Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, Leaving Behind Toxic Trash (wired.com) 270
"Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power that will play an essential role in fighting climate change. They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste at the end of their lives — and right now, most of the world doesn't have a plan for dealing with that," reports Wired. (Alternate URL here.)
But we'll need to develop one soon, because the solar e-waste glut is coming. By 2050, the International Renewable Energy Agency projects that up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and that the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually. While the latter number is a small fraction of the total e-waste humanity produces each year, standard electronics recycling methods don't cut it for solar panels. Recovering the most valuable materials from one, including silver and silicon, requires bespoke recycling solutions. And if we fail to develop those solutions along with policies that support their widespread adoption, we already know what will happen.
"If we don't mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill," said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao, who recently authored a review paper on recycling silicon solar panels, which comprise 95 percent of the solar market... And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.
"If we don't mandate recycling, many of the modules will go to landfill," said Arizona State University solar researcher Meng Tao, who recently authored a review paper on recycling silicon solar panels, which comprise 95 percent of the solar market... And because solar panels contain toxic materials like lead that can leach out as they break down, landfilling also creates new environmental hazards.
Landfill technology (Score:4, Insightful)
This is not about solar panels.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is not about solar panels.. (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, to be fair, in Europe we shipped our not-trivial-to-recycle material to south east Asia where they will "recycle" it in a more cost-effective manner.
Until even they said "enough" and refused to take it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This is not about solar panels.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:This is not about solar panels.. (Score:5, Insightful)
In a lot of cases it's better for the environment to incinerate garbage, especially if it's replacing a dirty power source like coal but even without that if the garbage would have to be shipped a long distance there are significant environmental improvements by incinerating it.
Re:This is not about solar panels.. (Score:5, Interesting)
>"This is about Americans still doing land fill and not handling lead as a hazardous material."
???? Lead is the most recycled material in the USA. 85% of lead is used in batteries and almost 100% of that is recycled. And 100% of all lead produced in the USA is from recycled sources. I am not sure how much of the remaining 15% is recycled, but a lot of it is target ammo, of which the overwhelming vast majority is left at ranges and almost all of that is collected and also recycled.
So let's not pretend "the Americans" are dumping lead all over the place as if it is not hazardous. How you got modded up is a mystery.
>Come and see what we do in Europe
[eye roll]
Re:This is not about solar panels.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Farming kudos by blaming America for stuff is not mysterious.
On the contrary: on Slashdot, saying anything that could be construed as even slightly anti-USA is a reliable way of being modded "Troll".
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"Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power"
"They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste"
"By 2050 . . . . up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually"
So, the truth is, solar power isn't actually all that "renewable". It's great to get all that free, unlimited power from the sun, but, it turns out that solar power isn't actually any different than all those other "dirty" forms of energy creation.
There is no free lunch.
Re: Landfill technology (Score:4, Informative)
Re: Landfill technology (Score:2)
Re: Landfill technology (Score:3)
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Re: Landfill technology (Score:4, Interesting)
We would need to tack on the environmental damage from all the mining, transportation, and dumping/storage of coal waste to make it Apples to Apples. No I won't bring in the mining of rare metals for solar because that is basically a one time effort for a panel where as it's an ongoing operation for a coal plant.
If you want those in, you would need to bring in both facilities' construction & maintenance costs/impact and add the mining for panels there. I would think the ongoing pollution output would lean in favor of solar mfg.
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It would be interesting, perhaps, to see what kind of recycling fee needs to be tacked on to solar panel sales to capture the total lifetime cost, much like the carbon taxes that are being added to fossil fuels. Then we could see an apples-to-apples comparison for solar to fossil fuels. TANSTAAFL, indeed.
Just as soon as we attach total cost to coal and nuclear, then apples to apples it up brother.
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There are no rare earths in standard silicon solar panels. Thats FUD propagated by fossil fuel interests.
The main ingredients in a solar panel are aluminum (frame), glass (front cover), plastic (back cover sometimes glass), silicon (the cells), and copper (wiring). Small amounts of silver and solder are used. Nearly all of that is recyclable.
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"Solar panels are an increasingly important source of renewable power"
"They are also complex pieces of technology that become big, bulky sheets of electronic waste"
"By 2050 . . . . up to 78 million metric tons of solar panels will have reached the end of their life, and the world will be generating about 6 million metric tons of new solar e-waste annually"
So, the truth is, solar power isn't actually all that "renewable". It's great to get all that free, unlimited power from the sun, but, it turns out that solar power isn't actually any different than all those other "dirty" forms of energy creation.
