
If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste? - vixen99
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2018/05/23/if-solar-panels-are-so-clean-why-do-they-produce-so-much-toxic-waste/#2a1c244a121c
======
DonHopkins
The late David MacKay's book "Sustainable Energy - without the hot air" is
available free online:

[http://www.withouthotair.com/](http://www.withouthotair.com/)

Here's the chapter about solar energy:

[http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml](http://www.withouthotair.com/c6/page_38.shtml)

Here's a 100 word synopsis he wrote for his talk to the House of Lords:

[http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/book/SUMMARY](http://www.inference.org.uk/sustainable/book/SUMMARY)

David MacKay also invented the Dasher text input system:

[http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/](http://www.inference.org.uk/dasher/)

~~~
llukas
Very good book but tech went lot further than David expected in many places
(ie. solar power efficiency vs price).

This page tried to keep it updated:

[https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1...](https://www.carboncommentary.com/blog/2017/3/30/l6qcqgoedse1wmjjz87t09usoq6jva)

~~~
yazr
Amazingly, LCOE prices of utility size PVs have dropped another 30% - 40% just
since this update alone.

And this is not some cherry picking. 2-3c/kwh in the US, India, Chile, Middle
East, etc..

------
TeMPOraL
A question I'd like to see answered: are solar panels net energy producers?
I.e. over their lifetime, do they generate more electricity than combined
energy that went into manufacturing, transporting and deploying them,
including the marginal energy costs of mining the necessary substances they're
made of?

Because if not, then they're a net waste.

I'd like to see a similar analysis on emissions instead of raw energy too.

It's not that I think solar is bad; it's just I don't understand why
discussions about energy and emissions never include end-to-end accounting of
energy costs & emissions.

\--

EDIT: Yes, I am lazy; in the Christmas fever I forgot about the term "EROI",
though I still see it discussed too rarely. But yay, thanks people for jumping
to conclusions and accusing me of motivated reasoning and/or sowing
disinformation. -.-

~~~
malux85
This is the right question.

A few years ago I worked for a wind turbine company (Admittingly a crappy one)
and I was one of two software engineers,

My first job was to analyse all of the data about 300 turbines were sending
back home, and build a dashboard.

Well a few weeks later after checking all of the data, it turns out that the
entire fleet of turbines actually consumed slightly more energy than they
produced.

This was because of many manufacturing problems meant there were several
frequencies that the turbine couldn’t spin at because it would generate a
resonance and shatter or break something. So the system was frequently
applying the break to stop the turbine destroying itself.

After several days of head scratching and double-checking and triple-checking
the data, I went to the mechanical engineers and they finally sheepishly
admitted they knew these things were net energy consumers rather than
producers.

This doesn’t even take into account the energy budget of cost of production
and distribution.

This isn’t the case for the big turbines you see out in the field, I’m really
just reenforcing the parent comments point that total energy needs to be
considered.

~~~
tgb
Why was applying a brake so energy intensive? Seems like it'd be practically
free.

~~~
misterdata
After braking the turbine isn't generating the energy it needs to in order to
be net positive.

~~~
mannykannot
For this to lead to a net negative, it has to be more than just a lost
opportunity to make energy: either it is a significant energy consumer (i.e.
not just a dissipater), or the turbines must be incapable of producing
significant amounts of energy even when working correctly. There is something
that has not been explained here.

~~~
hopler
That the turbines were incapable of producing significant amounts of energy
even when working correctly, is not out of the really of reason.

------
CptFribble
When you consider the whole life cycle start to finish, nuclear power is the
second safest in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour produced, only following
hydroelectric power. That also includes every nuclear disaster ever.

Solar energy is great, we need more of it, and I think the long-term future of
power includes a microwave transmission solar station at one of the Lagrange
points.

However, when you look at the total externalities, nuclear is actually the
safest and cleanest form of power that we could use in the medium term.

Except that everyone is afraid of it, and no one wants to spend the money.

~~~
adjkant
You say afraid as if it is a bad thing.

