WUWT:
The last few years have seen growing concern over what happens to solar panels at the end of their life. Consider the following statements:
– The problem of solar panel disposal will explode with full force in two or three decades and wreck the environment because it is a huge amount of waste which is not easy to recycle. 1
– 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 (53 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km). 2
– Contrary to previous assumptions, pollutants such as lead or carcinogenic cadmium can be almost completely washed out of the fragments of solar modules over a period of several months by rain water. 1
– In countries like China, India, and Ghana, people 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 plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth-defect causing) when inhaled. 2
Solar photovoltaic panels, whose operating life is 20 to 30 years, lose productivity over time. The International Renewable Energy Agency estimated that there were about 250,000 metric tons of solar panel waste in the world at the end of 2016 and that this figure would definitely increase. Solar panels contain lead, cadmium, and other toxic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. 3
In November 2016, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a warning that the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces each year is likely to increase from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the country has no plan for safely disposing of it. 4 A recent report found that it would take 19 years for Toshiba Environmental Solutions to finish recycling all of the solar waste Japan produced by 2020. By 2034, the annual waste production will be 70 to 80 time larger than that of 2020. 5
Maybe Elon Musk can blast them into outer space, thus “earning” more government money.
Amazing. People responsible for all of this “green energy” poppycock will never pay the piper.
This scientific evidence will be greeted by the greenies with the same enthusiasm as the story about the real environmental cost of the Toyota Prius, i.e. denial bordering on tantrum. Science is a bitch.
California recently mandated solar panels on all new construction and like plastic straws the panels will have to be banned years down the road. Create the problem, appear to fix the problem which usually means creating another problem.
We just need to invent the Technology to turn them into
Lunar Panels…Most of the Suns Energy comes from the Moon anyway..
Especially during Mitsubishi Eclipses.
This is nothing compared to the cost of tearing down all those ugly windmills when the subsidies go away. They will have to be dismantled or the gear boxes will eventually catch fire. Of course, the companies who put them up will simply go out of business.
Monuments to corporate greed, government corruption and public ignorance.
When i worked at a hazardous waste site they would reveive two to four fouryfive foot van trailers loaded with panels daily. Straight into landfill
Glue thin slices of nuclear waste next to each other to cover each solar panel. Make a multi-panel, (hay bale sized,) sandwich. Use strapping tape to secure the bundle. Fill a barge with bundles. Scuttle said barge into the Marianas Trench. Repeat as needed. Ocean pollution will be undetectable.
P.S. Stop making stupid fucking solar panels.
Toxic fumes? Birth defects? Environmental devastation?
Man, it’s like their advertising department is focused exclusively on me.
I’ll take 6 dozen.
Cut six holes into them and call them pool tables!
Weekly calls from “U.S. Solar”
Last time I told them my neighbor down the street has them and I didn’t want their ugly-ass panels on my roof.
Stunned silence tells me I may no longer be on their call list, finally.
Once again (and I hate to read like a broken record?) the law of “unintended” consequences……. Fookin’ retards!
“Speaking the truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act.” Geo. Orwell