There is no free lunch.
Anonymous indeed. We need massive recycling plants at least 4 or 5 to start. They get free material, a tax break, and they can then sell the recycled material competitively. There are no problems, only solutions.
Re:Landfill technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Landfill technology (Score:5, Informative)
The unburned waste from coal power plants is called "fly ash" and is very high in heavy metals (chiefly lead and mercury but also some radioactive isotopes of e.g uranium). Presently, fly ash is stored in big ponds or mixed into concrete and roadbase or other relatively inert fillers.
Dams full of coal plant waste can and have burst, with disastrous consequences, e.g https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Used solar panels can be (and are) recycled, e.g this project in france: https://www.veolia.com/en/news... [veolia.com]
To summarize, all forms of power generation have waste. Used solar panels can be recycled into useful new products. The "best" thing we can do with the waste from coal plants is "lock it up in some other structure or bury it" and hope that it never gets released. You really don't want heavy metals getting into your groundwater or food supply.
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Haven't we figured out how to make safe landfills yet? I feel like this is something we should be able to do.
The "safe landfill" is the one that doesn't exist. What goes into a landfill that cannot be recycled or composted?
Ok now take that list and figure it out, what the fuck. We are talking about free material here people. (don't bore me with technical limitations, they are problems that have yet to be solved - get to work)
Re: Landfill technology (Score:3)
Why is this modded flamebait? It's a perfectly reasonable question. The answer is yes, we absolutely know how to make safe landfills, lining them with clay etc and doing selective sorting beforehand to recycle metals and certain plastics. As always, the problem is not technology and human ingenuity, it's political will and money.
Re: Landfill technology (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Landfill technology (Score:5, Insightful)
Landfills are safe enough and solar panels are a minuscule portion of what goes into them.
TFA, and other FAs like it, are fossil fuel industry FUD.
Yes, photovoltaic panels produce pollution, but the alternative of burning coal is a thousand times worse.
Instead of publishing this garbage, why isn't Wired publishing articles about smokestack emissions, strip mining, and coal mine tailings?
Re: Landfill technology (Score:3, Funny)
"Coal is the alternative" is also solar industry FUD. There are plenty of clean energy sources that don't have the same EOL problem as solar and don't depend on so many hard to mine resources.
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The "lead in solar panels" is from solder (when non-lead-free solder is used, which is quite the assumption, esp. since lead-free solder is increasingly common in the industry). Can someone explain to me why we are supposed to care about lead in solder only in the context of solar panels? It's like 1/20th of 1% of global lead consumption.
Re: Landfill technology (Score:3)
Itâ(TM)s not just lead. Itâ(TM)s also other much nastier heavy metals, including cadmium, which is part of every known oncogenic pathway. Chinaâ(TM)s predatory pricing has let them grab most of the worldâ(TM)s PV panel market and drive the quality producers (Schott in Germany, etc.) out of business, even though even the Chinese âoeTier 1â vendorsâ(TM) panel lifespans are much shorter than the Western manufacturers.
Cheap Tier 2/3 panels often literally fall apart (delamina
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Not enough profit to make it a thing... Some day... Soon... Maybe...
Exactly. We could recycle solar panels right now; there are no technological barriers to doing so. You basically try to mechanically separate as much of the glass as you can, then melt the rest down so you can separate the various metals by density and reuse them. This isn't done much yet because there are not enough failing solar panels to make it worth doing. It's the same reason we don't have any lithium ion car battery recycling plants, etc.
Building the plants now would be a stupid waste of money, b
Anyone else? (Score:5, Funny)
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No. Get some new glasses.
Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:3)
Only way to be safe!
Katsch!
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The main difference is probably that it's easier to contain the solar trash than it is with the nuclear waste.
Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:4, Insightful)
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I don't understand this, people can't harp on and on about how apocalyptic climate change and how we need to do anything we can to stop it then turn their nose up at the only scalable real solution. Does nuclear have problems. Absolutely but it is pound for pound far safer than any of the major powers sources we are using now, especially if we're not incompetents who use flawed outdated designs like in chernobyl or fukshima. Compared to the apocalypse people keep predicting it could be 100x more dangerous with 100x more meltdowns and it would still be worth it to avert the catastrophe people keep saying is around the corner. I, mean they do really believe this right? With thorium technology nuclear is even safer with far less waste that lasts orders of magnitude less. Its like screaming that your boat is sinking and refusing to get on a bigger better equipped lifeboat because the food isn't organic.
