs being worked on that can "burn" the waste from previous reactors. These reactors can also produce plutonium-238, for more deep space probes like Voyager.

Solar? On Voyager? I can't even...

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

If it is not recycled then it is buried, either way we'd have a huge pile of stuff to deal with.

3) They compared it with nuclear rather than coal or petroleum.

Yes, they compare it with nuclear. This is because unlike a lot of environmental advocacy groups they offer solutions instead of just screaming about the problem. I've had the problem of pollution hammered into me since grade school, it's refreshing to hear people offering solutions.

Don't sell me bullshit and expect me to eat it.

Voyager?

Re:Push study.

[JASP1]

Nothing that is destined to operate much beyond Mars orbit is powered by solar panels.

Well, to be pedantic, Juno is a solar powered orbiter at Jupiter. The average distance to the sun for Mars is 1.5 AU, whereas it is 5.4 AU for Jupiter. But that's pushing the limits of the technology. There's an informative article on the topic from Smithsonian's Air and Space Magazine. You can get a sense of the size of the panels from this video.

Re:Push study.

[blindseer]

Focus on the discussion, not the people.

Sure, when discussing the durability of solar panels one would expect an example that contained actual solar panels. We don't know how long solar panels will actually last because we have not been using them long enough to get good estimates. Claiming a potential operational lifespan of PV cells in the centuries cannot be backed with actual evidence.

What we do have a lot of data on is the life of a nuclear reactor because we've been doing that for over six decades. Claiming an operational life of 50 years is not too much since that is the operational life of many reactors today. Given the experience we have we can expect them to last 80 years. Not particularly because we want to operate them that long, but because without new electrical generation capacity to replace them we have to.

New designs with the ability to more easily replace wear parts, better materials, and a better understanding of the limits of materials under neutron bombardment, we can expect next generation reactors to last over 100 years with extreme safety.

What is amazing to me is that even though the number of reactors operating in the USA is decreasing the output has been increasing. With a combination of periodic upgrades, improved operational procedures, and the overbuilt designs from and abundance of caution, we've seen nuclear power output increase. Reactors built in the 1970s used to run at 80% design capacity but now regularly run at 120% design capacity. That is impressive.

I've seen comments complain that this is not a fair comparison since the study compared only the fuel burned to the PV panels that wore out. Given the large margin of the waste produced, the long life of the nuclear power plant, and how a large part of a nuclear power plant site can be reused, recycled, or repurposed, the study may be flawed but the conclusion does not change.

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

You could also recycle the nuclear fuel and burn it further. I think he's making a decent assumption.

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

Or use an integral fast reactor (Generation IV) to burn the fuel more.

Re: Push study.

[BeaverCleaver]

Ammonia is broken down by bacteria in the soil to release nitrogen. This part of your gripe is not a problem.

Re:Push study.

[drinkypoo]

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.

You will if you leave room for some more panels on the mounting scaffold. If you feel like being generous with the space, save enough room to add more panels just like the ones you have; maybe you can find some used when/before you need them. Otherwise, understand that the panels will be better by the time you have a problem, and you can probably just take a couple of them down and put up a couple new ones to get your capacity back.

Re:Push study.

[DRJlaw]

You have just now decided to discredit statements based entirely on the source without analysis of the statement itself.

No, I've decided to discredit statements based on other statements made by the same source. You've confusing ad hominem argument, which is a logical fallacy, with credibility analysis, which is a logical inference of the accuracy of some statements based upon the known accuracy of others. You may also refer to it as reputation.

Focus on the discussion, not the people.

That was the discussion. The solar panel statements were wrong. The Voyager statements were wrong. Your discussion is, in general, wrong.

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

How exactly do you plan to 'burn' a silicon based PV cell?
And for what purpose?

Don't sell me bullshit and expect me to eat it.
Eating the waste of a coal plant you probably survive.
Eating the waste of a nuclear plant not.

What bullshit are you talking about exactly?

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

Claiming a potential operational lifespan of PV cells in the centuries cannot be backed with actual evidence.
That is why we have laws of physic.
For most things in life you don't need any evidence but simply an understanding how physics work.
PC cells hold basically indefinitely after they have degraded to their 'settled efficiency'.
Everyone but you knows that, so you need evidence and we facepalm about you.

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

And the degrading is slowing down over the course of the years and stops after about 10-15 years, so what exactly is your point?

Re:Push study.

[blindseer]

I remember a discussion about nuclear weapons testing and there was a desire to detonate a few prototypes. When asked on why we'd need to detonate anything when the computer models showed the weapon worked the reply was simple, we need to verify the models.

We can model the PV cells all we like but we won't know the models are valid until we can verify therm with real data. Sometimes physics will surprise us.

I think this says something about climate models too.

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

reactors. These reactors can also produce plutonium-238, for more deep space probes like Voyager.
Voyager and similar probes in future are not running on nuclear reactors. They are running on so called RTG.

If you got hammered by pollution ideas regarding PV cells since grade school,you should perhaps have a harsh word with your teachers instead of spreading this disinformation further.

It is actually quite disheartening that you still spread this bullshit on a daily basis when you got disproved here on /. since month about this topic.

Re:Push study.

[blindseer]

The Voyager probes use RTGs for power, where the thermal power comes from Pu-238.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Pu-238 from reactors here on Earth.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Please show me where my teachers gave me disinformation.

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

Yes you can. Ever heard of MOX fuel?

As much as 90% of the fuel can be reused. It just that the rest is actinides which poison the nuclear reaction and don't allow the reaction to occur any more. Much of the U-238 in the original fuel is transmuted into PLUTONIUM which is fissile so you need less U-235 because Plutonium can replace it.

The alternative is to use a nuclear reactor which works regardless of the actinides being there or not. Namely the Generation IV fast reactors that I mentioned above.

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

Also, something like a CANDU reactor, heavy water moderated, requires a lot less enrichment in the fuel for it to work.

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

Are we talking about theoretical reactors or the reactors actually running right now?
Facepalm ...

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

Considering there are DOZENS of CANDU-6 reactors operational in Canada, India, China, Romania, Argentina, etc, I would say your argument is pointless.

Of course you could have read the link but this is Slashdot after all...

Re:Push study.

[cheesybagel]

RTFL.

CANDU reactors do not need 5-6% fissionable uranium. 1% is enough.

They use heavy water as a moderator. Of course you could have read my link above but noooo.

You go back to school you dolt.

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

I would say your argument about CANDU reactors is pointless, too.
As their fuel does not need 'reprocessing', facepalm.

Re:Push study.

[angel'o'sphere]

We did not talk about CANDU reactors to that point.
That was a different post of yours.
And perhaps you want to check the GP.

Re:Push study.

[RespekMyAthorati]

I think this says something about climate models too.

Yes, it says they are based on science.

Re:Push study.