When you consider the timescale of nuclear power plants and how long nuclear
power has existed, safety stats seem to have a pretty low sample size with a
lot of uncharted territory.

That fear you mention is a very real and important one, because even if 99% of
plants operate under strict safety, it only takes one failure to cause massive
damage. Beyond lives and into land and resources, and additional risks of
further ecological harm.

For me, when considering if nuclear power is worth it, I think that we have so
many alternatives that will work well enough for a long-term horizon (let's
say 200 years) that any sort of risks of charting that new territory in
nuclear power and having that very large risk is not worth it currently.

That's not to say it won't be worth it in the future perhaps as climate change
worsens or in a century with additional safety tools possibly fueled by
additional scientific insight, but right now I think you're severely
undermining that some (not all) fear of nuclear power comes from a very
rational place.

~~~
sjwright
What are you talking about? The timescale of nuclear power is comparable to
most other forms of electricity generation. We have reliable, long term
statistics which show it to be insanely safe compared to all other forms of
generation, and that's despite the fact that all these reactors are shithouse
designs from the stone ages. We know how to build reactors that are orders of
magnitude more safe, which is remarkable since nuclear is already the safest
form of electricity.

As for using risk as an excuse to avoid it—nuclear power is orders of
magnitude safer than air travel, but you don't see anyone deciding that we
should continue to travel by boat.

~~~
adjkant
> As for using risk as an excuse to avoid it—nuclear power is orders of
> magnitude safer than air travel, but you don't see anyone deciding that we
> should continue to travel by boat.

if you look at failure rate, there are only 450 nuclear power plants currently
in existence as of 2016. To save time, let's do some napkin math and
estimation with charitable rounding. Let's say there are 1000 in existence. So
far we have seen at least one critical failure. For the sake of rounding,
let's charitably round that to 1 failure. Let's say that of those 1000 power
plants, the average time of existence is 40 years. That means that we have
about 40000 years of nuclear power plant testing so far. And we've had 1
failure in that, so if we use years, we have 1 in 40000 years.

Even adjusting to days, we get 1 in 14.6 million.

Looking at air travel, the crash rate is about 1 in 4 million.

Now consider the consequences of that one catastrophic failure compared to the
cost of a plane crash on average. You can't be serious when you say those are
the same.

Even with incredibly charitable looks at nuclear power safety stats it's
nowhere near your uncited "orders of magnitude" safer.

I think you really don't get the risk formula here. It's not about failure
percentage, it's about the consequences of any failure at all, no matter how
rare. An increase in nuclear power only increases the chances of any failure.

[https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-
powe...](https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-
world-wide.htm) [https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/travel/flight-crash-
app/index...](https://www.cnn.com/2015/01/22/travel/flight-crash-
app/index.html)

~~~
sjwright
Lies, damned lies, statistics.

One flight serves 100-400 people for a few hours. One nuclear reactor serves N
million people for N decades.

Everyone in a plane crash dies. What percentage of electricity users die in a
typical nuclear disaster? 0.001%?

------
Someone
_”they are not easy to recycle.”_ doesn’t mean they are impossible to recycle.

There already are companies working on it, since solar cell recycling will be
a huge market. It likely won’t be possible to fully recycle solar cells, but
what _can_ we recycle fully? At least, it will decrease the amount of left
over stuff significantly ([https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-
opportunities-...](https://www.greenmatch.co.uk/blog/2017/10/the-
opportunities-of-solar-panel-recycling))

One would hope most countries would introduce legislation requiring solar
panel recycling. The EU already has that, because solar panels fall under
theme waste directive
([http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/legis_en.htm](http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/weee/legis_en.htm))

~~~
WalterBright
I'm not sure why they need to be recycled. Aren't they mostly just silicon?
Silicon is sand? Aren't there a lot of other things that are more productively
recyclable?

~~~
pjc50
Sand is silicon dioxide. Wafers are pure silicon. Semiconductor silicon
contains small amounts of boron and phosphorous, aluminium metallisation;
panels are soldered together (may contain lead).

 _Some_ cells contain cadmium:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_telluride_photovoltaic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadmium_telluride_photovoltaics)
\- but this is not the dominant technology.

Translated conclusion from the linked article in German: ""The easiest way to
avoid environmental hazards caused by pollutants, at least in Europe, would be
to include photovoltaic modules like other electrical and electronic products
in the EU RoHS directive," the Stuttgart researchers suggest. "With the sole
prohibition of lead soldering in the modules, 97 percent of the photovoltaic
modules (with the exception of CdTe modules) would immediately be free from
pollutants and environmental hazards would be avoided.""