That and , I believe there are uses for spent nuclear waste that we are not utilizing. It's all sitting in pools right on the site where it was spent, and the pools are often times beyond intended capacity. Again this is not a problem this is a solution that has yet to be found - Work on it boys.
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Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:4, Informative)
No Sloshdat energy thread can run without the old Thorium Myth. A Thorium reactor *is* a Uranium reactor and it is not really any better or worse than any other Uranium reactor.
It doesn't breed Plutonium. That's the advantage. This allows for the entire fuel load to be consumed. The other part that comes along for the ride is the MSRs. When you combine the two techniques you get a very safe reactor that whose "waste" is quite valuable and is only radioactive for 300 years (which is manageable). It solves many of the fuel reprocessing issues caused by Carter's fear of Pu being harvested from spent fuel (which is actually pretty impractical). But do go on and inform the rest of us as to the exact level of your ignorance about nuclear technology.
Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:5, Interesting)
The main difference is those solar panels contain all the refined materials you need to make solar panels. So you chuck them all in a big pile and let a huge mine and refine machine turn that pile of combined elements back into the raw resources you want. Basically that pile of panels represents the best possible mining resources, a whole lot of crap missing, that you would normally need to eliminate in mining and refining, already gone. So less refining is required.
Just need a big enough pile to start with to make that large scale industrial process happen, not people pulling it apart. Machines shredding it, separating out the results, running each pile of material through separate refining processes, to get back the material you want, very large industrial scale centrifuges probably would work on the metals, plastics and stuff would need to be carbon captured at the exhaust, what ever refining needs to happen.
Don't treat it like recyclables (lots and lots of labour), treat it like a mining resource, an industrial scale project but you would need a very large stockpile of panels ready to crush, maybe only four to cover the entire US, maybe just one or two. Then sell the raw materials back to industry, the energy cost would be the big thing, so renewables.
Don't recycle, mine and refine, you can process a whole lot more, a whole lot faster.
Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds so very easy. You should start a company to do that. You'll make millions.
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It is actually that easy, and it is actually done that way.
The article is just hyperbole.
Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:4, Informative)
It is actually that easy, and it is actually done that way. The article is just hyperbole.
I would be if energy was cheap enough to make it cheaper to recycle than to mine new. However, energy is expensive (partly due to those solar panels) and so recycling isn't done. Only Aluminium can be recycled more cheaply than if it is mined and that's only because refining raw ore is very energy intensive. Also, solar panels are much more complex to recycle than some other things due to the number of different metals present in their construction which would require a lot of heat to separate. No this article isn't hyperbole and unless either some very energy efficient way to recycle the panels or energy gets very cheap then these panels won't be recycled and will sit around in a landfill somewhere leach heavy metals into the groundwater.
Re:Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:5, Interesting)
> I would be if energy was cheap enough to make it cheaper to recycle than to mine new.
Absolutely false.
https://www.greenlivingtips.com/articles/recycling-energy-savings.html
Energy savings from recycling vs. making new:
Aluminium – 95%
Copper – 85%
Lead – 60%
Steel – 62 – 74%
Zinc – 60%
That's just metals, the same is true for glass and some plastics as well.
> However, energy is expensive
I don't know where you live, but here in Canada, in inflation adjusted terms, energy is the cheapest it has ever been. Some upward movement in electricity (vs. inflation rate) has been offset by lowered prices in natural gas.
> partly due to those solar panels
Solar panels have been among the cheapest forms of energy in all of recorded history, and in the last five to seven years depending on where you are, among the cheapest form of electricity in history. This is from November 2019:
https://www.lazard.com/perspective/lcoe2019
As you can see in the included chart, wind and solar are much less expensive than coal or nuclear, and the only thing that comes close is natural gas.
> Only Aluminium can be recycled more cheaply than if it is mined
As noted above, this statement is absolutely incorrect.