[RespekMyAthorati]

If it is not recycled then it is buried, either way we'd have a huge pile of stuff to deal with.

What, about 0.00001% of the "stuff" of discarded cell phones?

Re:Push study.

[blindseer]

I think this says something about climate models too.

Yes, it says they are based on science.

Sure, I don't doubt they are based on science. I have to wonder if they are based on reality.

Re:Push study.

[samwichse]

Man, you missed an opportunity to throw his own statement back at him.

"And with that your credibility is gone."

Re:Push study.

[idji]

The Juno space probe is the first solar powered mission to Jupiter. it gets 4% of the sunlight at Jupiter compared to Earth and so has three panels 2.7 x 8.9 m^2.

Would you like ketchup on that?

[Charcharodon]

Just like everything else, nuclear included, solar panels are recyclable. Also unless you smash them they produce power longer than most of us will live. Sure they will eventually fall apart (the frame, glass, seals, etc), but again all trivial to recycle.

In the immortal words of Van Jones....."This story is a nothing burger"

Re: Would you like ketchup on that?

[Anonymous Coward]

Solar panels degrade over time just from being used. I hate to make generalizations, but since the masses need them, solar panels should be replaced after 25 years or so in most cases.

Re:Oh if only someone could have anticipated this

[religionofpeas]

You seem very eager to believe a bullshit article.

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

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[goombah99]

One can go further and ask what format is the waste in? for example chromium in nitric acid solution from, say, nuclear waste or something is much more mobile in the soil or aquifers than lead fixed in some glass matrix. Indeed one of the treatments for mobile wastes is to convert them to a fixed form. It's not like the process of making a solar panel created lead atoms. Thos atoms came from the environment, were concentrate for some use-- though in the case of lead the ore is usuall extremely concentrated to begin with-- and now they are back in the environment usually in some very fixed format in an alloy, not going any where and in rather small qualities in mixed waste. These waste scrap yards are an excellent short term storage format unlikely to do a lot of damage while we wait for the materials to become worth reclaiming. Cadmium and lead may be toxic but if you are not running them up an incinerator or letting them leach in to an aquifer then they are not actually toxic to anything.

Quantifying what is worse pollution is somewhat tricky here. this article doesn't even specify units let alone format.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[goombah99]

I think I failed if that's your interpretation

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Aighearach]

It wasn't you. If you wanted him to like you, you'd have had to blame some libraals for the problems with the story. There is nothing honest you could have said to get a more a honest response.

Re: Not all toxic waste is equal

[WindBourne]

What is funny is that the group is well known left wing.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Nuclear waste is normally recycled, just the US doesn't do it due to treaties signed about the byproducts..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[herve_masson]

> In what units?

If I read the article propely, it's volume (cubic meter per TWh).
So, it compares nuclear waste that are ultra dangerous and takes thousand years to become riskless, with lead, chromium, cadmium.

This comparizon is obviously entirely useless (and somehow stupid), unless it intend to mislead readers.

Having said that, recycling solar panel will soon be a challenge. Within next 10 years, we will have to replace a huge amount of panels that reached end of life.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[LynnwoodRooster]

Someone (OP?) should research the author -- Environmental Progress. They are (were) founded by Shellenberger; and he and Environmental Progress have/are advocating Nuclear power.

So what you're saying is they are sane environmentalists, who understand everything is a compromise?

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[mysidia]

Try Recyling Nuclear waste.

Most nuclear waste could be and should have been reprocessed safely, but federal rules say No.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Bomarc]

....references of this that is will raise the question of impartiality of the article.

Per chance you might want to read my comment before reply.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[ckatko]

>Try Recyling Nuclear waste.

Try googling it before spouting off nonsense.

https://whatisnuclear.com/arti...

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[sexconker]

Try Recyling Nuclear waste.

What is nuclear waste? Why is it dangerous?

Oh, it's radioactive? Then it can be - get this - re"cycled" and used in a smaller reactor! Hell, Toshiba has designed micro-sized reactors that would fit in your fucking backyard.

But ooooooooooooooooooh no, the nuclear boogeyman gonna git u! NUCLEAR BAD!!! Evil white scientist man need to take nuclear emergy and go home! ME NO UNDERSTAND SO ME AFRAID!!

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Smidge204]

Even at "End of life" they will likely still work, just not as well. Before recycling I'd think repurposing would be a fairly large market.

For a fraction of the price you can get a solar panel that's maybe 75% of its rated output. That's still usable power, and perhaps a good choice for some low-importance applications.
=Smidge=

Re: Not all toxic waste is equal

[Anonymous Coward]

you do realize that all of the transuranics turn into lead, right?

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[angel'o'sphere]

You can either deposit 'spent fuel' and consider it 'waste' ...
Or you can reprocess it. Regaining about 50% of it as new fuel (so you need an extra 50% from elsewhere) and produce about 100 times more waste than the original idea of depositing had.
Perhaps you should google what the word 'reprocessing' means and how it works?

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Barsteward]

"who understand everything is a compromise?" - if that was the case then they wouldn't have tried to do such a hatchet job on solar. If you look at their website, you'll see they are nuclear advocates.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[serviscope_minor]

So, it compares nuclear waste that are ultra dangerous and takes thousand years to become riskless, with lead, chromium, cadmium.

Out of interest, how long do lead and cadmium take to become riskless?

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[GuB-42]

Nuclear waste can be recycled into nuclear fuel (reprocessing).
But in the end, it just comes down to economics, like solar panel waste : is it cost effective to do so?

Re: Not all toxic waste is equal

[Anonymous Coward]

The French have demonstrated for 4 decades that your 70's era propaganda is bullshit. They're currently reprocessing fuel and have been for a long time.

Re: Not all toxic waste is equal

[dunkelfalke]

Pray tell me, what use would irradiated steel have?

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Maury Markowitz]

> Actually Nuclear waste is normally recycled

It's commonly *reprocessed*. Whether the results go back into a reactor is very much dependant on the country. This includes the US, where some reprocessing takes place.

> just the US doesn't do it

I believe you are confusing this with the closed-cycle breeder fuel system that Carter cancelled in the 1970s? That is a horse of an entirely different color.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Maury Markowitz]

> Within next 10 years, we will have to replace a huge amount of panels that reached end of life.

Except that we install more new panels every year than the number that were installed in every year up to 10 years ago. In 30 years, then we start seeing the wave.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Maury Markowitz]

> Then it can be - get this - re"cycled" and used in a smaller reactor

A small portion of the fuel can be recycled. It has to be mixed with large amounts of fresh fuel.

Here is an article that talks about how it is actually used:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOX_fuel

As you can see, most reactors can run on about 30% such fuel, with the rest being fresh uranium. And as in most cases the price of fresh uranium is less than MOX, the only reason to do this is political. That's why the US doesn't - although everyone seems to invert the political argument. Really, why should the US feds pay reactors to use MOX?

