5 ms·
The article is a bit fast and loose with its data. Borssele indeed has limited high-energy radioactive waste; the article omits that there is also low-energy ra
by Beldin 4y ago
The article is a bit fast and loose with its data. Borssele indeed has limited high-energy radioactive waste; the article omits that there is also low-energy radioactive waste - a lot more, in fact.
Similarly, recycling may be a problem for solar panels, but is that better for nuclear? I have never heard / read about how to recycle the (radioactive) non-fuel parts of a nuclear reactor.
I'm not against nuclear per se, but articles such as this one don't help. I think there's a genuine case for nuclear to be made; this isn't it.
- jeffbee 4y agoRecycling is not in fact any kind of problem for solar. There is a large, organized campaign by the derelict energy industry to plant the meme of solar as some kind of toxic menace but it just isn't one. There is no cadmium in solar panels. There was a small amount in thin film panels briefly favored by utility-scale solar plants but thin film is economically dead and nobody is buying those. Antimony is used in the glass, not the panel. The glass contains ~1g/kg of antimony, and PV panels contain about 50 tonnes of glass per MW (most of the panel mass is the glass). That works out to 50kg of antimony per MW, i.e. basically none. If you took all the antimony out of a 1GW solar plant and somehow dissolved it in water - which can't happen because antimony trioxide isn't even soluble in water, and dissolving metals out of glass with water is practically impossible - and if you dumped all that into Lake Shasta, it would still be within drinking water standards. And again, nobody will dump this into the environment because fifty million kilos of high-grade glass is going to get recycled, not dumped. I think it's sad that the nuclear boosters are being duped into spreading these lies about solar panels.