Slashdot Mirror
Study Claims Discarded Solar Panels Create More Toxic Waste Than Nuclear Plants (nationalreview.com)
Templer421 shares an article from National Review:
A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants. Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium, are piling up around the world, and there's been little done to mitigate their potential danger to the environment. "We talk a lot about the dangers of nuclear waste, but that waste is carefully monitored, regulated, and disposed of," says Michael Shellenberger, founder of Environmental Progress, a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy. "But we had no idea there would be so many panels -- an enormous amount -- that could cause this much ecological damage." Solar panels are considered a form of toxic, hazardous electronic or "e-waste," and according to EP researchers Jemin Desai and Mark Nelson, scavengers in developing countries like India and China often "burn the e-waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled."
A spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association argues that the study is incorrect, and that in fact solar panels are "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life."
A spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association argues that the study is incorrect, and that in fact solar panels are "mainly made up of easy-to-recycle materials that can be successfully recovered and reused at the end of their useful life."
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.
... stopped at:
... a nonprofit that advocates for the use of nuclear energy ...
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
The "300 times more toxic waste than nuclear power" requires considering one kilogram of solar panel as being toxic waste equivalent to one kilogram of spent reactor fuel. This is a preposterous comparison.
Furthermore it treats all solar panels as being as being the same source of hazard. Cadmium telluride panels are a special concern for disposal, but they are 2.5% of the global market and only used in special situations, whereas 95% of production is silicon panel and not toxic at all.
The disposal of solar panels is a valid concern that must be addressed, like the disposal of all electronics, and solid waste generally, but this framing is wildly deceptive.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
While solar panels do pollute a little if not properly disposed of, as far as I know, lead, cadmium and chromium are all pretty easy to recover by melting down the panels. If you are stupid enough to burn plastic, you get what you get, but as a kid we burned plastic from time to time and we didn't suffer any ill effects.
The problem with these articles is they assume the worst case for the disposal of panels while assuming the best case for nuclear waste. It is relatively trivial to recycle lead, cadmium and chromium into new solar panels, and they require no more than respirators and proper gloves and ventilation/filtration to work with, whereas spent nuclear fuel is quite difficult and dangerous to work with and there is no real east way to recycle spent nuclear waste. Alternatively, you could bury the worlds entire supply of solar panels in a landfill and it would be pretty harmless, assuming the landfill was modern and properly lined and isolated from the ground water (the lead, cadmium and other heavy metals are usually laminated between layers of glass, so even breaking the panels only exposes a small fraction of the total heavy metal content).
As first world societies, if we are really concerned for the environment, we should slap a recycle fee onto every panel sold and then require that they be recycled in a first world country with felony prison time for exporting un-recycled e-waste to the third world (we already do this more or less for many other things that need to be recycled).
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
Read it. Makes lots of really bad assumptions, all designed to push a specific political agenda.
1) Assumes they have a really short lifespan. Basically they are using manufacturer's estimated lifespan of 25 years, when in truth, these things do not stop working. No moving parts, hermetically sealed so no water, insects, or even air gets in, low electrical voltage. The most common cause of destruction is something hitting them - lightning bolts, hail, baseballs. They can theoretically last for centuries, not 25 years. NASA's Voyagers 1 and 2 are both going strong after 37 years exposure to micrometeorites in space.
2) When they do stop working, it assumes they will be recycled, rather than land filled (not a guarantee), and that they will be recycled in the cheapest, most environmentally horrible method - burning. Yes, that is the most common method for ewaste, but we are more likely to bury than to recycle them
3) They compared it with nuclear rather than coal or petroleum. Nuclear creates a SMALL amount of toxic waste that people are unreasonably scared of, while coal and petroleum create massive amounts of toxic waste that people ignore.
Don't sell me bullshit and expect me to eat it.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
You seem very eager to believe a bullshit article.
Try Recyling Nuclear waste. The stupid article simply says 300 times as much toxic waste as a nuclear power energy unit. In what units? volume, molarity, mass, rads, toxicity, ease of neutralization?
the article is Right wing rubbish.
No it's not like there isn't a grain for truth to be gleaned here but such glib quantifications are . give away that this article itself is utter crap
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
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.
Dear Diary...today I was pompous and my sister was crazy.
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.
Did they account for all the waste from nuclear plants. They have a awful lot of control systems and plumbing systems. Many moving parts.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
I hate to say it, but this is (1) not a "study"-- it's an opinion article, and
(2) the opinion expressed is unmitigated bullshit.
From the purported "study": "Solar panels contain toxic metals like lead, which can damage the nervous system, as well as chromium and cadmium, known carcinogens.
Notice that weasel word--materials "like" lead. Solar panels don't contain lead. Period. But the "study" didn't actually say they contained lead, did it? It said they contain materials "like" lead. What does that actually mean? Uh, I don't think it actually means anything whatsoever.
Likewise, solar panels don't contain chromium (you'd think this guy would go after cars, wouldn't he? They actually do use chromium.). And, while one type of panel does use cadmium (albeit in micron thicknesses)-- the vast majority of low cost solar panels sold are silicon solar cells, which do not contain cadmium.
Overall conclusion: this is not a "study," this is bullshit, pure and simple,
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
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.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
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.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
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 ?
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 am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
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".
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
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".
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
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.
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.