> Also, solar panels are much more complex to recycle than some other things due to the number of different metals present in their construction
I've hauled thousands of panels around. Of the normal 25 kg panel, at least 20 kg is glass, either in the front panel or the cells themselves (which are basically fancy glass). About 4 kg is aluminum in the frame. The rest is a combination of silver in the front-cell wiring, copper in the panel-to-panel wiring, and various plastics, mostly PET and HDPE. There are about 12 to 13 g of solder as well, previously containing lead but in the process of aggressively moving to non-lead solutions.
All of those materials melt at temperatures well below that of the highly refined glass of the solar cells, which means you get them back for free if you choose to recycle the panel.
> landfill somewhere leach heavy metals into the groundwater
They do not. Every single statement in your post is wrong
I'm afraid you're parroting a series of talking points put out by Koch, so I hope you feel good about that. Well maybe at least they're paying you for it.
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Having worked at a plant that produced silicon for the PV industry, I can tell you the problem with recycling the silicon is getting the phosphorus back out. And to a lesser extent, the boron. The industry wants exceedingly pure silicon so they can add exactly the right amount of phosphorus back in. And they do not want to adjust their process for every new batch of poly silicon going in. And the phosphorus does not have a high partition coefficient in the hydrochlorination process. So what phosphorus you s
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you need to learn a bit more about "nuclear waste".
Just off the top of my head I remember that what the USA calls "nuclear waste" from power plants is in fact 96% reusable U-235, 1% Pu, and only 3% "waste" that can not be reused in conventional power plants. In Europe they reprocesses the spent fuel. 97% of it gets sent back to the power plants. The 3% could actually be feed back into a properly designed reactor and "burned up" by neutron exposure to transmute the long lived isotopes into shorter lived on
Re: Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:5, Insightful)
Nukes are already too expensive. Safe nuclear power is definitely a thing. And it's great. But recycling silicon (glass/sand) is way easier than recycling uranium. And the price of safe nukes is higher than solar with recycling.
It's a shame we slowed down on nuclear power in the 80s but at this point by the time we get nuclear power online enmasse we'll have needed to already have transitioned to renewables.
It's too late for the nuclear power industry except through new technology that can be mass manufactured and deployed rapidly not massive boondoggle projects that take decades and billions of dollars to build.
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recycling silicon? You mwan it sound like a solar panel is just a bit of sand.
Its not, its hard glass with silver mixed in along with other materials to make up the sandwich of materiels that make it work. Its a bitch to recycle, hence chucking it in landfill.
See also Lithium-ion batteries, the casing and electronic bits are easy to recycle, but the lithium bit, the bit we want to recycle... not so easy at all.
Re: Should had stayed with nuclear power (Score:4, Interesting)
Try recycling a nuclear power plant. All of that steel, concrete, and other material that would be great to use for other projects after the reactor has been shut down but everything near the reactor has been made slightly radioactive. It's now low level waste which means that it can't be recycled.
Plus there's nowhere to safely put the high level radioactive waste because society hasn't come up with a way to deal with something that's dangerous for 10,000s of years. Perhaps we should find a spot on the Earth that's being pushed back towards the molten core (I think it's a subduction zone). Then if we can just put the toxic payload safely in the ground that's about to go back to the core. Everything will become liquid, dilute, and some will eventually come back to the surface as lava. However it will take a long time to happen. It will take a long time for the items to even reach the molten core as plates move on the order of centimetres (inches) a year. And since it has to be placed on an oceanic plate for subduction to take place, and usually in quite deep water, there's not many groups that could get access to any material placed there. At least it's better than trying to shoot it up to the sun.
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Try recycling a nuclear power plant. All of that steel, concrete, and other material that would be great to use for other projects after the reactor has been shut down but everything near the reactor has been made slightly radioactive. It's now low level waste which means that it can't be recycled.
All true. However, a nuclear plant is much, much smaller than 6 million tons per year making it a much more approachable problem.
That's kind of the beauty of nuclear power: it's a concentrated solution which generates concentrated problems. Unlike other forms of power which generate distributed problems.
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Dig it into the soil. The gypsum (and to a lesser extent, the paper coating) help to break up and aerate heavy clay soils. Raw gypsum is sold for exactly this purpose at garden stores. (In my country, 20kg bags of powdered "Gypsum Clay Breaker." The exact name my be different where you live)
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recycling silicon? You mwan it sound like a solar panel is just a bit of sand.
Its not, its hard glass with silver mixed in along with other materials to make up the sandwich of materiels that make it work. Its a bitch to recycle, hence chucking it in landfill.
