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Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

fastcompany.com

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Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#161

Post by dangrossman »

reilly3000 wrote: post #84
googlryas wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, at this point in our hyperpartisan world, I expect monsterous FUD about pretty much anything. There was just a small scale war in my city about a proposal to slightly modify the way our library is funded. If that gets people riled up, then one can only imagine what multi trillion dollar industries can stir up.

Public Relations won. Advertising won. Weaponized Infighting is winning. Say the first thing that comes to mind when you think “Coca Cola.” Say it out loud, don’t edit. If you said something about nostalgia or polar bears you would be like most humans around the globe for the past 50+ years. I submit that as my evidence that PR and Advertising are remarkably potent. If you really said something to the effect of “depr…

> Say the first thing that comes to mind when you think “Coca Cola.”

My first thought was "Pepsi", so I guess a different advertiser won the war for my brain.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#162

Post by Schroedingersat »

hardolaf wrote: post #134
Schroedingersat wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are roughly 40 million kgs of accessible, usable fissile material (U235 and Pu239) on Earth. Each kg produces 30-80TJ with maybe another 20 if you spend even more money to scavenge the last little bit via reprocessing. Newer reactors hold about 6 years of fuel and cycle some of it every couple of years. World energy consumption is approximately 550EJ. How are you proposing to fuel your reactors more than once?

This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now.

> This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239.

That's all known and inferred accessible reserves. Not current mines. There are about 8-10 million tonnes of natural Uranium which has 0.5% extractable U235 (a bit more if you're willing to pay 10x as much for enrichment). There might be another big, high yield mine in Canada somewhere, but you probably want to check before putting down all our chips on it. U238 is not fissile.

> We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now.

So a technology that hasn't made it to the test bench, has no evidence as to its longevity or economics, probably requires more Beryllium than exists, and requires at least twice as much fissile material as is available for startup to breed fissile material from fertile thorium is your solution? One where the only proxy for how the extraction step might work is MOX reprocessed fuel which is more expensive than renewables on its own and releases more radiation under normal operation than Fukushima and TMI combined?

Why are you suggesting diverting funds from a technology that works to build a completely different technology from your solution that destroys precious fissile material it needs to scale quickly then? Even in the most optimistic scenarios it will take decades to breed up a fresh load of U233 to double your fleet, and you will have to throw away all your multi billion dollar PWRs.

Why not keep doing the thing that's provably working. That way if you solve the whole breeder thing then it will only take a few generations to breed enough fuel rather than hundreds.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#163

Post by acdha »

lolinder wrote: post #124
8note wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as they're still cars, you should keep holding your breath. Tires and breaks still give off the polluting dust, not to mention the noise

Noise from electric cars is practically non-existent compared to cars (particularly trucks, SUVs, and motorcycles). I'm sure the pollution from tires and brakes isn't great, but that's like saying that if we cured cancer people would still die. Duh, but we should still cure cancer.

I agree with the general point, but the answer for livable cities still has to be fewer cars. Lower speed limits help a lot: there's a point around 30mph where the greatest source of noise goes from being the engine to the tires, so we have a lot of room to make cities better by getting people onto e-bikes or into smaller low-speed vehicles which use orders of magnitude less energy.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#164

Post by newyankee »

colordrops wrote: post #69
nostromo wrote: post #33

Aren’t they mostly silicon and recyclable metals? If so, who cares about the waste? It depends on what’s in the waste that matters, not its raw volume. The materials used in solar panels are both highly recyclable and environmentally benign, a great combination.

They also last at least 25 years. There's no way that the waste from the panels is worse than 25 years of CO2 emissions.

I think a recent study showed 6 out of 11 panels or something maintained 80% of its original capacity after 30 years. As long as technological disruption does not deem replacement as a no brainer economically, I am sure quite a few panels may produce energy for 30 to 40 years.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#165

Post by photochemsyn »

cjlars wrote: post #5

>The report projected that the United States would have a cumulative total of 7.5 to 10 million metric tons of solar panel waste in 2050. This compares to 292 million tons of total landfill waste in 2018 alone [1], putting solar panel waste on the order of 0.1% of total waste produced in the US between now and 2050. [1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...