> Toshiba has designed micro-sized reactors that would fit in your fucking backyard

So have lots of people, there are dozens of such designs. However, the price of the units is so high that no one has purchased one, and likely never will.

> no, the nuclear boogeyman gonna git u

If by "the nuclear boogeyman" you mean the high CAPEX of new plants, then yes, it is going to get you.

kWh for kWh, wind turbines are about 1/2 the cost of a reactor, natural gas is even less, and solar is between the two. Which is why NG, wind and PV are the fastest growing power sources in history, and nuclear companies are going bankrupt around the world.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Verdatum]

By all means, you should keep an eye out for left-wing rubbish too; but one does not grant a pardon for the other. The article freaking out about plastic bottles the other day was left-wing garbage panic, and most of Slashdot spotted it as such. It's generally better to look at the quality of the research and the soundness of the conclusions than it is to worry about what interest the information benefits.

As far as this concern, solar panels are mostly silicon and glass or plastic. Lead is only present when made with leaded solder; which is outlawed in European production. The shift is towards designs that require as little solder as possible, because solder costs money. And chromium and cadmium are only present in tiny amounts, if at all. Your dinner fork has more chromium than a solar panel by two orders of magnitude at least.

Re: Not all toxic waste is equal

[Verdatum]

It appears to be staffed by left-leaning people, but it is heavily influenced by the nuclear industry; and obviously nuclear is never mom & pop operations; that's strictly huge corporations, likely to be controlled by people with fiscally conservative values. These guys are basically attacking the solar industry in hopes of growing support for nuclear; and doing so in sneaky ways; by carefully framing the statistic and naming scary chemicals, many of which are only trace levels or not present at all depending on how the solar panel is constructed. I'm a bit conflicted on that; because in many cases, nuclear is potentially a much better energy source environmentally; but it works best for powering things like industry and high-density areas. Urban and suburban consumers potentially have quite a lot to gain from solar. But that can be revenue lost to these companies that want to build new nuclear plants. Interest in wind and solar has caused interest in nuclear to go down; and that's a shame.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Verdatum]

They are an advocacy group that is funded by the nuclear industry; not an independent unbiased research group. So instead of giving cold data, they give scary statistics that try to compare solar waste, which is mostly harmless silicon, with nuclear waste which still doesn't have an agreed upon storage location; and must be protected for centuries. They also mention chemicals that are in trace amounts or potentially not present at all. I strongly support nuclear power and the building of new plants, but I don't particularly support these BS propaganda techniques. There are actual good arguments for nuclear over solar in many markets; this is not one of them.

Re:Not all toxic waste is equal

[Verdatum]

You skipped a part. it compares nuclear waste to waste that is mostly harmless silicon, plastic, and glass with potentially trace amounts of lead, chromium, and cadmium. Lead is only present in the soldering, and could be fixed by enacting legislation requiring lead-free alternatives for solar installations; which as I understand it, is already the case in the EU. Not counting the chromium in stainless steel installation hardware, chromium and cadmium are only ever present in thin film depositions, in only some forms of solar panel; meaning like 150nm thick coatings. There's less cadmium on an entire solar farm than there is in just one Van Gaugh painting of sunflowers.

mdsolar's not going to like this...

[chihowa]

mdsolar's not going to like this...

Re: "Can be" recycled, doesn't mean it's easy or c

[the_wesman]

^^ that's why the block of text you "quoted" says "easy-to-recycle" and not "can be recycled"

Re: And this is why Republicans...

[ls671]

Nothing 3 way switches couldn't take care of by switching on/off the grid I guess...

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Rei]

Which is precisely what this "study" does. Their graph simply compares cubic meters to cubic meters.

I put "study" in quotes because as far as I can tell there actually isn't a peer-reviewed study. Please correct me (with a link) if I'm mistaken.

Re: "Can be" recycled, doesn't mean it's easy or c

[mOzone]

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

"Can Be" =/= "Will Be"

[Cinnamon Beige]

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.

No more from nationalreview.com

[Gravis Zero]

nationalreview.com makes extremely disingenuous arguments and I'm not talking about just this article. Please no more from nationalreview.com.

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[blindseer]

Would you prefer it if you read about this problem on HuffPo?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

That's an article from 2014, so this is not new or the rantings of only "right wing nutjobs".

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[Gravis Zero]

That article has a much clearer view of the issue and does state that they can be properly recycled. So yeah, I would prefer to read it on "HuffPo" because it's not distorting the truth with false comparisons.

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[blindseer]

So we have HuffPo that talks about how solar PV waste is a problem and to solve the problem we need more taxes, more subsidies, and we'll figure out how to recycle this stuff some day soon.

Then we have National Review that talks about how CO2 emissions are a problem. Before us are two solutions, nuclear power and solar PV, each with a waste problem. The waste problem is 300x larger for solar compared to nuclear so let's use nuclear. Or at least use nuclear until we figure out the solar waste problem.

Seems to me that National Review has a better grasp of the problem, it's CO2 production that is the real problem. The problem is not PV waste because we can choose to use something other than PV. I do agree that both articles can be argued to "distort the truth" by lying through omission but the National Review article gives a much larger view of the problem compared to HuffPo.

Have you considered the possibility that nuclear power is in fact the solution to the PV waste problem that HuffPo says we should be looking for?

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[Gravis Zero]

It's not a question of "how do we recycle solar panels" it's a matter of economics: it costs more to recycle them than to trash them. Just make it a legal requirement that they be properly recycled and you'll make a few jobs for people to break them down for a few bucks per panel. Seriously, stop overthinking it.

Nuclear waste is more difficult to deal with let alone recycle. Nuclear power has great potential, just not the retarded breeder reactors that we have currently.

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[blindseer]

Just make it a legal requirement...

Stop right there.

You think we can "just" pass a law? One that would make solar power MORE expensive? That's going to happen, for sure.

Maybe I am over thinking this but I believe you didn't think about this enough. The solar power industry exists only because of government subsidy. Adding a tax would diminish this subsidy on an industry that is already on thin margins. These subsidies exist because powerful lobbies made them happen, getting a tax on solar panels is not something we "just" do.

Re:No more from nationalreview.com

[Gravis Zero]

LOL!

This is the more general problem of e-waste

[Applehu Akbar]

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.

Re:This is the more general problem of e-waste

[blindseer]

There is no need to single out solar panels.

I'll respectfully disagree, and I'll explain.

In my house I have a lot of electronics. If I were to have solar panels on my roof and tore them off and put them on a pile and then took all my electronics and put that on a pile the solar panel pile would be much larger. People don't have much to replace the electronics they use everyday and so we can't just exactly chose to not use them and keep our standard of living. We don't have to use solar power, we can use something else and still live like we do. This is especially true with access to nuclear power, it's as "green" as solar when comparing CO2 output, but far less waste to deal with in the end.