~~~
owenversteeg
That sounds like a really easy and important step. I wonder what the cost
increase would be, and why they're not included in RoHS?

~~~
pjc50
Hmm. I found [https://sinovoltaics.com/learning-
center/certifications/eu-r...](https://sinovoltaics.com/learning-
center/certifications/eu-rohs/)

.. which makes a certain amount of sense, but also illustrates a key nonsense
of ROHS. Certain products are _inherently made out of_ hazardous substances -
in this case, CdTe solar cells. So they get exempt. Just as you can't use lead
in solder, but you can take your lead-free PCB and attach it to a
comparatively huge lump of lead in the form of a lead-acid battery.

~~~
zaarn
Well, lead-acid batteries are one of the most recycled products in the world,
the entire lead of a lead-acid battery can be recycled, the lead we loose into
the environment from them is largely due to the batteries breaking or being
improperly disposed.

------
solarkraft
It's becoming boring to read these "But is x _really_ clean? Ha, got 'em"
articles.

Surely your coal powerplant doesn't produce _any_ toxic waste.

~~~
bad_user
The alternative isn't coal, the alternative is nuclear.

~~~
phyzome
Good thing nuclear plants don't produce any toxic waste either.

~~~
wbl
It's all about quantity. The quantity of radioactive waste a nuclear reactor
produces is small. It also quickly becomes comparatively harmless.

~~~
adjkant
I'm not a nuclear expert or anything but can you cite this? Isn't a big
negative of nuclear exactly that the waste lasts for so long? What exactly
does "relatively harmless" mean?

~~~
kemayo
I'm too lazy to find a really good source, but here's a quick summary.

The spent fuel of a nuclear power plant is a mix of various isotopes, which
will decay at different rates. Nuclear decay occurs when radiation is emitted
from a nucleus. Thus the more dangerously radioactive stuff decays a lot
quicker.

Idea is that something which is actively pumping out heat and deadly levels of
radiation might become safe(-er) within a few months to years. Getting to the
point of "you won't die if you spend an hour in the room with it" is still
decades of waiting away, though. And the entire spent fuel mix would take
thousands of years to get back to the radiation levels of the original ore we
fed into the plant.

All that said, a fun-ish comparison I've seen is that coal ash contains fairly
high levels of heavy metals like lead and cadmium, which genuinely _never_
become "safe". We have something like 1,500 ash disposal sites in the US which
are toxic hellscapes at risk of leaking into the surrounding areas.

~~~
phyzome
« Thus the more dangerously radioactive stuff decays a lot quicker. »

If it decays _very_ quickly, yes, it's less of a threat (except in case of a
spill from the reactor, where people would get exposed to fresh material.) If
it decays _very_ slowly... well, the damage just might be spread out over
time. I think a case could be made for that, at least...

But it's more complicated than that, anyway. Strontium, for instance, is a
particular problem because it is similar to calcium, so people's bodies
incorporate it into bones. Having it stick around in the body rather than
flushing out makes it more dangerous than it would otherwise be. Similar for
iodine, which is why nuclear meltdown preparedness programs involve having
potassium iodide pills on hand—to try to saturate the body with non-
radioactive iodine.

So the bioaccumulation potential must be considered as well, because what
matters is how long people are in _contact_ with radioisotopes.

------
dragonwriter
Answered (obliquely) in the article (which for some—presumably ideological,
given the source—reasons tries to not acknowledge this fact): because
environmental costs of disposal are a non-internalized externality which, if
internalized, would promote recycling except in certain disaster cases where
this became impractical, and eliminate most of the toxic waste.

