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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

#241

Post by __pache__ »

TheSmiddy wrote: post #217
__pache__ wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The most reliable grids in the world are made up of a large number of small generators rather than a single source which when taken down takes down the entire grid. who said to do otherwise ??? > If you were to start a new city disconnected from the rest of society then a combination of wind, solar, hydro, and batteries is the cheapest and most reliable system to power that city. No it'd be hydro/nuclear.

https://www.iea.org/reports/projected-costs-of-generating-el...

no

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

#242

Post by __pache__ »

pfdietz wrote: post #228
__pache__ wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

hydrogen power plants ?

Yes. Of course the hydrogen needs to be made and stored, but storage of hydrogen underground is very cheap, about $1/kWh of storage capacity, two orders of magnitude lower than batteries.

that seems stupid compared to breeder reactors ??

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

#243

Post by __pache__ »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #211
__pache__ wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Have any of those actually bred more than they used and extracted it without catching fire or spewing radioactivity everywhere? If not it's just MOX, a slightly radioactive sodium fire, or a graphite pile with extra steps.

> Have any of those actually bred

yes? do the research. you're making assertions you haven't done research on, apparently.........

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

#244

Post by __pache__ »

aperson_hello wrote: post #200
__pache__ wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Making and installing solar panels doesn't cost anywhere that much CO2. ...source? Solar is unreliable, you _need_ another system, so you have to install 2 systems now. It _will_ be cheaper/less co2/etc.etc. to just install and use 1 system. The real solution to reducing overall CO2 is clearly Nuclear. Do you disagree with this?

Nuclear should be part of the solution. Solar is just too cheap not to do be part of it too. Since there are on demand sources (natural gas peakers, batteries, etc.) and because solar isn't replacing clean sources at this point in time, solar (and wind) can and should be part of the energy mix! Here's one source. Plenty more if you Google it https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf

what should I be looking at in this source? how does it scale? you can scale nuclear/hydro very easily for millions of people .. they inherently scale.

solar does not, you need tons and tons and tons and tons and tons of panels. it does not scale. this seems so self evident. like people are holding their hands over their ears and eyes, ignoring the obvious...

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

#245

Post by __pache__ »

Schroedingersat wrote: post #209
__pache__ wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ongoi…

> > Was I wrong about something ?

> Extremely.

Can you concisely explain this without writing a book obfuscating your arguments..?

> You can't start a breeder reactor without fissile material

Who said otherwise? We stopped the breeder reactor journey mostly because fuel is so cheap. This will become more relevant over time, if necessary, due to natural market forces. dude, what? stop trying to obfuscate the obvious..

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

#246

Post by pfdietz »

__pache__ wrote: post #242
pfdietz wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Of course the hydrogen needs to be made and stored, but storage of hydrogen underground is very cheap, about $1/kWh of storage capacity, two orders of magnitude lower than batteries.

that seems stupid compared to breeder reactors ??

The reverse is the case. In what way do you think this is stupid? It enables very cheap renewable energy to exploit its huge levelized cost advantage over nuclear yet still be able to cover the rare dark/calm periods the nuclear stans like to angst about. The key observation is that a simple cycle turbine power plant is about $0.50/W, some 20 times cheaper than a nuclear power plant. The fuel is of course much more expensive, but for backup supply that hardly matters.

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

#247

Post by ABCLAW »

thrown_22 wrote: post #21
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #16

It's mostly silicon, how bad could the waste be?

Cyanide is just carbon and nitrogen. How could it be possibly toxic?

1) This is the technical answer: Cyanide binds fairly strongly to one of the molecular machines involved in cellular respiration, inactivating it.

The result of that inactivation is that your cell begins to have issues producing ATP, even when it has nutrients available. Without going too far into detail, ATP is essentially the cellular unit of energy that your cells run on. Without being able to make more, your cell will eventually run out of ATP and it will die. Enough cells die? You'll die.

2) The more important point here is that not only is your intuition uninformed, but you appear to be incredulous as well. Ask yourself why you react to unintuitive results in areas you're not familiar with in the way that you do.

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

#248

Post by ilyt »

lazide wrote: post #70
ilyt wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - 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) So do hybrids. Burning fuel at power station isn't 2x as efficient as burning it in ICE engine; most of the savings come from not wasting power while braking

One correction - a typical coal burning power plant is approximately 33% efficient at converting fuel to energy [ https://www.energy.gov/fecm/transformative-power-systems ], and combined cycled natural gas power plants are 45-57% efficient. [ https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/natural-gas... ] Direct ICE vehicles are between 11-27% efficient. [ https://sciendo.com/pdf/10.2478/rtuect-2020-0041 ] So even…

That's why I talked about hybrids - ICEs have slim efficiency area, add breaking lossess and you get to that number. But put it in a hybrid and you can run it at near-max efficiency most of the time and don't waste that much in breaking.

Hell, Formula engines get to 50% but those don't exactly need to care about emission equipment

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

#249

Post by Schroedingersat »

trashtester wrote: post #236
Schroedingersat wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you have 1 xray taken in a hospital, that's as much radiation exposure as living next to a nuclear plant for 100 years. Now do living near Serpent river, or Church Hill, or Kadapa, or Ranger or Mailuu-Suu or the cumulative worldwide effect if we got 15% of our power from a reprpcessing facility like La Hague. Make sure to include the effects of heavy metal poisoning, not just radiation. Also would you like to re…

> Make sure to include the effects of heavy metal poisoning, not just radiation. I'm a bit lazy. Maybe you have some numbers available for this? My guess is that deaths caused by this (associated with nuclear power), if at all measurable, would be orders of magnitude lower than deaths from the extraction and pollution associated with fossil fuels (Per GWh). > Here's a riddle. What fraction of world energy can 40,000t…

You're talking about scifi. I'm talking about the next 8 years.

You're also completely failing to distinguish between fertile and fissile.

So realistically, at the same scale of ore extraction as coal mining. How much power is available?

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

#250

Post by Schroedingersat »

__pache__ wrote: post #245
Schroedingersat wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 ongoi…

> > Was I wrong about something ? > Extremely. Can you concisely explain this without writing a book obfuscating your arguments..? > You can't start a breeder reactor without fissile material Who said otherwise? We stopped the breeder reactor journey mostly because fuel is so cheap. This will become more relevant over time, if necessary, due to natural market forces. dude, what? stop trying to obfuscate the obvious..

So you're both willfully ignorant about the technology you're pushing and unwilling to have it spoon fed to you? Wow.
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