If we take the typical household with a new cellphone, computer, TV, and whatever else they buy in 25 years the pile of e-waste is likely pretty small, especially if the plastic, glass, and metal is removed and recycled. If you add to that a rooftop covered with solar panels then that is quite a pile, and a much larger portion of that pile is the difficult to recycle PV cells.

I will agree that the existing e-waste problem does need to be dealt with at some point. For now we can landfill it, ship it off to Ongo-Bongo, or whatever. It's quite possible we can do that indefinitely because we have a lot of places to pile up this junk and dig up new raw materials for new iDevices and TV sets. if we try to replace coal with solar instead of nuclear then this will become a problem very quickly unless we solve this problem of recycling it. Until we solve that problem we should develop nuclear power, and do so soon.

Wind is also an acceptable solution but it also has it's own recycling problems. The problem is less of hazardous materials but just mass. Each windmill has a large concrete anchor in the ground to keep it from blowing over and recycling concrete is not trivial either. Wind takes ten times the mass of concrete than nuclear with current technology to produce the same power. We can reduce the mass of concrete needed for nuclear with fourth generation nuclear but we don't have an equally simple solution to holding up a windmill.

Re:This is the more general problem of e-waste

[Applehu Akbar]

If we can solve the problem of separating metals in e-waste, that not only opens up a whole new range of industrial processes, such as more efficient mining, but gets us closer to being able to separate metals efficiently on the isotopic level, which would mean the end of the nuclear waste problem.

Re:This is the more general problem of e-waste

[dbIII]

There are plenty of ways but processing doesn't come for free. A lot of the really useful stuff has high melting points and/or is very strongly chemically bound to something else.
However, as for the stuff mentioned in the undergrad study splashed all over the net, it's usually dopants in silicon so in such tiny traces that it would be very difficult to recover even if you melt the silicon and fairly difficult to remove chemically.
The question that should be asked when tiny traces of things that are very tightly bound in and chemically stable are being suggested as pollutants is how the hell are they going to get out? If it's that easy to leach them out then recycling would be cheap.

Re:This is the more general problem of e-waste

[RespekMyAthorati]

If I were to have solar panels on my roof and tore them off and put them on a pile and then took all my electronics and put that on a pile the solar panel pile would be much larger.

That's because the solar panels are 95% glass. Plain old insert silcon dioxide.

Carefully chosen verb "claims"

[mi]

Study Claims Discarded Solar Panels Create More Toxic Waste Than Nuclear Plants

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?

Re:Carefully chosen verb "claims"

[RespekMyAthorati]

"Claims" is 100% correct.

Re:Carefully chosen verb "claims"

[mi]

So is "Suggests" and "Says".

It's a load of rubbish.

[SuricouRaven]

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.

Re:It's a load of rubbish.

[gweihir]

Nuclear is "clean"? Apparently you are completely unaware that one reliably way to improve on "toxic" is "toxic and radioactive".

Re:It's a load of rubbish.

[SuricouRaven]

Consider the quantity, though. Nuclear produces some really nasty waste, but the volume produced is very small in relation to the energy production. Small enough that 'just bury it' is a viable disposal option, at least once the political problems are finally resolved.

I also just noticed I called them pro-solar, when I intended to say pro-nuclear. They are actually very anti-solar. Along with anti-wind, anti-oil, anti-coal. I've not looked through their whole site, but I imagine there is some anti-hydro in there too.

Re:It's a load of rubbish.

[gweihir]

I am very well aware of the quantities, but you are not.

E waste from Nuclear plants?

[dprimary]

Did they account for all the waste from nuclear plants. They have a awful lot of control systems and plumbing systems. Many moving parts.

Re:Then I guess

[Anne Thwacks]

In other research, a ton of lead is heavier than an ounce of feathers.

However, this research was not funded by "persons of dubious character".

But all bitcoins are welcome.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Aighearach]

Lol really, different things are different?! IC chips containing precious metals can't possibly be different than solar panels. Surely they would just burn anything that says "e-waste" on it, and huff the fumes hoping precious metals will fall from the sky? No?

These guys are just another front group

[hyades1]

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.

Re:These guys are just another front group

[Verdatum]

I wish they didn't feel the need to be so deceptive. If you're organization was created to promote nuclear, just say so. It's like they specifically designed themselves to immediately set off the bullshit detector for even slightly skeptical people so their stuff would only spread among people who take "studies" at face-value. Their arguments, their name, their background-info pages, the website styling, it's all disengenuine. And it's weird to need to act that way when there are indeed lots of good arguments for nuclear acting in tandem with solar and other clean energy sources. It's like it's aimed at people who aren't clever enough to research and see why modern nuclear is safe; they're targeting people who are silly enough to think that solar will solve all our problems so it's OK to keep fighting against that plant they want in my backyard.

Re: And this is why Republicans...

[blindseer]

Rooftop solar is not a typical backup solution, but it can be. Rooftop solar and a battery pack, which is what the GPP said he had, is a backup solution. This is is fact what Tesla has been selling with their PowerWall systems, something that can keep the lights on in a power outage. Pair that PowerWall with solar and it can keep a person with lights and such indefinitely. It's not quite an off grid system yet since the costs would be prohibitive to be large enough to run air conditioners and large appliances.

Re: And this is why Republicans...

[WindBourne]

Not really. If you have battery storage, you are allowed to connect multiple circuits to it bypassing the grid switch.

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:Unmitigated bullshit

[mysidia]

Solar panels don't contain lead.

However, lead and other toxic heavy metals may be necessary to be released during the overall production processes used to create the solar panels, so the production process can be said to include or contain these waste materials.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[Baloroth]

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.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[ChrisMaple]

The common solar cells don't use lead, but if the wiring connecting the cells uses lead-tin solder, the solar panel contains lead.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[Frank Burly]

However, that is not what TFA asserts.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[DanielRavenNest]

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.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[Khyber]

"Solar panels don't contain lead."

The ones made in the 80s used lead solder at their electrical connections.

"Likewise, solar panels don't contain chromium "

Flexible perovskite solar cells most certainly contain a layer of chromium oxide.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[davecb]

The polite term for this, as used by academic philosophers, is "the lie direct"

--dave
[and yes, I was hired and emploed by Sun Microsytems as a a philosopher and logician]

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

However, lead and other toxic heavy metals may be necessary to be released during the overall production processes used to create the solar panels
Erm ... no?
Why would you use/need lead in a process producing silicon PV cells?
And if you would need/use lead, why would you 'release' it?

so the production process can be said to include or contain these waste materials.
Erm, no?