------
pjc50
It would be nice to distinguish between different panel chemistry: it's not
news that CdTe or CIGS cells contain cadmium, but do crystalline ones?

Also, a sense of perspective; lots of roofs have either lead flashing (toxic
heavy metal) or bitumen (carcinogen) on them already.

~~~
baybal2
Moreover, the article also mentions Arsenic.

Arsenic is not used in production of PV cells today for exactly that reason,
and also because it is much slower diffusing bulk dopant in comparison to
Phosphorus.

The only reason Arenic was used in first generation of solar cells (eighties)
is because of technology commonality with the microelectronics industry. Bulk
manufactured cells never used Arsenic dopants.

------
bambax
Except when they are destroyed by a storm, etc., what makes a solar panel go
bad? Is there a chemical reaction inside that consumes something (that could
maybe be refilled) or is it just the fact that they are exposed to the
elements (and so maybe they should be made stronger)?

~~~
Someone
[https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/06/causes-
solar-p...](https://www.solarpowerworldonline.com/2017/06/causes-solar-panel-
degradation/):

 _”According to NREL, modules can fail because of unavoidable elements like
thermal cycling, damp heat, humidity freeze and UV exposure. Thermal cycling
can cause solder bond failures and cracks in solar cells. Damp heat has been
associated with delamination of encapsulants and corrosion of cells. Humidity
freezing can cause junction box adhesion to fail. UV exposure contributes to
discoloration and backsheet degradation.”_

~~~
ginko
Seems like quite a few of these could be avoided by regular maintenance.

~~~
baybal2
No, the biggest killer of PV cells is natural degradation

Photons and other energetic particles knock Silicon atoms out of lattice, and
tear the junction layer.

There is no 100% efficient trick against that so far in any common
semiconductor. Lithium dopant was once used in space PV cells. It almost
halves the decay rate, but even that was not considered enough to warrant
using it over simply having bigger area of less durable, but more efficient
cells.

------
baybal2
> Author: Michael Shellenberger

That is already telling. A _registered lobbyist..._

The two claims he makes:

1\. PV modules are made of Cadmium

Cadmium cells make less than 1% of the market, and they are a failed, dying
technology. CdTe cells were made in hopes of making cells cheaper by not using
a "microchip grade" silicon, but the people behind the startup making them
were completely wrong about economics of the process — the truth is completely
the opposite. It is silicon cells' process commonality with the rest of
semiconductor industry that makes them so cheap.

Hey, but thanks to those joke dudes called "venture capitalists" for spinning
them up.

2\. PV modules are made of Arsenic

No, only first generation of cells made in electronic fabs were made with
Arsenic as N dopant.

No commercial process ever used it. PV cells are N doped with Phosphorus
exactly for the reason that it is non-toxic, and because Phosphorus is simply
better as a bulk dopant. It is much faster diffusing, and requires lower
temperatures for dopant activation.

~~~
ThomPete
He is running for governor and a democrat btw. He used to be against nuclear
until he actually did the effort of understanding the facts and came out for
it. This made him persona-non-grata by the environmentalists.

So if you want to talk about lobbyism...

But thanks for proving the point. Claiming he is a lobbyist anymore than you
are is exactly the kind of shaming tactics that are being used instead of
arguments to silence people the majority don't wan't to hear..