There's a huge differential when it comes to processing different panel types, such as First Solar's CdTe panels (cadmium is a toxic heavy metal) versus the monocrystalline silicon panels that China is making (apparently only China has managed to scale up monocrystalline silicon, with the machines as tightly held secrets as ASML's EUV systems).

You'd think that would be a primary point of discussion in any article on solar panel waste, but no.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#166

Post by nerdponx »

bamboozled wrote: post #159

On a side note, why aren't governments providing rebates so people start putting solar panels everywhere? Like, by now, considering we're facing major environmental catastrophe without seriously drastic action, wouldn't it just be wise to put panels almost everywhere there is at least sunshine for a decent part of the year. Like what are we doing? ha I'm trying to buy a block of land next door with a decent sized she…

US federal and state governments did and do subsidize solar.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#167

Post by pfdietz »

samatman wrote: post #150
derriz wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can no more rely on nuclear or coal generation for your electricity without back-up than you can on wind or solar. A nuclear plant in the US is off-line for 29 days a year on average according to the EIA. So you still need back-up for your "reliable" nuclear, unless you want people using candles for nearly a month a year. All generation technologies are intermittent - they're just intermittent in different ways.

You're comparing scheduled maintenance in a 90+% uptime system with intermittent, unpredictable, correlated, continuous fluctuations in power, with capacity factors in the 10-30$ range of nameplate capacity. I have a great solution for nuke plant downtime, this is going to blow your mind, wait for it: for every 14 plants worth of power, built, drumroll please.... 15 plants! Then maintain them on a schedule.

Solar/wind/batteries/hydrogen > nuclear

The way you back up your $10/W nuclear plant is with $0.50/W simple cycle turbines, which can burn hydrogen. Or maybe $1/W combined cycle, if you want to do seasonal storage.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#168

Post by pfdietz »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #162
hardolaf wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. We also have viable LWR designs for Th-232 and are in the process of creating the first 5 Th-232 SMR test reactors at grid-scale right now.

> This number is based on existing mines (active and inactive) only. There's a lot more fissile material available than just the 40 Gg of usable fissile material. And that's assuming we only use U-235 and Pu-239. That's all known and inferred accessible reserves. Not current mines. There are about 8-10 million tonnes of natural Uranium which has 0.5% extractable U235 (a bit more if you're willing to pay 10x as much f…

> That's all known and inferred accessible reserves.

Resources, not reserves. Resources are turned into reserves when they are proved.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#169

Post by nl »

solardev wrote: post #155
nl wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HBR is a pretty reasonable consensus view of what business leaders in the US are thinking.

Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues, especially ones that may have a conflict of interest with their existing investments?

I'm not sure what your point is.

@3D30497420 made the point that the HBR article claiming that solar panel waste is expected to be a significant problem was the first result.

It's good to have prominent articles aimed at the same people who read HBR that give a corrected view.

> Are business leaders the people best equipped to evaluate environmental issues

It doesn't matter if they are the best equipped. The point is that they are making these decisions based on sources of information they trust like HBR.

That information needs to be corrected.

Re: Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

#170

Post by pfdietz »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #157
pjc50 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm.. there are a number of different chemistries, and they're not all clearly labelled like batteries. It appears the switch from phosphoros/boron dopants to gallium was quite recent: https://theconversation.com/the-sunlight-that-powers-solar-p... But that's gallium dopant rather than GaAs. There's also CIGS and CdTe "thin film" solar cells, which are extremely toxic in even small amounts. But those chemistries were…

Most commercially viable cells use silver front side metallization (or both sides for bifacial). This represents about 50g/kW net of silver depending on location, but there are methods in the production pipeline to reduce it to 25g/kW. Tandem cells will reduce it to less silver than a control rod uses, but the commercialisationnpathway isn't set in stone yet. Worst case scenario, we hit silver limits, they get switch…

Or switch to copper for the contact wires, with a Ni or Mo barrier layer (about 1 micron thick) to prevent the copper from reacting with the silicon.
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