See also Lithium-ion batteries, the casing and electronic bits are easy to recycle, but the lithium bit, the bit we want to recycle... not so easy at all.
Figure it out, Don't make me fucking do it for you.
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Nukes are already too expensive. Safe nuclear power is definitely a thing.
Yes, we can absolutely build nuclear power plants that are safe. But the nuclear power industry is so hopelessly corrupt that it is impossible to build nuclear power plants at a reasonable cost.
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Silicon is not sand or glass (Score:3)
I think you're confusing the incredibly highly refined silicon metal used for making solar cells with silicon dioxide.
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Strange that everyone is recycling solar panels then ...
Bury them with nuclear waste (Score:2)
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Did you mean throw them in the ocean and hope they don't float?
Uranium is 4x as dense as lead so no, it won't float. Also, there are 4,000,000,000 tonnes of Uranium in the ocean naturally because it is water soluble. But do continue making hyperbolic claims.
Store it on old nuclear sites (Score:2)
Why not stick them in Chernobyl or Fukushima, sites of certain decomissioned nuclear reactors or other spots on Earth that are lost to humanity for any meaningful purpose for thousands of year? The damage is already done, so they might as well be useful for landfilling hard-to-recycle toxic stuff. It's not like it's going to make things any worse.
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Why not just build modern nuclear power plants and not have to worry about the waste from solar panels?
Once you account for the waste they create once they die AND the waste they create during manufacturing, is solar even worth it?
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Is the problem of nuclear waste solved for the modern power plants?
Re:Store it on old nuclear sites (Score:5, Insightful)
Is the problem of nuclear waste solved for the modern power plants?
Yes, insofar as any problems are not technological in nature.
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I read once upon a time that Thorium reactors (that need a neutron source to keep the reaction going) could consume waste as that source.
https://flibe-energy.com/techn... [flibe-energy.com]
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Nuclear idiot# 134 (I think, 134? yes?):
You are mixing up nuclear waste with unspent fuel.
Strangely a very common mistake by americans, seems you learn nothing in school about "the dangers of nuclear energy".
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Why not stick them in Chernobyl
They're already there. [bbc.com]
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You don't think that digging up contaminated soil could move some of it closer to the water table?
It's a nice oil and gas paid for advertisement (Score:5, Informative)
Solar panels, that is conventional silicon panels contain nothing harmful. There are Cd-Te panels produced by first solar that contain Cadmium, a dangerous heavy metal but these panels are not anywhere near a large percentage of the market and will likely be recycled because their construction makes recycling much easier.
On the other hand no significant numbers of panels are dying. Some of the panels from the 70's are still in operation today. The 20 year lifetime on solar panels is the federally mandated warranty. It says nothing about the life of the panel. As I've said many of the first panels ever created are still in operation almost 50 years later.
This is a paid for shill piece, recognize that.
Re:It's a nice oil and gas paid for advertisement (Score:5, Interesting)
actually they mention solder with the lead and tin, but that's also a red herring. Besides the relatively tiny amount by weight that isn't a problem unless you put in salt water. I have stock of lead based solder I use because the modern lead-free is pointless (again, unless you used it solder plumbing carrying salty water which I don't) and doesn't address any real problem.
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Landfills can contain relatively high amount of salt, i.e. in discarded food. So anything containing lead can pose a serious environmental problem, even far from sea.
Re: It's a nice oil and gas paid for advertisement (Score:2)
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Re: It's a nice oil and gas paid for advertisement (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, I didn't fully get the point here either. Compared to other forms of energy, solar still beats them in the waste category.
Wind has massive blades and bearings that need periodic disassembly, replacement, shipping, and recycling. Their size really gets in the way.
Coal has its own maintenance costs for the plant. But more importantly, its operations require constant transport of fuel and once used, mostly go to a ditch potentially leaching mercury, lead, and other heavy metals.
Hydro has massive turbines that need to be replaced. Not to mention the facility is massive and thus needs a lot of maintenance. People forget that dropping water has the lowest energy density of the field so you need to go big to make up for it. The carbon cost of the facilities cement alone probably puts it behind the others for atleast for a decade.
NPG is like coal but with a little less maintenance, and most of the waste dumped into the air rather than landfills. But they still have ongoing waste from continuous fuel transport.
