3 ms·

The risk of injury or death while installing solar may be greater than nuclear by the numbers, but if a guy falls off his roof installing a solar panel it doesn

The risk of injury or death while installing solar may be greater than nuclear by the numbers, but if a guy falls off his roof installing a solar panel it doesn't poison the land around him for hundreds of years

oh_sigh 9y ago
If a guy falls off a roof building a nuclear plant, it doesn't poison the land for hundreds of years either. A more fair comparison would be if a PV manufacturing plant had an industrial accident and hundreds of thousands of gallons of nasty chemicals o to the land.
- roryisok 9y ago
  Yes I suppose it would. But if I had to choose (and I really hope I never do) I'd rather have silicon tetrachloride spilled in my town than nuclear waste.
dpark 9y ago
Perhaps not, but the waste from solar panel manufacturing might. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-... > The paper’s investigation, published in March 2008, profiled a Chinese polysilicon facility owned by Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., located near the Yellow River in the country’s Henan province. This facility supplied polysilicon to Suntech Power Holdings, at the time the world’s largest solar-cell manufacturer, as well as to several other high-profile photovoltaics companies. > The reporters found that the company was dumping silicon tetrachloride waste on neighboring fields instead of investing in equipment that could reprocess it, rendering those fields useless for growing crops and inflaming the eyes and throats of nearby residents. And the article suggested that the company was not alone in this practice.
- beat 9y ago
  That's not a particularly good argument, though. Are companies manufacturing solar panels breaking environmental laws to cut costs? Probably. Are companies manufacturing nuclear power components with exotic materials not breaking environmental laws to cut costs? Um.
  - dpark 9y ago
    Moving manufacturing/construction out of China and into the US increases regulatory oversight. It's very likely that nuclear manufacturing done in the US is cleaner than solar manufacturing done in China.

oh_sigh 9y ago

If a guy falls off a roof building a nuclear plant, it doesn't poison the land for hundreds of years either. A more fair comparison would be if a PV manufacturing plant had an industrial accident and hundreds of thousands of gallons of nasty chemicals o to the land.

roryisok 9y ago
Yes I suppose it would. But if I had to choose (and I really hope I never do) I'd rather have silicon tetrachloride spilled in my town than nuclear waste.

dpark 9y ago

Perhaps not, but the waste from solar panel manufacturing might. http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-always-as-green-as-you-think http://spectrum.ieee.org/green-tech/solar/solar-energy-isnt-... > The paper’s investigation, published in March 2008, profiled a Chinese polysilicon facility owned by Luoyang Zhonggui High-Technology Co., located near the Yellow River in the country’s Henan province. This facility supplied polysilicon to Suntech Power Holdings, at the time the world’s largest solar-cell manufacturer, as well as to several other high-profile photovoltaics companies. > The reporters found that the company was dumping silicon tetrachloride waste on neighboring fields instead of investing in equipment that could reprocess it, rendering those fields useless for growing crops and inflaming the eyes and throats of nearby residents. And the article suggested that the company was not alone in this practice.

beat 9y ago
That's not a particularly good argument, though. Are companies manufacturing solar panels breaking environmental laws to cut costs? Probably. Are companies manufacturing nuclear power components with exotic materials not breaking environmental laws to cut costs? Um.
- dpark 9y ago
  Moving manufacturing/construction out of China and into the US increases regulatory oversight. It's very likely that nuclear manufacturing done in the US is cleaner than solar manufacturing done in China.