Solar Waste Crises Looming

Quote:

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.

Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.

All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?

Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste.

We found:

Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).

In countries like China, India, and Ghana, communities living near e-waste dumps often burn the waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off the plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled.

Bold added. Uncle Sam is in effect subsidizing the prolific spread of toxic waste in the name of producing clean energy. You can't make this **** up.

Lol adios forever and always.

Bet the guy who made that did not know by highlighting the importance of fossil fuels in all those things he is making an argument for conservation of fossil fuels when it come to energy and gas.

I'd hazard a guess that you might be happier with your family living near discarded solar panels than nuclear waste.

I was hoping microbet was going to drop some education on us in this thread

Ya cause you can totally consume limited reserves of oil and gas and conserve them at the same time.

We're not talking about trees here lol.

We could reduce our use of oil through conservation, yes. Just pushing led lights and having higher mpg for our cars would save a bunch.

fortunately the internet heard of this nonsensical propaganda, and used some common sense to debunk it

https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/...nuclear-plants

unfortunately, right wingers will never learn.

Doing nothing more than thinking about **** for roughly 5 seconds I provided all the education anyone in this thread needed.

Lol adios forever and always.

I mean, he can actually believe that crap. cmon man adios.

Wait, they just let people walk right up to these toxic solar panels? Some people even put them ON THEIR HOUSE.

I guess it's back to burning manure for my family's energy needs.

I'd even guess cleanuping after solar creates jobs?

Obviously there's a lot to debunk. The weight of waste is hardly the most important thing when you're comparing glass, aluminum, and silicon to radioactive waste.

But, anyway, two things come to mind:

The 800000 ton scary figure of potential waste by 2040 in the country of Japan per year isn't really that much. One land fill in Los Angeles County (Sunshine Canyon Landfill) takes 2.4 million tons a year right now.

And, Solar panels are very recyclable and when you try to find out how long they last you're going to get way way underestimates. Some of the oldest solar arrays like this one are still operating after 40 years and some old arrays like this one have been refurbished/recycled because it's worth it due to improvements in efficiency.

Well, I'm glad the Solar Energies Industries Association just said "No". What a low bar for debunking in your world.

I assume when Enron says "No", you believe them too, eh?

The study also DIRECTLY addresses the recycling issue.

The funny thing is - Conservatives aren't saying solar is bad because it pollutes, they're just reminding you that all energy pollutes. Apparently some way more than others.

Here's a profile of the authors of the study, if you're interested:

Environmental Progress is almost certainly not affiliated with Koch brothers or big oil.

Michael Shellenberger (Founder of EP) is a Time Magazine "Hero of the Environment" and Green Book Award-winning author and policy expert. For a quarter-century he has advocated solutions to lift all people out of poverty while protecting the natural environment.

Michael is coauthor of visionary books and essays including "The Death of Environmentalism," Break Through, An Ecomodernist Manifesto, "Evolve," and Love Your Monsters. He writes for publications including Scientific American, The New York Times, and the Washington Post.

His research, writings and talks challenge the idea that rising energy consumption is bad for the environment. Michael has made the intertwined moral and scientific case for energy and environmental justice in "An Ecomodernist Manifesto," written with 17 other leading scholars and scientists, in "Why Energy Transitions are the Key to Environmental Progress," coauthored with Rachel Pritzker, and a TEDx talk, "How Humans Save Nature."

Michael is a leading pro-nuclear environmentalist. Michael was featured in "Pandora's Promise," an award-winning film about environmentalists who changed their minds about nuclear. He appeared on "The Colbert Report," and has debated nuclear on CNN "Crossfire" with Ralph Nader, and at UCLA with Mark Jacobsen. His 2016 TED talk is on "How Fear of Nuclear Hurts the Environment."

Michael's 2007 book with Ted Nordhaus, Break Through, was called "prescient" by Time and "the best thing to happen to environmentalism since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring" by Wired. Michael is co-founder and Senior Fellow at Breakthrough Institute where he was president from 2003 - 2015 and advisor to MIT's "Future of Nuclear Energy" task force.

Michael has been profiled in the New York Times, Wired, the San Francisco Chronicle, the National Review, The New Republic, and on NPR. His research and writing have appeared in The Harvard Law and Policy Review, Democracy Journal, the PLOS Biology, The New Republic the Wall Street Journal; and cited by the New York Times, Slate, USA Today, Washington Post, New York Daily News, The New Republic.

Michael has been an environmental and social justice advocate for over 25 years. In the 1990s Michael helped save an old-growth redwood forest, and helped force Nike to improve factory conditions in Asia. In the 2000s, Michael advocated for and helped realize an expansion of federal investment in renewables and energy efficiency.

The two authors from Environmental Progress of the article cited from the OP's National Review article:

Mark Nelson, Senior Analyst
Mark Nelson, Senior Analyst, oversees EP's ground-breaking Energy Progress Tracker, the most comprehensive review of nuclear power plants planned, under construction, and at-risk of premature closure.

Mark's research into the environmental impacts of nuclear closures in Germany and California has been cited in the New York Times and other publications.

Mark completed his graduate work in nuclear engineering at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Tony Roulstone, and studied aerospace and mechanical engineering at Oklahoma State University. Mark is a competitive runner, musician and photographer.

Jemin Desai, EP Fellow

Jemin Desai is a student studying electrical engineering and computer sciences, and nuclear engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where he is a staff member for the introductory computer science course. He will receive both B.S. degrees in 2020. He was born in Mumbai, India, and raised in Singapore, Vancouver, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

None of that changes the fact that the mass of potential waste is a dumb way to measure. It may well not be the fault of the authors of the study though and just the derpy people reporting it. Making the point that burning old solar panels to get the copper is a problem is obviously a fine point. Scare headlines about 300 times the toxic waste is idiotic propaganda.

Lol at blasting the SEIA.

Jiggy, I've mentioned this before, but the political orientation of my clients, if they express any, has been overwhelmingly conservative. Neither here nor there really, but thought you might be interested.

I'm sure your clients are conservative. I'm all for solar panels, where they make sense, just like most Conservatives. I think studies like this are just a reminder that nothing is free.

Except everything, lunch, and the gingerbread man

Man how do you bite your tongue when dealing with those ****ing morons? You're strong.

I said conservatives, not Trumpkins. The one client I've had who said anything positive about Trump is an older Filipino man (grew up over there) who is a big fan of Duterte. I'm very tolerant and respectful with my elders. It didn't bother me at all. He's a very nice guy and we got along very well.

I'm sure there were plenty of clients in the past who turned out to be Trumpkins though. You can check out my posting before 2016 if you want. I used to be much nicer and more tolerant before the idiot Republicans elected a moronic narcissistic authoritarian cheeto.

I was famous for being nice. People yelled at me for defending conservatives in the politics forum. I'll still do that for non-Trumpkins.

thread is ticklish... does the premise factor in Fukushima, Chernobyl? Mailuu-Suu? the Polygon?
Hanford? Off the Somali coast? ... Heck, Indian Point?

Prolly not.

Also, yeah, ummm... uranium is finite... and thorium remains the energy source of the future,and always will be.

You don't need to make an argument for the conservation of fossil fuels. The pricing mechanism does this already. When fossil fuels get scarce, the price of oil goes up making it valuable to find more, to preserve what already exists, or to find alternative energies.

also fossil fuels aren't getting scarcer, the scarcity idea is a crock of ****

resources are directly tied to human ingenuity. We have a magnitude more access to more oil today from shale and fracking and deep sea drilling then we did in the 1900s

malthus does not apply to humanity, atleast for the next billion years of human existance