6 ms·

This is one of the cons of this green energy movement, there is a shitload of waste from solar, wind, and batteries that nobody wants to talk about.

ahartmetz 7y ago
People are bad at comparing, say, 10k tons of solid waste to 10M tons of CO2. That doesn't mean that they are equally bad. I think it's fine not to talk about it because people will easily get stupid ideas like renewables being just as bad for the environment. Cost, land / real estate, storage, and transport are some real problems.
ben7799 7y ago
Worse than the millions of tons of pollutants released per second every day all over the world from non-green energy? Non-green energy releases more than 2 million tons/second of CO2 alone every day. There probably haven' been 2 million tons of turbine blades produced in history.
cptskippy 7y ago
> a shitload of waste How does it compare to traditional energy sources in terms of volume and toxicity?
wklauss 7y ago
The fact that we are discussing a published article seems to suggest somebody wants to talk about it. Also, non renewable sources of energy produce a ton of waste as well! Petroleum refining, for example, is notoriously wasteful. More info: https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.html https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.ht... In this case, it seems more like a logistics problem than an environmental one since the blades are made from inert materials and therefore good candidates for landfill. I'm assuming the cost does not justify crushing it for other uses but it could be done at some point if needed.
hristov 7y ago
No there isn't. The waste is very limited and quite benign compared to fossil fuel waste. Take these turbine blades. Ok, you have to put them into a landfill after 20 years of use, but as far as things you have to put into a landfill, it is the best you can ask for -- it does not pose a danger to the environment, it will not leak poisons into the groundwater. More or less it will just sit there forever. In comparison, coal and oil produce air pollution that you cannot sequester, that you have to release in the air for people to breather. Oil further produces liquid waste that is very difficult to sequester and regularly destroys the environment, and poisons drinking water. Coal further produces massive amounts of coal ash, that is incredibly dangerous and hard to store and regularly gets released into the air or the drinking water when hit by extreme whether. Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Even then, the complex cooling systems regularly fail, and do occasionally release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. All of the above not only produce much more waste but their waste is far more dangerous and damaging.
- keanzu 7y ago
  > Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Seems like you are talking about high-level waste (HLW) which is just 0.2% [1] of all radioactive waste by volume. The cooling you are referring to is a passive cooling pond [2], there's no active cooling. There are no radioactive gases escaping from the spent fuel - not small or massive amounts. Spent nuclear fuel is a solid. Liquid waste is from weapons programs, not power generation. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool Is radioactive fuel wildly more difficult and dangerous to manage than a few thousand inert turbine blades? Absolutely.
HoustonRefugee 7y ago
I have to agree. No one really talks about EOL for alternate energy gear. I would call not knowing what do with the blades when they reach EOL is a serious oversight. "Can't be recycled" usually means "it is not economically feasible to recycle them and still turn a profit".
- jascii 7y ago
  More often than not: "and still turn the same profit"
jascii 7y ago
People talk about it all the time, like for instance the original article. The problem is that it gets a bit tiresome to counter the same nonsense again and again: Yes, everything we as humans do has an environmental impact. No, the impact is not even close to the impact of fossil fuels.
- clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
  I never suggested that it is as bad as fossil fuels.
  - jascii 7y ago
    "This green energy movement" as compared to what then? perpetuum mobile?
rsynnott 7y ago
I mean, this seems like a much more tractable problem than, say, coal fly ash (you typically get a choice of storing that in big holding ponds which subsequently leak, or directly in the local populations' lungs). Or, er, CO2. Also, you're literally commenting on an article about it in a major media outlet, so I'm a bit dubious about this "no-one wants to talk about it" thing.
imtringued 7y ago
What about the billion tons of coal exhaust in the atmosphere?

ahartmetz 7y ago

People are bad at comparing, say, 10k tons of solid waste to 10M tons of CO2. That doesn't mean that they are equally bad. I think it's fine not to talk about it because people will easily get stupid ideas like renewables being just as bad for the environment. Cost, land / real estate, storage, and transport are some real problems.

ben7799 7y ago

Worse than the millions of tons of pollutants released per second every day all over the world from non-green energy? Non-green energy releases more than 2 million tons/second of CO2 alone every day. There probably haven' been 2 million tons of turbine blades produced in history.

cptskippy 7y ago

> a shitload of waste How does it compare to traditional energy sources in terms of volume and toxicity?

wklauss 7y ago

The fact that we are discussing a published article seems to suggest somebody wants to talk about it. Also, non renewable sources of energy produce a ton of waste as well! Petroleum refining, for example, is notoriously wasteful. More info: https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.html https://archive.epa.gov/epawaste/hazard/web/html/index-63.ht... In this case, it seems more like a logistics problem than an environmental one since the blades are made from inert materials and therefore good candidates for landfill. I'm assuming the cost does not justify crushing it for other uses but it could be done at some point if needed.

hristov 7y ago

No there isn't. The waste is very limited and quite benign compared to fossil fuel waste. Take these turbine blades. Ok, you have to put them into a landfill after 20 years of use, but as far as things you have to put into a landfill, it is the best you can ask for -- it does not pose a danger to the environment, it will not leak poisons into the groundwater. More or less it will just sit there forever. In comparison, coal and oil produce air pollution that you cannot sequester, that you have to release in the air for people to breather. Oil further produces liquid waste that is very difficult to sequester and regularly destroys the environment, and poisons drinking water. Coal further produces massive amounts of coal ash, that is incredibly dangerous and hard to store and regularly gets released into the air or the drinking water when hit by extreme whether. Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Even then, the complex cooling systems regularly fail, and do occasionally release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. All of the above not only produce much more waste but their waste is far more dangerous and damaging.

keanzu 7y ago
> Nuclear produces waste that must be continuously cooled at great cost so that it does not set itself on fire and release massive amounts of radioactive gasses. Seems like you are talking about high-level waste (HLW) which is just 0.2% [1] of all radioactive waste by volume. The cooling you are referring to is a passive cooling pond [2], there's no active cooling. There are no radioactive gases escaping from the spent fuel - not small or massive amounts. Spent nuclear fuel is a solid. Liquid waste is from weapons programs, not power generation. [1] https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-wastes-myths-and-realities.aspx https://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fu... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spent_fuel_pool Is radioactive fuel wildly more difficult and dangerous to manage than a few thousand inert turbine blades? Absolutely.

HoustonRefugee 7y ago

I have to agree. No one really talks about EOL for alternate energy gear. I would call not knowing what do with the blades when they reach EOL is a serious oversight. "Can't be recycled" usually means "it is not economically feasible to recycle them and still turn a profit".

jascii 7y ago
More often than not: "and still turn the same profit"

jascii 7y ago

People talk about it all the time, like for instance the original article. The problem is that it gets a bit tiresome to counter the same nonsense again and again: Yes, everything we as humans do has an environmental impact. No, the impact is not even close to the impact of fossil fuels.

clSTophEjUdRanu 7y ago
I never suggested that it is as bad as fossil fuels.
- jascii 7y ago
  "This green energy movement" as compared to what then? perpetuum mobile?

rsynnott 7y ago

I mean, this seems like a much more tractable problem than, say, coal fly ash (you typically get a choice of storing that in big holding ponds which subsequently leak, or directly in the local populations' lungs). Or, er, CO2. Also, you're literally commenting on an article about it in a major media outlet, so I'm a bit dubious about this "no-one wants to talk about it" thing.

imtringued 7y ago

What about the billion tons of coal exhaust in the atmosphere?