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Solar panel waste may not be as bad as we thought

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

#201

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.” Say it out loud, don’t edit

Cocaine

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

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems with electric cars there is always another compaint. First came the long tail pipe argument, I think even the most ardent of naysayers have realised that that one is bullshit. Then the batteries were going to be scattered about the countryside. Except most of them are still in cars, the demand for batteries from crashed damaged cars is high and the life even in early models appears to exceed expectations. Th…

The problem with electric cars is that they're still cars. Cars are inherently way less efficient than trains, or even buses. In practice, trains take less than 1/7th the power that cars do to transport passengers - and that's before we get into the land-subsidies (parking, giant roads) that cars need in order to be financially competitive. But even when cars are necessary, they tend to be massively overengineered -…

Yes, I get it. But on the other hand I tend to think that the reality of getting people to use public transport and cycling en masse is comically naive.

You can see how defensive people get about the marginal adjustments that swapping from a ICE to an electric car would mean. Basically just that journeys of several hundred miles become slightly more painful, oh and if we're being fussy it's not clear how towing would work with an electric car yet (the impact on range rather than their ability to do it is the issue).

> But even when cars are necessary, they tend to be massively overengineered - does every car need to be 1) a five-seater, 2) 500KM range (300mile range), and 3) capable of driving at 110KM/hr (70miles/hr)?

I'm with you on this but it's slightly worse than you say. Most of the popular electric cars are large sedan / SUV sized rather than small city cars and hatchbacks. Cars like the VW E-up and the Honda E are exceptions. Admittedly they still have 4/5 seats but the market demand is a problem for anything less (people are irrationally attached to the ability to transport 4+ people, even if they never actually do it).

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is because CdTe is actually a stable molecule that isn’t water soluble, turns out the problem of panels from a toxic leeching perspective is largely from the small amounts of lead used at soldering points which is a common point with most silicon PV panels. No reason tin can’t be used instead/lead free panels can’t be made except for the saving of a few pennies by skimping on the solder - no regulations to ensur…

Nowadays everything is "ROHS", even in the US, so not even lead.

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

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is because CdTe is actually a stable molecule that isn’t water soluble, turns out the problem of panels from a toxic leeching perspective is largely from the small amounts of lead used at soldering points which is a common point with most silicon PV panels. No reason tin can’t be used instead/lead free panels can’t be made except for the saving of a few pennies by skimping on the solder - no regulations to ensur…

Have they actually made a decent lead-free solder yet?

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

#205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The current price of nuclear power in the US and Europe is almost entirely due to overregulation combined with decades of dwindling expertise, with a sprinkle of corruption on top. If we remove this regulatory sabotage, nuclear energy can be produced at about ~$30-40/MWh [1] (At 3% discount rate, and in the case of the US/Europe with the assumption that excessive regulation is scaled back a notch.). If we build enough, we could bring that below $30/MWh from the efficiency of scale.

Green hydrogen tends to cost ~$100/MWh, just for the fuel. Building and operating the plants themselves comes on top of that.

Even if the fuel comes down to $40/MWh by 2050, as predicted in this article[2], it will still be competitive with properly organized nuclear.

[1] https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/economic-aspec...

[2] https://www.energytech.com/renewables/article/21238510/ridin...

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

#206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So nuclear then? Plants take on average 1-year longer than natural gas plants Water moderated reactors provably cannot work. Breeders do not exist. You don't get to start gaslighting about build times until you prove it's possible to make the fuel rods. Here's a few hints on how to tell if something works: What was the largest ever deployment of nuclear generation in a single year? For how many years in a row have…

Does this invalidate everything you're saying, or what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor

what. Definitely what.

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

#207
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-...

In Australia we generate 12 million metric tons of coal fly ash per year. It's our largest single waste stream, literally almost 1/5 of all waste generated in the country [1]. I'm sure in the US at least that amount is generated from coal. So 10 million tonnes of cumulative waste from solar panels is not huge in comparison (and this is before even considering the CO₂, NOx, SOx, etc. emissions from that coal)... 1. ht…

Don't forget that it's also more radioactive than nuclear waste: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

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

#208
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the reasons is that a lot of these downsides are overplayed, based on long-obsolete data or false altogether. For some examples: - electric cars are still burning fossil fuels cause powerplants burn fossil fuels (yeah, but electric cars go ~2 times further on 1 liter of fuel even if all our power came from fossil fuels which it doesn't) - rare earth minerals are limited which means we can't have everybody driv…

>- you cannot have 100% renewable power grid because unpredictable production (you can, some countries do - for example Costarica and many countries are very close - for example Portugal and Norway - but it creates different problems than the traditional powerplants - but there are ways to solve this which are getting ever more economically viable - citing data from 10 years ago is about as sensible as citing CPU tra…

Traditional powerplants are big nation-scale projects measured in decades and cannot be moved mid-lifecycle - unlike solar panels. They are also strictly dependent on running water for cooling. In my country (Poland) there has been a week few years back where some powerplants had to shut down because nearby rivers were too low and the water temperature was too high to cool down the powerplants (you cannot heat the water to 60 C cause the river life will die, so the workable temperatures are surprisingly low).

If you care about mobility and adjusting to climate change - you should bet on solar more than on anything else.

There are problems with renewables, but there are also many solutions, and the criticism usually assumes we change nothing else in our energy grid.

For example it's true that renewables are less predictable than traditional powerplants. Which increases costs of energy because we need to keep some overcapacity in production, consumption and transfer capabilities for balancing purposes and that's expansive.