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

That are not the cells the article is about, and I'm not aware that Perov cells escaped the research labs meanwhile.
On the other hand: those cells include so much lead that you would be an idiot if you would not recycle them (even with the abundance of lead, it is still a valuable metal)

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[ShanghaiBill]

The "study" is intentionally misleading. It is designed to push an agenda. They only look at nukes during normal operation. Yet almost all human exposure to radiation has occurred during accidents, like Chernobyl and Fukushima. Yet they just handwave that away.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[ShanghaiBill]

The common solar cells don't use lead, but if the wiring connecting the cells uses lead-tin solder, the solar panel contains lead.

PbSn solder is very restricted in the EU, and it is unlikely that a solar panel manufacturer would get a waiver to use it. PbSn solder is also banned for many purposes in America. I doubt if a solar panel manufacturer would use PbSn solder since it would greatly restrict where the panels can be sold, and there are adequate substitutes available.

Do you have any evidence that any solar panels are currently manufactured with PbSn solder?

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[ShanghaiBill]

The ones made in the 80s used lead solder at their electrical connections.

That is irrelevant to the merits of solar going forward.

Flexible perovskite solar cells most certainly contain a layer of chromium oxide.

Those have not been made in commercial quantities.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[BlueStrat]

Why would you use/need lead in a process producing silicon PV cells?

Solder for internal electrical connections. Of course these days the use of lead-based solder has been reduced significantly in favor of lead-free solder which can contain a mixture of tin, copper, silver, bismuth, indium, zinc, antimony, and traces of other metals. Although less toxic than lead solder, it's far from being a non-toxic or a non-pollutant. Most common lead-free solders also have a higher melting-point than traditional lead-based solder (there are some exceptions for low-melting-point solders, but those aren't generally used in solar panels).

Strat

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[Khyber]

"That is irrelevant to the merits of solar going forward."

No, it isn't, when flexible perovskite solar cells are coming around and they're based from methylammonium lead iodide.

"Those have not been made in commercial quantities."

They just hit 22% efficiency last year compared to 3% back in 2009. They'll be out VERY soon.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[angel'o'sphere]

That is not "process", that is the end product. I understood the parent meant "process" as in making silicon pure and doting it later and making the "wafers".

Not sure how much soldering they do in our times. I assumed they simply have a copper alloy evaporated on the surface.

Anyway, as panels will get recycled the solder tin (funny that we say tin in german, but as you are right, we used to use lead, too) will be recycled, too. Probably only as a block of metal.

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[BlueStrat]

I assumed they simply have a copper alloy evaporated on the surface.

The panels are made of arrays of cell-units which are themselves a number of cells. The cells themselves use a deposited conductor to transfer electricity to the edge where a larger conductor is required to carry the combined current.

You aren't going to put 10s or 100s of watts of power through tiny deposited-metal conductors without letting the magic smoke out. ('Magic smoke' is what actually makes all electronics work. Having it, or allowing it through error, to escape is what causes failures.)

Strat

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[mysidia]

Why would you use/need lead in a process producing silicon PV cells?

Emissions from PV Life Cycles

Check [3] Case 1 Emissions. And: "The high fraction
of direct Pb emission from material processing is related to
solar glass manufacturing, which accounts for about 80% of such Pb emission."

Re:Unmitigated bullshit

[Maury Markowitz]

> Emissions from PV Life Cycles [mit.edu]

From 2007. Since then both the glass and soldier have moved to lead-free formulations. Here is a more recent reference:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=f9gXDQAAQBAJ

But just the fact that we're arguing points like this demonstrates they won. There's probably 100x lead in a typical nuclear plant - which is dozens of years old on average and filled with wiring - than there is in all the solar panels in the world.

Study shows butt-hurt coal miners

[presidenteloco]

Make shit up about solar panels which are stealing their jobs.

Re: those fucking plastic bottles

[LynnwoodRooster]

New Jersey or the Sun? I can understand New Jersey, but what has the Sun ever done to you?

Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[gweihir]

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?

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[atomicalgebra]

Nuclear waste is significantly less dangerous then you are claiming. There is not much of it, and there has never been a single case where it has harmed anyone(waste from nuclear power). France stores all of their waste in a single room the size of a high school gym. The only real dangerous parts of it are the strontium-90 and cesium-137 which both have short half-lives(30 years). The longer-lived isotopes can and should be recycled. We can easily recycle it to produce 1000's of years of power. Nuclear waste is just a metal rod. Basically you would have to eat nuclear waste for it to hurt you. According to James Hansen, the NASA scientist who proved climate change is real, called nuclear power "the only viable path forward on climate change."

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[blindseer]

Plutonium is not a radiation hazard. All the rules and regulations on it's handling is based on the premise it is a militarily valuable substance. Plutonium is regularly handled in a glove box, the heavy gloves and glass protect the body from what little alpha and beta radiation that it produces. There are people living today with plutonium in their bodies, so it's not much of a biological hazard but the glove box is common practice from an abundance of caution.

Polonium, on the other hand, is also an emitter of alpha and beta radiation but it's half life is very short. Depending on the isotope it is from seconds, to days, to years. It's safe in a glove box but if ingested or injected the alpha particles tear apart organs not built to handle it like skin is. This made it a popular means of assassination for a while. It was lethal even in small doses, relatively safe to handle, and would not produce symptoms until hours later. If the assassination attempt was to be aborted then it'd be flushed down a toilet were it would decay harmlessly (for humans anyway) in the sewers and be undetectable days later.

In nuclear waste you have long lived stuff, which is not a hazard beyond other heavy metals like lead, and short lived stuff, which decays away in about 300 years.

I remember reading an article years ago on how some linguists were working on a means to convey the dangers of nuclear waste buried for millennia, and to account for how language might change in that time. I later learned how this was just nonsense. Nuclear waste will be no more of a radiation hazard than common dirt in a few hundreds, or thousands on the top end, years in the ground. It will be contain heavy metals like lead but we have natural deposits of that already.

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[angel'o'sphere]

There are people living today with plutonium in their bodies
Yes, from the nuckear test sides in Nevada etc.
They die a horribble death by leukemia and bonce cancer.

Plutonium is basically the most deadly stuff on the planet, there are only a few more deadly things.

The deadly dose if you get it in your body are basically dust particles, a few micrograms per kg of body weight.

Why you are such an idiot is beyond me. Perhaos you read to many spy stories and take stuff like 'Pollonium can be flushed down the toilett and is then non detectable after a few days" literally? Sorry ... to really write such nonsense you don't had bad teachers in school but you simply are an idiot.

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[dbIII]

His sig is a very handy idiot detector.
His posts on many topics confirm it - one of the people Stalin called "useful idiots" prepared to go all the way for The Party - thus going all the way is blatant lies to push a Party policy of nukes.

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[angel'o'sphere]

Somehow sad ...

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[blindseer]

They die a horribble death by leukemia and bonce cancer.

Not quite.
http://warisboring.com/the-sci...

The one death from cancer was lung cancer, in someone that smoked heavily.

