Oh no, copper! Chromium! Next you're going to tell me of the fiendish plot to incorporate these into pots and pans to poison us all.
There is no reason to include As in PV. There are anti-renewable propaganda screeds that pretend otherwise ("look! GaAs PV cells are a thing, therefore all PV uses As!")
That leaves lead. Lead has been used for connections, but it is being phased out, not least because of EU environmental regulations. The PV cells themselves do not need lead.
I suspect you are just repeating anti-renewable lies here.
> I suspect you are just repeating anti-renewable lies here.
You speak with a tone of authority - do you have deep expertise and knowledge in this field? Yes or no? Please don't dodge the question.
This is the best article I could find with about 10 minutes of googling. I have excerpted a small portion, but there is more relevant information immediately following this portion.
This does not sound like a solved problem to me, at all.
3. Global photovoltaic market and waste generation
The market share of solar panels by technology group is shown in
Fig. 4. Currently, the volume of comprehensive connected PV panels is
rising sharply. Rapid growth is anticipated in the coming years with the
typical useful life of a solar panel of 25 years [1,12]. However, it is
expected that the total quantity of PV panels EOL will reach 9.57 million
tonnes by 2050 [4]. In 2014, the market was dominated by silicon-based
c-Si panels, which accounted for a 92% share of the market with those
based on CdTe technology at 5%, copper indium gallium (di) selenide
(CIGS) at 2%, with 1% accounted for by those manufactured from other
materials (dye-sensitized, CPV, organic hybrids) [4,14,15]. The market
share of c-Si PV panels is projected to decrease from 92% to 44.8%
between 2014 and 2030 [13,14]. The third-generation PV panels are
predicted to reach 44.1%, from a base of 1% in 2014, over the same
period [4,13–15].
Solar PV panels will probably lose efficiency over time, whereby the
operational life is 20–30 years at least [7,13,16]. The International
Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) estimated that at the end of 2016,
there were around 250,000 metric tonnes of solar panel waste globally
[12]. The solar panels contain lead (Pb), cadmium (Cd) and many other
harmful chemicals that could not be removed if the entire panel is
cracked [17–19]. In November 2016, the Environment Minister of Japan
advised that Japan’s production of solar panel waste per year is expected
to rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tonnes by 2040 and the country has no
plans to dispose of them safely and effectively [17,20]. A recent statement found that the Toshiba Environmental Solutions will take
approximately 19 years for reprocessing all solar massive waste of Japan
produced by 2020 [21]. The yearly waste will be 70–80 times higher by
2034 than the year before 2020 [21]. China with a larger number of
solar plants, currently operates around two times as many solar panels as
USA and has no proposals for the dumping of the whole old panels.
Despite the presence of environmental awareness, California, another
world leader in solar panels, also has no waste disposal plan. At the end
of their useful lives, only Europe requires the manufactures of solar
panels to collect and dump solar waste. Although solar panels were
disposed of on regular sites, it is not advisable because the modules can
degrade, and harmful chemicals can leach into the ground causing
drinking water contamination [22].
The lifetime of PV modules has been estimated for 25 years. Therefore, it can be assumed that the installed PV power (MW) becomes waste
after that period. To identify the time shifting, the years of installation
and the years of waste generation may be denoted as x and y, respectively where y ¼ xþ25 [1].
The listing of cadmium there should be a tipoff. Cd is used in CdTe, which is a small and shinking fraction of the PV market (most is Si, which does not use Cd; CdTe is also limited by the availability of tellurium). And I already explained about lead.
The projection there that c-Si market share will shrink seems very dubious. c-Si market share is growing, not shrinking (displacing multi xtal Si).
The waste from PV is largely glass, plastic, aluminum, and steel. All these will be in small quantities compared to what is produced elsewhere in the economy.
Actually it does matter if it's not properly processed. Government research found those metals were contaminating landfills, and imposed restrictions.
If you are interested in the facts, here are one. I believe in research done by my pro-PV government and scientists, not environmental shills and anti-science PV aficionados like you and this article.
Let me repeat: we have copper and stainless (chromium) steel pots and pans (or, in the case of stainless steel, surgical implants!) The idea that PV is dangerous because of those metals is absurd on its face. Chromium toxicity is from highly oxidized (hexavalent) chromium that will not be produced from Cr in ordinary structural materials.
My priors for interpreting statements like yours is to treat them as garbage. This is because renewables have been subject to an endless stream of BS criticism for decades. The expectation upon seeing more such clearly dubious criticism, such as yours that flies in the face of elementary chemistry, is that it's just more of the same.
There is no reason to include As in PV. There are anti-renewable propaganda screeds that pretend otherwise ("look! GaAs PV cells are a thing, therefore all PV uses As!")
That leaves lead. Lead has been used for connections, but it is being phased out, not least because of EU environmental regulations. The PV cells themselves do not need lead.
I suspect you are just repeating anti-renewable lies here.