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The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic panels: https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew
by missinfo 5y ago
The hype is going to die down the more we see landscapes and entire mountains being covered with non-recyclable, toxic panels:
https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786 https://twitter.com/ScienceIsNew/status/1458512267150966786
It strikes me as environmental vandalism. Solar panels make sense on roofs, not so much on landscapes. Maybe the desert, but you have transmission loss and still have to deal with the large amount of toxic landfill they generate. Nuclear makes much more sense for anything approaching base load.
- ben_w 5y agoPutting them in landfill implies is it harder to turn old PV into new PV than to build new PV literally out of rock. This does not seem plausible in long-term (short term, sometime has to actually build a factory to do it), and if it was true then we would’ve just substituted one polluting non-renewable (fossils) for another.
- thinkcontext 5y agoI assume you wring your hands just as much for mountain removal for coal? Or the coal ash ponds so toxic they kill workers by the dozen when they need to be cleaned up? Or the millions of lives whose health is damaged by fossil fuel externalities? By all means we should have frank discussions of the externalities of various technologies.
- missinfo 5y agoCorrect, coal is worse. But notice I said nuclear is the way to go.