Why you are such an idiot is beyond me. Perhaos you read to many spy stories and take stuff like 'Pollonium can be flushed down the toilett and is then non detectable after a few days" literally? Sorry ... to really write such nonsense you don't had bad teachers in school but you simply are an idiot.

Perhaps "a few days" is a slight exaggeration but it is very difficult to detect, and decays to a common isotope of lead in a short time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Perhaps you could explain how polonium would be detected if flushed down a toilet?

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[gweihir]

Au contraire. Plutonium is the most deadly substance known to man and it is exactly because of its radiation. Sure, you need to breath it in for that, but as long as one gram powdered finely can reliably cause lung-cancer in a mullion people, it is not safe to have lying around.

You are as clueless as you are naive.

Re:Nuclear waste is "carefully monitored" now...

[RespekMyAthorati]

which decays away in about 300 years.

A hell of a lot of shit can go down in 300 years.
Like someone digging it up and using it to make a dirty bomb.

Re:All Electronic Waste

[gweihir]

Indeed. Also, the toxic metals in solar panels are in the silicon, they are no just being washed out by rain or something. This stuff is in fact better contained that most radioactive waste.

I know the study's suspect

[rsilvergun]

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).

freaking weasel

[Yurka]

How is "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials" in any way informative? No one said they were 50%+ cadmium.

Rick Perry plan to make Nuclear Energy Cool again

[OrtCloud]

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.

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.

Ok so let me get this straight

[SCVonSteroids]

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?

Re:Ok so let me get this straight

[SCVonSteroids]

Christ. I read the article and now I feel stupid. It's all bullshit.

Re:Ok so let me get this straight

[AHuxley]

Re 'Like it's something bad and we should just keep mainly sucking up oil."
A lot of generational share holder wealth is trapped in nuclear, oil, gas and grid power. Old money that just expects to keep making a profit.
Solar that feeds back into the grid during the day for cash payments, allows for battery pack to be used or totally removes a paying connection account by going off grid?
Most of that can be stopped and profits sured up by:
Making sure the payments are small for any power thats sold back to the grid. Or some energy credit so the account never gets any cash? Or no credits or cash because government can pass a law in that part of the world or state.
Ensuring the power company always has to be connected to a house that a human can live in.
No grid connection, its not a legal house. Connect the grid and pay for that every year and its legal.

Solar is pushing too much new energy into grid that just expected to sell energy. The accounts have to be paid for that or given some credit. Thats more costs.
As grids get more greedy again to cover costs they have to reverse solar interest in new and creative ways.
Cost is not working as it once was. Getting a big system on the roof and talking points about payback over 10 or 20 years is not preventing people from saying no to solar.
No getting not much money for pushing power into the grid is not slowing solar use.
So the new idea is to make solar look not as attractive for "some" reason.
Anything to save the grid, existing profits, support existing shareholders and grid owners.

Re:Ok so let me get this straight

[RespekMyAthorati]

No grid connection, its not a legal house. Connect the grid and pay for that every year and its legal.

Well, you can always use the grid to power one night light and solar for everything else.

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.

Re:All Electronic Waste

[blindseer]

This is a far cry from a 5000 year half-life.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

There are no fission products with a 5000 year half-life. There are short lived products and long lived products. The short lived stuff will be effectively gone in 300 years, and we know how to build structures (physical and political) to keep such things safe. Long lived products are not considered a radiation hazard, they are still heavy metals so gloves, goggles, and the like are still called for but this is nothing beyond what would be needed to recycle batteries and e-waste.

If done right the production of actinides, which has been a problem with solid fuel reactors, can be eliminated.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

With fourth generation nuclear reactors we can create a sustainable energy infrastructure. After reading some recent news on the USA energy policy from Trump, Pence, and Perry we might just have that soon.

I've talked to the clown who wrote this.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Archtech]

"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization".

Are you Jerry Weinberg? No, I thought not.Otherwise you would have got the quotation right:

"If builders built houses the way programmers write programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy civilization".

You might at least acknowledge Weinberg as the author.

Re: those fucking plastic bottles

[Anonymous Coward]

No, frankly, this is Berkeley, I smell student term paper that got blown up to be a study.

Re:"Can be" recycled, doesn't mean it's easy or ch

[ChrisMaple]

Recycling the materials used to make a solar panel does not imply that the recycled materials will be made into solar panels.

Re: those fucking plastic bottles

[blindseer]

The sun! It burns us! We must destroy it. But how? Let's poison it with nuclear waste. Right, my precious?

Gollum! Gollum!

Nuclear power lobbyist...

[GerryGilmore]

... 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.

slanted nose in the clouds

[epine]

Note that we were doing it in 1945 with what passed for technology at the time....

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.

Re:Then I guess

[blindseer]

The "bad" stuff is made of stuff we dug out of the ground and made into often unstable molecules to make the PV panels. When exposed to UV rays, moisture, and the glass or plastic is damaged (like from hail or an errant baseball) these unstable molecules can leach out. These molecules can leach into the water where it can be a cancer causing agent. Had it been left in the ground like it's been for billions of years, it's in a stable state from natural processes, it can harm no one.

Some PV panels are more likely to create these carcinogenic molecules than others. Those containing lead, cadmium, and arsenic are the most likely to create these compounds when left to the elements.

So, yes, "bad stuff" is created in these PV cells when they do not exist in the ground. This is not debated much, but what is debated is the rate these molecules are produced and leach into where it can harm people. If PV cells are produced in a quantity to where it can replace coal then it will be a problem. Just how much of a problem is something that no one is quite sure of, as far as I know anyway.

You can be snarky about the problem but that does not make it go away.

How Many

[JimSadler]

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.

Re:All Electronic Waste

[blindseer]

That would be true if PV panels were made only of silicon.

Silicon PV is not very efficient, but it is cheap. What is happening though is that other PV materials are getting cheaper and replacing silicon. These other PV systems are made of materials we don't understand as well. There is concern that if left out in the sun (imagine that, solar panels in the sun) the chemicals break down over time into carcinogenic materials that are water soluble. If not disposed of properly, such as just busted up into pieces and tossed in a landfill, the hazardous materials can leach into ground water.

Right now this is not much of a problem given the little use that non-silicon PV solar has now. If expanded at the rate some people claim it will in the near future then 25 years later we will have a very large pile of hazardous waste to deal with.

By comparison nuclear power is a much better known problem that we have a better handle on how to deal with in the future. Now is not the time for solar, but it is the time for more nuclear.

Follow-up study concludes that

[easyTree]

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.

Re: RECYCLING a solar panel wont kill you....

[atomicalgebra]

Recycling a nuclear fuel rod wont kill you.... Also solar will be recycled like ewaste is recycled in China. That does kills people.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[dgatwood]

Everything about this is baffling. What makes them think solar panels contain even trace amounts of plastic apart from the wiring (which you wouldn't replace when you replace the panels)?