~~~
lucb1e
> and a democrat btw

I like how Americans put politicians in one of two camps and make it an us vs.
them thing instead of having coalitions of parties to come to a good
conclusion for everyone.

~~~
ThomPete
I am a Dane living in the US. Denmark have 9 parties it's the same thing at
the end of the day. The conclusions are no better just because 4 parties got
them through.

------
agumonkey
There are few questions:

\- photovoltaic cell degradation (which, beside external breakage, is the
cause of recycling): so far it seems that cells degrade very slowly, 30 years
and still 80% original power

\- manufacturing: if everything is melted/glue/fused .. it's hard to recycle.
Maybe that's not a physical necessity but just old practice

\- silicon purification is said to be a energy hog, and uses lots of various
Cl based acids. Some say these acids are handled properly nowadays (quite
plausible). The energy side .. I wonder when we'll see a solar farm powering a
PV cell plant. e^e

What about other PV substrate? are perovskite toxic ?

------
dd36
Compared to what? Extracting fossil fuels requires bringing toxins to surface
and combusting them endlessly.

------
xte
The problem is not only cleanness but also scale and sustainability: we need
continuous power so if we go for solar panels we need to imaging a earth-wide
electrical network with veeeeeery small losses.

IMVHO solar panel are interested in modern houses (well insulated) as thermal
source to heat both sanitary water to head the house itself with a good
ventilation system. Photovoltaic may be interested a small scale local backup
for low power devices like emergency illumination, communications and perhaps
as a companion to thermo-solar for small pumps to make water circulation and
perhaps home ventilation. Nothing more.

~~~
isoprophlex
Your opinion is poorly informed. In the future we will still need high-exergy
energy sources. PV provides this; thermal tech doesn't.

Also, storage solutions for electricity exist, and these are not
fringe/academic technology. For example, electrical vehicles exist today. Once
everyone has an EV, that'll add ~50 kWh of storage capacity per EV to the
grid.

~~~
xte
Thinking li-ion battery as a solution for PV electricity storage means confuse
marketing bullshit with technology. Today's EV battery in 5/6 years will be
good to augment African's and Asian's waste cargo business. Nothing more.

You are right saying that we need and we will need more electricity, not
because of EV BTW, but PV is NOT an answers being an inconstant and low
efficiency power source.

And I speak not basing my assumption on someone else unverified publication
but due a semi-direct experience (few friends of mine in the recent past
transform their roofs for PV, myself having recently build my new house I
choose solar thermal to heat the house via a MCV and for sanitary water
production with a 1000l + 800l cumulus. I have few friends/relatives that
bought few EV, including two with a Tesla model S and I see how satisfy they
are(n't) and how they'r EV range decrease in a very short time.

~~~
therealdrag0
What about physical energy storage? Flywheels, weights, water-dams, molten-
salts, etc. When it's sunny, you store the electricity in one of these
systems, then you can draw it out anytime you want.

~~~
xte
Few solutions (like water-dams) prove to be really effective at a reasonably
big scale, however cost balance do not justify PV... It's far more interesting
wind power + water-dams or simply classic hydroelectric but again it's
feasible only in certain orthographic areas so it doesn't really scale for the
entire world... It's nice for Swiss, Austria, Norway, other all-mountains
countries but not for Germany, Russia, Australia, vast part of the USA etc.

Essentially with renewable energy the sole viable option is a mix of solutions
varying from place to place, scenario to scenario and while this can cover a
lot can't meet our entire energy requirements so it's good to invest but still
as a complement of other solutions.

That's why, beside bullshits, we try to suppress fossil energy production but
keep nuclear (any country say "we will ditch it, in a far future) and keep
researching on nuclear fusion.

In today's world people like to dream at any news but, unfortunately, most of
those news are pure marketing and even genuine ideas hardly scale. For
instance vast majority of people think that self-driving vehicles are already
there and it's only a matter of time to see them at scale; the truth is that
we can have autonomous driving only in simple scenarios like properly
urbanized towns and highway but we can't self-drive in harsh conditions like
when it snow, on unclear roads etc.

We advance a bit regularly, both on EV and self-drive, many country start to
install "helpers" on roads like specific reflective rods around road
intersections, radar-reflective asphalt (few aluminum debris in the asphalt
mix) and side-protections etc, we slowly start to provide few recharging
stations around, few country (like France for individual new homes garages)
mandate for newer constructions a recharge point for any private parking etc
but it's far from "being there" and for now it does not scale at all nor we
know how to made it scale.

And the same is for energy, few country strongly push domestic PVs to a point
they start ceasing to accept "exchange in place" of electricity because the
grind can't receive nor properly use peak production and costs of exchange are
higher than classic pyramidal distribution. Essentially we do not know how to
actually create a "smart grid", there are many ideas on the table but none
that prove to be complete and effective.

At a small, domestic, scale I recently built my new house and carefully
evaluate all options I here about and in the end the sole real cost-effective,
practical application of PV I found is a limited power production just to
backup my home ventilation and pump thermic-solar water but nothing more. I
can't use electric inconstant power, using it to heat water (the sole form of
usable storage in a modern house) is LESS effective and far expensive than
classic solar thermal vacuum panels, I can produce enough in summer to power
air-conditioning at peak time but the overall cost of PV
panels+inverter/microinverters due to their expected lifetime surpass
electricity cost of the net (it's relatively cheap here in France and having a
well insulated, and airtight and well oriented/designed house I do not need
much power)...

At larger scale I know few "big" PV power plants both classic, (high)
concentration photovoltaics etc but none of them are profitable without big
incentives simply because classic panel efficiency and lifetime is too low to
justify big investments, concentrated solutions are far better but they last
very little time, power production degrade really quickly and maintenance
costs climb at a very high rate. Other kind of solar power production like
high-concentration to produce vapor and power a classic turbine do a better
job but still have skyrocketing high maintenance costs and still inconstant
power production...

Long-story short: for now we do not have any definitive electric storage
viable solution except for very limited application. Researching on that topic
is a super-important priority but we have to keep up other options. For one
time it's not a political/commercial/reactionary move but a simple engineering
reason.

------
deevolution
Recycling the panels costs more than the value of the salvaged materials - but
the alternative is expensive environmental damage and danger to people.
Recycling is surely less expensive than the alternative.

