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From Slashdot:

A new study by Environmental Progress warns that toxic waste from used solar panels now poses a global environmental threat. The Berkeley-based group found that solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear-power plants.

I'm specifically interested in whether:

  • The article accurately summarizes the study
  • The study withstands scrutiny and whether it has valid criticism
  • The study conclusion is supported by other studies
user5341
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    Even if so, they're different types of toxic. Industrial byproducts can be treated or otherwise mitigated; nuclear waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years. – Kevin Jul 05 '17 at 16:10
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    "Study" may be a generous term for what looks like a footnoted blog post (http://www.environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis) from an avowedly pro-nuclear organization that "defines as toxic waste the spent fuel assemblies from nuclear plants and the solar panels themselves, which contain similar heavy metals and toxins as other electronics, such as computers and smartphones." – jeffronicus Jul 05 '17 at 16:13
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    [Similar type of question](https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/q/38386/39853). – Jordy Jul 06 '17 at 07:09
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    I have a few gallons of toxic waste in my garage (mostly used motor oil) which doesn't worry me too much. A few gallons of uranium on the other hand would wipe the entire city as it would be well above the critical mass. – Dmitry Grigoryev Jul 06 '17 at 08:38
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    @DmitryGrigoryev: The problem with spent nuclear fuel is neither the possibility of criticality excursion nor the uranium in there -- uranium is comparatively tame compared to some of its fission products, and those pose the big problem (looking at you, Cs137). That's why the fuel rods going *into* a reactor don't require much in the way of special handling, but the fuel rods coming *out* of a reactor are "hot" indeed. – DevSolar Jul 06 '17 at 09:39
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    " Discarded solar panels, which contain dangerous elements such as lead, chromium, and cadmium" - No... they don't. They contain silver, copper, silcon and aluminium, in reverse order of volume. There are *some* solar panels, (less than 1% of maunfactured) namely the CdTe technology ones, which naturally contain cadmium, but I am personally hoping that solar cells made of (toxic metals + incredibly rare substance) is going to show its fiscal unfitness anytime soon. – Stian Jul 06 '17 at 09:40
  • @StianYttervik: Not quite correct, or rather, oversimplified. The [materials](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Materials) used in solar cells differ depending on the type of cell, each with its own pro's and con's. – DevSolar Jul 06 '17 at 11:28
  • @DevSolar certainly simplified, aside from fringe/emergent technologies like organic solar cells, the only major toxic content in commercially available cells is Cadmium, from CdTe - which has a tiny market share and the cells are slimmer than wafer based ones so it doesn't add up to much in weight. If there are any other toxic contents worthy of mention, please mention them. – Stian Jul 06 '17 at 12:46
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    @StianYttervik: Indium, selenide, arsenide, depending on the compound(s) they appear in. Plus the waste produced when mining those. Plus the lead in the soldering, for example. -- Note that I am not backing the claim, not by a long shot. I am just criticizing the blanket statement pro solar panels, which is making the pro-solar standpoint (which I share) needlessly vulnerable. – DevSolar Jul 06 '17 at 12:52
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    @DevSolar Arsene, true. I forgot that one. The other ones are not very toxic. Lead in soldering is just equal to general eletric/electronic waste, no need to point fingers on a particular power generating technology for that. It is not like we are going back to punched-hole-card computers because of it. It seems like we are of the same opinion and merely disagreeing on the small things. =) – Stian Jul 06 '17 at 13:12
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    WRT nuclear power, you have to really give some consideration to what's meant by "waste". For instance, the spend fuel assemblies can readily be recycled/reprocessed to produce new fuel. Reactors can even be designed to produce more fuel than they consume. Something similar is probably true of used solar panels and the "waste" from the production stream. If it contains rare elements, it can probably be recycled profitably. – jamesqf Jul 06 '17 at 18:57
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    I'd take 300 cubic feet of used solar panels in my backyard for every cubic foot of nuclear waste the producer of this statistic takes in theirs. – Myles Jul 06 '17 at 19:34
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    @Kevin Nuclear waste can also be treated and mitigated, and it is routinely done. And the more radioactive the waste is, the faster it *stops* being radioactive (which is why nuclear waste is safe enough to handle given a few precautions after a few years in a pool). A lot of the complications come from (reasonable) fears of nuclear proliferation etc. But you're entirely right that comparing "kilograms of waste" is nonsense. Combustion engines produce tons of water as waste, but we usually aren't too concerned about that. Though e.g. uranium is more dangerous as a heavy metal than a radiator. – Luaan Jul 07 '17 at 09:51