AFAIK, all real-world solar panels are basically doped silicon covered with glass. The plastic-coated solar cells are exclusively used in cheap solar calculators and maybe the rolled panels they use on satellites. Plastic-covered panels likely wouldn't survive a year in direct sunlight, and that's not even considering the efficiency losses from rain pock-marking the surface.

This is basically the scientific version of "fake news".

Environmentalists aren't looking good on this one.

[sethstorm]

That, and since it violates leftist & environmentalist orthodoxy, there are smears of "fake" all over.

Perhaps coal isn't too bad after all.

What bollocks is that again?

[angel'o'sphere]

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?

Re:And this is why Republicans...

[blindseer]

Sure, the Republicans are pro-solar.

I'm old enough to remember ALLLLLLL the way back to the 2008 presidential debates. McCain talked about how we should be building nuclear power plants, as in actually building them, as in pouring concrete and stuff. Obama responded with a bunch of happy mouth noises about investigating nuclear energy and funding research or some bullshit. In 2012 the presidential debates were much the same with Obama making comments on loan guarantees for nuclear power and Romney talking about fixing the broken NRC regulations so we can have nuclear reactors go from proposals to breaking ground within 2 years.

Then we have the Obama administration dumping a bunch of federal money on Solyndra and other solar panel makers. That did not turn out so well by the way. Trump made a speech recently about how we should not have an energy policy where we wait for the sun to shine and the wind to blow.

The first new nuclear power plant built in the USA in forty years is in Republican controlled Georgia. At the same time you have Democrat controlled California passing all kinds of laws to get rid of nuclear and subsidize solar. The legal protections to solar power in California is so strong that we have neighbors ordering neighbors to cut down trees because they are shading their solar panels. Right, lets kill the plant life for our precious solar panels.

If you look at the Republican and Democrat party platform documents and search for things like "solar" and "nuclear" you will see just how much each party loves each. The word "nuclear" appears just once (last I checked) in the DNC platform and that is in reference to weapon proliferation. Republicans love their nuclear, it appears several times in their platform document.

It's the Democrats pushing solar. I don't think that they hate the planet. I just think that they hate Republicans, and if Republicans hate solar they they are just going to love them to (our) death.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Aighearach]

A couple points:

1) Glass solar panels use EVA plastic film for the lamination, and over the back for encapsulation. If they're using something more expensive, it is a plastic resin of some sort. The silicon cells are very very fragile, you have to have encapsulation, and that means plastic.

2) The plastic film is UV resistant and that is what they would use to protect the cell even if they weren't already using it in the lamination.

The one thing they do have is lots of chrome wire. Chrome is bad, don't eat that. Do not under any circumstances grind the chrome into a fine powder and snort it. Do not heat it over 3000F. If you want to melt the glass down, heat it to 300F and separate the cells from the glass before melting. Easy. But don't breath the dust from broken cells either.

Wow - undergrad social science study on Slashdot!

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Oh if only someone could have anticipated this

[Crashmarik]

The technology uses toxic materials by the boatload. Nothing leaves the environment unless it's shot into space.

So you ignore the conservation laws, basic common sense, handwave away the article with ad hominem.

Be willing to bet you think you are open minded and rational as well.

more

[dbIII]

the end of the nuclear waste problem

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.

Slashdot: Religion for nerds

[Texmaize]

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

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[dgatwood]

Okay, my bad. The commercial variety apparently do use plastic for the backs (and a plastic-based bonding agent, but then again, so does most window glass these days; that's kind of lost in the noise).

Either way, the comparison to wires is silly, because it would take as much effort to burn off the plastic back as to heat and separate it intact.

This was a nuclear industry hatchet piece

[Izaak]

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.

Re:This was a nuclear industry hatchet piece

[Maury Markowitz]

> . I can spot several major flaws

Uhh, but you missed the main one. They are comparing the amount of fuel waste from nuclear with the amount of construction waste from solar.

If one compares fuel waste from both, then solar is infinity times "better" than nuclear.

If one compares construction materials from both, then solar is about twice "as good" as nuclear.

If one compares the later assuming recycling, solar is at least six times better, perhaps as much as twenty times better.

And this all assumes that anyone gives a crap about this as a metric, considering we throw away something like 1000 times either amount in water bottles every year.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Aighearach]

The layer that bonds the cells to the glass should be EVA and should melt under 300F. Usually that will get all the layers apart. The only real exception is if the whole inside is potted with resin, which is mostly in the small portable panels.

Re:Oh if only someone could have anticipated this

[religionofpeas]

The technology uses toxic materials by the boatload. Nothing leaves the environment unless it's shot into space.

They only use a small amount of toxic materials, relative to total weight of the panels. And the worst of the materials, cadmium, is tightly bound to tellurium, making it less toxic than the ore that we originally got it from. Also, the tellurium is very valuable, so there's a big incentive to recycle it.

So you ignore the conservation laws, basic common sense, handwave away the article with ad hominem.

No, I just read the article, and saw it was bullshit.

Re:Oh if only someone could have anticipated this

[Crashmarik]

They only use a small amount of toxic materials,

Yeah and the nuclear power people can't say exactly the same thing. CO2 is completely non toxi

No, I just read the article, and saw it was bullshit.

Pics or it didn't happen or at the very least citing problematic parts of the report not the article.

Semantics are important...

[Timothy2.0]

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.

Re:Semantics are important...

[Maury Markowitz]

> Just because the materials *can* be successfully recovered and reused doesn't mean those
> materials *are* being successfully recovered and reused.

Indeed, but had you spend 15 seconds or so in Google you would notice there are multiple programs all over the world doing just that, and in Europe, you already pay for their disposal when you buy them.

Surely it would have taken you less time to Google the facts than write this dumb post.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[rgbatduke]

Hey. don't pick on Duke Energy. NC is something like second or third in the nation in terms of total solar installation, and Duke Power is installing them pretty much everywhere. It is getting difficult to drive a hundred miles on major roads without seeing at least one solar farm off to the side of the road.

You are mistaken if you think that solar energy somehow costs the big electrical power companies profits. Quite the contrary, quite the contrary. PRIVATE solar rooftops might one day cost them profits, but solar that they install themselves makes them money. It is cheaper and easier to finance incremental installations of solar than it is to permission, finance, and build pretty much anything else.

What do with solar panels?

[leslie.satenstein]

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.

Not exactly an unbiased study..

[LesserWeevil]

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..

Re:Environmentalists aren't looking good on this o

[RespekMyAthorati]

Perhaps coal isn't too bad after all.

Only to a shithead like you.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[postbigbang]

I note your duke.edu address.

And I'm talking about private and commercial, but not Duke OWNED installations.

My comments still stand. Lots of money has been poised towards state legislatures to cripple solar money. The propaganda piece cited is just more disinformation and scare tactics, as opposed to cogent research, IMHO.