~~~
Nasrudith
There is a third option - safe stockpiling of the old panels until they become
economical to harvest. They are pretty inert - just a concrete floor and a
roof overhead could prevent it.

------
noufalibrahim
Isn't concentrated solar power
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power))
an alternative way to harness solar energy and convert it into something
usable? While not useful for installations like a home roof, I thought it made
sense for generators and such.

~~~
pfdietz
It's largely not competitive with photovoltaics.

~~~
therealdrag0
It seems to still be competitive in some regions:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Costs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentrated_solar_power#Costs)

But, ya PV prices have fallen so much they're breaking people's expectations;
and they work without direct sunlight.

------
baybal2
All and every semiconductor manufacturing produces tons and tons of toxic
waste.

If people are so inclined, they are free to surrender all modern conveniences.

~~~
ThomPete
That's not really the proper way to think about this.

Computers with electricity and access to cheap and plentiful energy are a
baseline for everything else in modern society.

Solar has a bunch of advantages but the idea that it together with wind is
going to be able to solve our energy needs is simply misguided and thus it has
to undergo the same Cost/Benefit analysis as everything else does.

~~~
emj
You do have to think about externalities that hurt the earth; it is often
thought of as a political question what externalities to include in
cost/benefit analysis. We do not care about things that do not affect our
current beliefs (see climate change deniers, profit maximizers). Just because
something is a baseline in your life does not mean it is exempt from a
complete cost/benefit analysis.

~~~
ThomPete
You also have to think about externalities that improve human life and a bunch
of other things.

So yes you have to make the cost benefit analysis. I have yet to see someone
make a cost benefit analysis that would make solar and wind come out on top.

------
vemv
What if photovoltaic technology just isn't actually ready for showtime? i.e.
it may need more research, so there's a clear recycling plan for each unit.

We've seen this sort of thing before - being too quick to proclaim X is ready
to take over the world, without thinking of the consequences first. See
autonomous cars.

------
peter_retief
I once tried to have this conversation with people who were keen on clean
solar power, I suggested the evidence supports nuclear energy as the cleanest
option we have to date. Needless to say I was vilified and insulted. (The sun
is nuclear anyway :) )

~~~
pjc50
Cleanest if and only if nobody makes a mistake. Otherwise you end up with
unfixable messes. And decommissioning is hardly a solved or cheap problem.

~~~
AngryData
There might not be many mistakes if we weren't forced to use reactors designed
in the 50s and built in the 60s when we barely understood nuclear chemistry,
but rather modern designs using advanced nuclear chemistry and advanced
materials and design improvements.

If nuclear power was equated to cars then arguing about nuclear safety using
our current examples of failure would be like arguing about automobile safety
risks using a Model A.