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    @kevin Nuclear waste can also be treated or otherwise mitigated, and lead is dangerous for millions of years. – barbecue Jul 07 '17 at 14:31
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    @jamesqf: Nuclear reprocessing recovers up to 10% of the uranium as re-usable, with the rest being about 7% highly radioactive and 93% low radioactive, plus loads of contaminated water and air. As for breeder reactors, there are exactly two in production use today, [Beloyarsk 3 and 4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beloyarsk_Nuclear_Power_Station). By design, breeders are less safe than conventional reactor designs. I was not able ad-hoc to find numbers on the efficiency of breeder reactor fuel reprocessing though. – DevSolar Jul 07 '17 at 15:02
  • A minor comment: CdTe solar panels (PV) are not generally classified as hazardous waste per federal (EPA) guidelines (http://www.clca.columbia.edu/papers/Life_Cycle_Impact_Analysis_Cadmium_CdTe_Photovoltaic_production.pdf ) but can fail in stricter states like California (http://digitalcommons.law.ggu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1064&context=gguelj ), and it seems other PV are less hazardous such that California doesn't label them as hazardous. So in that sense, not all PV are "toxic waste". – BurnsBA Jul 07 '17 at 19:54
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    As a side note, if you're considering the panels themselves to be waste once their life is over, there is *quite a large amount* of concrete in the average power plant. – SomeoneSomewhereSupportsMonica Jul 08 '17 at 10:34
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    As usual, it depends on where you're standing. 'nuclear waste is dangerous for tens of thousands of years' is meaningless wihout numbers, (how dangerous, and how does the hazard vary with time?). Half-lives and decay-chains require more than one headline to judge the danger from a mix of radioactive isotopes over time. One might claim that 'ordinary' CO2 is much more dangerous because it has an infinite half life :) – Martin James Jul 09 '17 at 09:52
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    @DmitryGrigoryev 'A few gallons of uranium on the other hand would wipe the entire city as it would be well above the critical mass' what? I presume you mean weapons-grade enriched U235. If you have that much in your garage, (gallons?), even if sufficiently distributed to avoid criticality, you are in little danger from radioactive emissions, but are likely to be killed very soon as terrorists massacre you and your family to get at such an 'asset' :) Natual uranium is not that dangerous,. It's nowhere near as active as, say, Pu239 ,(and even that is mostly an alpha emitter). – Martin James Jul 09 '17 at 10:01
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    @SomeoneSomewhere Not as much as you might think, though. A typical solar panel has around 10 W peak per kg. A typical light-weight nuclear powerplant requires about 50 tons of steel and 300 tons of concrete per MWe (with rather outdated technology, mind you - modern designs get to 120 tons easily, top-of-the-line *less than a ton*). It also lasts about twice as long on average and has a larger capacity, but even if we ignore that, you still have nuclear at 350 tons per MWe and solar at 100 tons per MWe of peak power. Not to mention less waste from clearing the land :P – Luaan Jul 10 '17 at 08:29
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    About the CdTe solar cells: when I saw this discussion, I remembered that First Solar (a big CdTe cell producer) had a special end-of-life recycling program. I'm not quite sure what the status of that program is right now, but at the very least it shows that the PV industry is aware of the risks of the materials they use. – Sjoerd Smit Jul 10 '17 at 09:46
  • @Myles 'I'd take 300 cubic feet' - as this thread shows, you need to be very careful when comparing stuff for equivalence. The energy density of reactor-grade uranium is VERY high, and you may well find that, for a 'fair' exchange' you would end up with 300 feet cubed of solar panels in your yard;) – Martin James Jul 11 '17 at 11:10
  • @MartinJames So I would get a 9x9x11 pile of trash and they'd get around 1000 lb of highly radioactive material... I'd take one for the team. – Myles Jul 11 '17 at 13:43
  • @Myles '9x9x11'? 300 feet cubed is a cube 300 feet on each side:) – Martin James Jul 12 '17 at 07:07
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    @Martin You are right that my number is off but mine is actually too high. Volume of a box shaped object is L x W x H. Your 300x300x300 cube is 27,000,000 cubic feet. 300 cubic feet is would be a box of 5x6x10 which is somewhere between motorcycle sized and subcompact car sized. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_foot – Myles Jul 12 '17 at 14:21
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    @Kevin *"Industrial byproducts can be treated or otherwise mitigated"*. Can they now? How do you "mitigate" and "treat" mining byproducts, mineral refining waste and similar in such a way they suddenly turn harmless? –  Oct 27 '17 at 11:12

2 Answers2

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This study, by a nuclear advocacy group, is based on treating a cubic meter of used solar panels as being equivalent to a cubic meter of spent uranium.