Not again!

[Maury Markowitz]

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/

Re:All Electronic Waste

[Maury Markowitz]

> With fourth generation nuclear reactors we can create a sustainable energy infrastructure

Nope.

If you break down the CAPEX on a nuclear plant, using a baseline modern design like CANDU6 or ARV, you'll see that about 2/3rds of the total price are in the non-nuclear section. That's the boiler, primary cooling loop, secondary loop, tertiary loop (or dump), turbines, generators, substations, transformers, switchyard, buildings, etc. Those parts are basically identical in 4th gen designs. In fact, they are rather similar to a coal plant, with the exception that there's no radioactivity in the first loop so the overall cost is a lot lower.

Anyhow, the cost of just those non-nuclear portions are about two to three times the price of a natural gas plant that produces the same amount of energy.

So in other words, in order for nuclear to compete with gas, the reactor has to cost negative billions of dollars.

I don't care how advanced you think the 4th gen might be, it will not cost negative dollars.

As it seems you are also pushing the LFTR, I should point out there are dozens of reports on these designs spanning from the 1970s into the 2000s that all show they would be more expensive to build and operate than conventional designs.

Here is one recent example:

http://franke.uchicago.edu/bigproblems/BPRO29000-2014/Team10-EnergyFinalPaper.pdf

Let me quote the conclusion:

          Although substation cost-savings are associated with the building of a LFTR in comparison to a traditional uranium plant, the difference in cost, given the current industry environment, remains insufficient to justify the creation of a new LFTR. Thus, it may be cost and time efficient to focus on continuing to improve operational efficiency of the existing nuclear power plants instead.

There are lots of "reports" from the supporters that claim otherwise, but they're basically just overnight costs. And most of them are utterly bogus. The MIT study is the best example; they claim LFTRs will cost half as much as conventional designs. What's most interesting about that statement is that in order to make it cost half as much, it would have to cost negative dollars - due to the infrastructure noted above. And they say most of that savings will be due to the LFTR opperating at low/atmospheric pressure, in spite of the fact that there are many commeecial reactors that do that today, including the CANDUs up the street from me, and they cost more than conventional designs.

This sort of wishful thinking and utterly bogus reporting continues to infest the entire nuclear arena, but no more so than the LFTR "group". While the higher costs have been repeatedly pointed out (even when presented *to their face*, which I have seen), supporters continue claim the reason no one uses them is a vast global conspiracy to do with weapons research. One again has to point out the example of Canada, which doesn't use them in spite of not having a nuclear weapons program and having large supplies of thorium. Or Germany, or Belguim, or lots of places.

Nice civility you have there.

[sethstorm]

Instead of trying to attack the author, what do you have to say against the message?

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[Verdatum]

We have very little evidence that PET plastic used in bottles releases chemicals that have a significant impact on life processes. It isn't entirely impossible that it poses a threat, but we have nothing identifiable. And not in the "We can't prove that smoking causes cancer" manner exploiting the fact that those type of studies are difficult, in the we don't even have so much as anectodal evidence that it's a major problem. The great pacific garbage patch is teaming with life and it seems to be doing perfectly well. Some animals do ingest plastic fragments, and in some species, that does build up. This can cause digestive problems, and they can be fatal. Other products like fishing-line and netting tend to cause serious problems, not bottles, but it's not pandemic. Life appears to be able to adapt. The few that die are the weak, the old, and the unlucky. It's effect is on the order of a new predator; it's the sort of thing that ecology can adapt for. If eating plastic was a major issue, then in enough generations, species will adapt to differentiate the stuff. By all means, recycle your bottles, and if that isn't offered, put them in trash bins so that they go to a proper controlled landfill. It's a thing to be concerned about, but it's not a major looming threat. Then again, neither are modern solar-panels. And nuclear waste is mostly a political problem caused by lack of education on how nuclear waste actually works.

Re:Oh if only someone could have anticipated this

[Verdatum]

The problem with the report is not the information in it; it is the framing of data. It's comparing apples to oranges. The "300 times" figure is a measurement of kilograms of waste per terawatt/hour. But the nuclear waste is a much more expensive problem then the solar waste, which is mostly silicon, plastic, glass and concrete. The "study" is done by an organization set out to promote nuclear power. It mentions lead, cadmium and chromium, but doesn't mention how much. Lead is only used in the solder; it's perfectly possible to use lead-free solder. Chromium and cadmium are present in 150nm thick layers. And the cadmium is a by product of the zinc industry, so the chemical must be processed in one way or another; might as well store it in solar panels for a decade or two. There's more cadmium in a Van Gogh painting of sunflowers than there is in a entire solar farm. And only about half of the PV cells out there even use cadmium technology. Meanwhile, nuclear waste is a problem that doesn't currently even have a permanent storage solution. And if/when we finally do get a solution, it will need to be guarded for centuries. These comments mention "recycling", but that's not yet viable on an industrial scale.

The report is from an entity with the goal of promoting nuclear. That's not an ad-hominem attack, that's pointing out a strong potential for being inobjective and having bias. The sort of bias that could cause deceptive cherrypicking of information reported. This is not a peer-reviewed scientific publication. It is an advocacy group that is promoting an agenda. And I say that even though I largely agree with the agenda. We should increase the use of nuclear-power worldwide, but the way to accomplish that is not by scaring people into thinking that solar is bad when it isn't.

Completely Unmitigated bullshit

[Geoffrey.landis]

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.

Re:Completely Unmitigated bullshit

[Khyber]

"Right now, their very high humidity sensitivity makes them not commercializable"

Gee, perhaps if we encase this material in something impervious to water. Hmm, I wonder how they do it with humidity-sensitive Gallium-Arsenide cells.. Oh, they cover the damned thing with plastic or glass.

Re:those fucking plastic bottles

[rgbatduke]

Yeah, but I'm a physicist and am not affiliated in any way with Duke Power. I'm just stating facts -- indeed, here is a piece of DP information:

https://www.duke-energy.com/ou...

700 large scale solar facilities around the state. What they are doing in other states I do not know, but in NC they are literally building new ones all the time. Note this:

http://www.seia.org/research-r...

NC is indeed number two in the national rankings in installed capacity as of last year, behind California and (perhaps surprisingly) ahead of near-desert states like Arizona, and most of this is Duke Power.

I reiterate: The Koch brothers have a specific agenda that is (as far as one can tell) the active suppression of democracy and the establishment, no, that's not fair as it's already there, the rapid growth in the power of an oligarchy. The energy companies in general, however, don't give a rat's ass what is the source of the energy they collect or release and redistribute, as long as they make a good profit from it. Solar is profitable, and about to become the most profitable, by far. So it doesn't matter what one does to "free up coal" or reverse carbon restrictions. Nobody is going back to (substantial new capacity in) coal in the US, although it may be decades before the grid can function without it.