~~~
Teknoman117
The largest sticking point for me with nuclear is the whole bigger is better
mentality. I'm all for it if we're going with passively safe designs. In
theory this could help the whole decentralized grid ideas along. I think it
would go a long way to ease public fear if we actually built reactors that
can't melt down under any circumstance.

I'm just scared of the big reactors. Nothing on this Earth is going to
passively remove 1.5 GW of heat coming from something the volume of a hot
water heater.

We also need to be recycling our waste like the other nations which use
nuclear power, not just chuck what's still 90% useful material in a holding
tank for eternity.

~~~
ThomPete
People think about this completely upsides down IMO.

Nature is killing more people every year than have been killed by nuclear in
all its time. The sun is killing more people than dies of nuclear (Melanomas
and skin cancer) I could go on.

Nuclear isn't as dangerous as it's been claimed and with never reactors the
actual security procedure is physical. On top of that investments into thorium
and fusion could have gotten us much further.

It's not that bigger is better it's that bigger is safer from a number of
perspectives.

Nuclear is by far the safest, greenest, most scalable, reliable energy source
we know how to use and it's many times safer than the very mother nature
everyone seems to want to save.

Nature doesn't give us a safe, friendly environment we then make unsafe it
gives us a hostile and dangerous environment which we then make safe.

Funny how disagreement in this always gets met with downvotes rather than at
least argument or reasoned disagreement.

Why is it so hard for people to disagree about this without it turning into a
downvote competition?

~~~
pjc50
[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514492/20-years-
on-...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1514492/20-years-on-Britain-
still-feels-the-effects-of-Chernobyl.html)

[https://www.guernicamag.com/the-fallout/](https://www.guernicamag.com/the-
fallout/)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_Rainbow_Warrior)

The problem with nuclear has always been trust, and repeated breaches of trust
- often in regards to weapons proliferation, from which fission can never
really be separated. See the ongoing efforts to prevent Iran's nuclear
programme, for example.

It also has a nasty habit of cost overruns, because projects don't scale down.
How overrun is Hinckley Point C now again?

Whereas solar cells scale down to the level of a few square milimeters on a
watch or calculator. The great lesson of silicon valley - AWS and everything
else - is that "big bang" projects always get beaten by things that can start
tiny and scale incrementally.

We need to deploy solar and wind now. Maybe in the 25 year lifetime of a solar
panel we can get a nuclear plant finished. Maybe fusion will work. Maybe
someone will find a way to stop Thorium reactors dissolving their own
plumbing.

~~~
ThomPete
That's not a problem with nuclear that's a problem with people.

Cost overruns come from extreme security legislation and the fact that we
haven't built enough so those are simply not proper arguments.

Add on top of that that solar will never, as in never ever be able to deliver
cheap (at scale), clean, plentiful and consistent energy which is the minimum
requirement for any type of energy any sane person would support.

Promoting something that is currently not providing more than 1% of the worlds
energy being heavily favored politically and with plenty of subsidies and
which will never support maybe more than 10% of the worlds energy needs which
is being very generous sounds like something the world will look back at in a
hundred years and think "What the hell were they thinking".

~~~
acdha
Blowing off real problems with breezy, unsupported denial is not helping your
credibility. If your goal is effective advocacy you should be acting like a
nuclear engineer, acknowledging the problems, and talking in detail about how
they’re being addressed in-depth. I generally agree that we need nuclear power
but that’s because I’ve read those articles rather than what you’re posting in
this thread.

~~~
ThomPete
What is unsupported in what i have said?

~~~
acdha
Here’s an example: “The amount of nuclear waste that actually exist is
microscopic”

It’d be wonderful if it’s true but you didn’t exactly cite sources or
otherwise explain how a claim which has been not true to a degree which has
factored into national politics is no longer true.

~~~
ThomPete
I don't have to cite anything. It was claimed there where a lot but not
actually demonstrated. Why should I prove a negative?

~~~
acdha
Because your goal is to be an effective advocate?