And solar panels are mostly recyclable. The glass obviously. Aluminum casing of course. These two are the bulk of the panel. The little bit of plastic is probably burned off like any other electronic. The actual cell is a very small part but is complicated. And unfortunately that is the part that is rarest in supply. Maybe one day that supply will be constrained enough that ground up cells will be a cheaper source for mining.
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If Pioneer 6 is still operating, make that 55 years.
Re:It's a nice oil and gas paid for advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
There is 140 Million tons of coal ash produced in the USA annually Alone. I’d rather live next to a landfill full of solar panels than one full of mercury laden coal ash any day.
Pure FUD. Anytime someone uses BIG ROUND NUMBERS to sell their point without a reference you should be very suspicious.
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Compare (Score:5, Interesting)
78 million tons of solar panel waste per year.
35,000 million tons of CO2 output per year from burning fossil fuels.
Hopefully future solar panels will be 100% recyclable and cheap.
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78 million tons of solar panel waste per year.
35,000 million tons of CO2 output per year from burning fossil fuels.
Hopefully future solar panels will be 100% recyclable and cheap.
We could always burn them ... :-)
Thinking out loud (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe manufacturers (of all products) should be stuck with the bill for the proper disposal of what they create/sell. Sure it would cause the price of products to jump a bit, but it would also provide a financial incentive for them to create more recycleable products.
Re:Thinking out loud (Score:5, Informative)
You mean like the EU's 2003 WEEE Directive [wikipedia.org]?
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2020: 500 new solar panel companies were created today.
2030: 500 new solar panel companies were created today after 500 solar companies created in 2020 shuttered their operations.
2050: 500 new solar panel companies were created today after 500 solar companies created in 2030 shuttered their operations.
Lather, rince, repeat...
Even bigger problems ... (Score:5, Funny)
Solar Panels Are Starting to Die, ...
Just wait until the Sun dies, then *all* the solar panels will be useless and need to be scrapped.
I smell Koch (Score:5, Informative)
In Europe, recycling them is mandatory for home owners and the market for those companies is obviously just starting now.
https://news.energysage.com/re... [energysage.com]
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Seriously, WHERE is the recycling done? Is it really done in the EU? Or is it shipped to China or other 3rd world sites where frequently unsafe and poorly paid work is forced on the poor.
Re:I smell Koch (Score:5, Informative)
Make them less toxic (Score:3)
Kicking the can down the road (Score:4, Insightful)
Putting ANYTHING in a landfill is just kicking the can down the road. At some point it will most likely be a problem that people in the future will have to deal with. Recently they replaced the blades, gear box, and generators in the wind farm near where I work. of course the gear box and the generators were probably recycled. The blades however were chopped up by a large log saw, and hauled to a landfill. Solar panels will be to I bet. It is too easy to just throw away. Without a mandate to recycle, solar panels will goto landfills.
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At some point it will most likely be a problem that people in the future will have to deal with.
Why? Just leave it there.
Re:Kicking the can down the road (Score:4, Insightful)
You seem to be doing the "landfill" incorrectly (Score:2)
The landfill is supposed to be in remote areas, where even contamination should not leak to natural resources. A simple idea: find a state where there is a large desert, and bury the stuff in the middle of nowhere. Ah, yes Arizona is such a state.
I have no issues with old stuff going into landfill. If there is no more use in the materials (like aluminum cans, or gold in CPUs), or no out-gassing (like food that needs to go into compost), just dump them into a pile and then bury it. It is just a huge hunk of
I have a solar powered calculator from the 1980's (Score:2, Offtopic)
What are they doing wrong with solar panels these days?
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Re:I have a solar powered calculator from the 1980 (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this what they say about spent nuclear fuel? (Score:2)
Even in landfills it's a small problem (Score:5, Interesting)
Here in Australia you could bury every panel we've ever used until 2050 and the pit wouldn't even begin to be as large as one existing coal sludge lake. As the article says it's not even a significant portion of global ewaste. Worst case scenario is landfill in the desert where it will be completely benign. Recycling will need policy support, but anyone who thinks proper nuclear waste happens without government support is delusional.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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> But nobody wants to talk about the e-waste of things like solar and wind power.
There's over 150 posts in this thread, who is this "nobody" you speak of?
> And we're rapidly running out of cheap third-world shitholes to dump this stuff in.
They are disposed of locally. It took me less than 5 seconds to look this up. Would you like me to click it for you to, or can you at least do that on your own?
https://www.nesglobal.net/photovoltaic-solar-panel-disposal-in-california