But - grid-scale batteries solve a lot of these problems, and they aren't just a cost - they are earning money even in traditional grids by outcompeting peak powerplants without any subsidies. In fact people are afraid of how fast they are "destroying the market" for peaker plants and there are propositions to regulate this against the grid-scale batteries :) Batteries do the equivalent of high frequency trading on energy market and peaker plants have like 15 minutes latency vs batteries sub-second latency - you can imagine how it works out in practice. The Tesla battery in Australia already paid off the investment costs.

Another way is to produce synthethic fuel with cheap solar power when it's not used and then run the generators on that. Basically make methane tanks our batteries. There are promising technologies doing that, for example Terraform Industries.

Supposedly they can produce natural gas that is cheaper than the peak prices EU paid at the start of the russian invasion of Ukraine.

Another way is to simply build a lot more and to use smart pricing to encourage people to use the energy during the peak production. For most people it's perfectly fine to charge their cars at parkings near their office, it's just an organizational problem. Heating houses in the winter can also be done during the day - most houses in Central Europe can stay comfortably hot for longer than a day during the winter.

There are a lot of things we could do, but people who don't want anything to change take 1 thing they don't like and assume everything else stays the same so that the change seem impossible.

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weren't you just asserting expertise on the contents of a solar cell and energy content of generation? How do you not know the relevant terms or name for the dominant variety? Did you even know there were different types before you made up numbers? Energy payback time. Passive Emitter Rear Contact photovoltaics They're made of sand and a tiny bit of silver. The amount of silver used total is going down per year in sp…

> Weren't you just asserting expertise Was I wrong about something ? > Energy payback time. Right. This doesn't scale as close to as well as nuclear .......... > You'd have to increase uranium mining 5x ??? if things actually do become expensive, welcome to breeder reactors bro

> Was I wrong about something ?

Extremely.

> Right. This doesn't scale as close to as well as nuclear ..........

Using extremely generous assumptions about high grade ore, and old, much simpler reactors you can come in slightly under that for about a month. https://world- nuclear.org/information-library/energy-and-the-environment/energy-return-on-investment.aspx

EROI is significantly worse than solar because of ongoing energy costs for fuel and O&M. Especially if you use ore that is typical rather than the low hanging fruit. A perc module is around 60-120 depending on where it is placed. NPP is 15-60 depending on where its uranium comes from, how it is enriched and whether it uses reprocessing.

>> Mining: Ranger ore in 2008 was 0.26% U head grade. Energy: 273 GJ/t U3O8, 322 GJ/tU, including significant development work. (Note that if ore of 0.01% U is envisaged, this would give 1638 TJ/yr, 70 PJ total for mining & milling, hence total 108 PJ for the centrifuge option, thus inputs become 3.3% of output and energy ratio becomes 30.) All Ranger inputs are thermal (it generates own electricity). The Schneider 2010 figure for mining & milling is similar to Rössing.

> ??? if things actually do become expensive, welcome to breeder reactors bro

You can't start a breeder reactor without fissile material so new capacity still needs just as much (they don't exist so can't say for sure, but about double per GW by fairly generous estimates, actually). Additionally most of the concepts need about 2-10% of annual Beryllium production per reactor.

You have to fit something into the industrial capacity of the world before you can start gaslighting about costs that consistently go up or about costs of technologies that don't exist and might maybe start figuring out the hard bit of extraction and refuelling in ten years.

Expanding Uranium mining 5x would require processing a billion tonnes of ore per year. For reference Iron Ore production is about 2.5 billion tonnes. You'd need at least 30 million tonnes of sulfuric acid (world production is about 180 million).

Then for the reactors you'd need the most of the world supply of chromium. For a PWR you'd need half of the indium, and significant amounts of Zirconium, Cadmium and silver. Reliable Molten salt reactors don't exist and there's one MSR with okay capacity factor, but no information about how kuch noble metal they need is available.

This is just to match renewables now mind you, not where they will be when you finally open your mines (which takes years or decades).

The idea that Nuclear could scale to match renewables in under 50 years is laughable. Which is why fossil fuel shills butt into every conversation to claim renewables can't work and must be replaced with it.

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

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems with electric cars there is always another compaint. First came the long tail pipe argument, I think even the most ardent of naysayers have realised that that one is bullshit. Then the batteries were going to be scattered about the countryside. Except most of them are still in cars, the demand for batteries from crashed damaged cars is high and the life even in early models appears to exceed expectations. Th…

The problem with electric cars is that they're still cars. Cars are inherently way less efficient than trains, or even buses. In practice, trains take less than 1/7th the power that cars do to transport passengers - and that's before we get into the land-subsidies (parking, giant roads) that cars need in order to be financially competitive. But even when cars are necessary, they tend to be massively overengineered -…

Well I agree about public transport (and I happen to live in a country with decent public transport - I do less than 3000 km per year so buying EV makes no sense, I'm still driving a Fiat Punto made in 1995 and if not for my wife sentiment for the car we should probably just sell it and rent when needed ;) ).

When I was commuting 180km every day for a few months (lived in Lublin, worked in Warsaw temporarily) I realized I'm making the whole route using electricity (a trolley in Lublin, a train between the cities, a tram in Warsaw). And I was reading a book the whole time. It's the self-drivining car dream made true with 19th century technology :)

But US is fucked up culturally and infrastructurally when it comes to cars so the next best thing is making EVs cool.

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