Just digging around the links, I find the following:

  • Yes, slashdot's description is pretty accurate.
  • "Environmental progress" is a pro-nuclear advocacy group. The website initially presents as a general environmentalist and social advocacy group, but looking at their "this is a source of concern that we need to mobilize about" pages makes it clear that pro-nuclear is what they do and are.
  • The "study" was made from relatively small amounts of generally available data with a lot of assumptions. It also equates "solar waste" (ie, discarded solar panels, which contain relatively small quantities of things like lead) with nuclear waste (ie, discarded radioactive materials) and compares them by volume (discarded solar panels being significanly less dense than spent uranium). It's pretty blatantly biased.

the "study":

The study defines as toxic waste the spent fuel assemblies from nuclear plants and the solar panels themselves, which contain similar heavy metals and toxins as other electronics, such as computers and smartphones.

To make these calculations, EP estimated the total number of operational solar panels in 2016 and assumed they would all be retired in 25 years — the average lifespan of a solar panel. EP then estimated the total amount of spent nuclear fuel assemblies that would be generated over a 25 year period. EP then divided both estimates by the quantity of electricity they produced to come up with the waste per unit of energy measure.

While nuclear waste is contained in heavy drums and regularly monitored, solar waste outside of Europe today ends up in the larger global stream of electronic waste.

Solar panels contain toxic metals like lead, which can damage the nervous system, as well as chromium and cadmium, known carcinogens. All three are known to leach out of existing e-waste dumps into drinking water supplies.

This was then seized on and amplified by the National Review - not exactly known for a strong pro-environmental stance.

...and the initial bullet points from the site's "Clean Power In Crisis" US Section

In the 1960s and 70s, the US was the world leader in nuclear technologies.

Half of the US nuclear fleet is now at risk of premature closure by 2030.

Wind and solar receive, respectively, 17 and 140 times more in federal subsidies than nuclear.

Thirty states have mandates to deploy clean energy that exclude nuclear.

It would take 12 years to replace the 120 billion kilowatt-hours of yearly production from the eleven at-risk nuclear plants with wind and solar, and 81 years to replace the entire reactor fleet. Dozens of climate scientists and conservationists urged former president Barack Obama to do everything in his power to protect and expand America's largest source of clean energy. They have also written to President Donald Trump and the leaders of large environmental organizations.

So, yeah. A blatantly biased group is twisting the numbers hard to try to make nuclear look good at the expense of non-nuclear clean energy sources.

user56reinstatemonica8
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Ben Barden
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  • From their About page: "Environmental Progress's biggest victories were saving America's largest source of clean energy — nuclear power — in Illinois and New York." – jeffronicus Jul 05 '17 at 16:15
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    So the study measures toxic waste not by actual toxicity, but only by weight? And not even by weight of any toxic material, but by weight of the total garbage, including non-toxic? That doesn't seem very reasonable. I would +1, but skeptics.SE discourages completely unsourced answers. Could you add a link to the about page of EP and a link to their "study" (plus relevant excerpts)? If you have, actual numbers about the toxicity of solar and nuclear would also be great, although it seems that the 300 number is clearly unreasonable, and links to EP itself should make this clear. – tim Jul 05 '17 at 16:37
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    @tim I would say the source is in the OP, as it's just careful reading & interpreting it mostly – user2813274 Jul 05 '17 at 17:41
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    I added some quotes, for those who don't like having to click a few links. I also noticed... it wasn't even comparing based on mass. It was comparing based on *volume*. Spent uranium is pretty dense stuff, I suppose, and if you're going to spin it hard enough to equate discarded solar panels with spent fuel cores, why hold back at all? – Ben Barden Jul 05 '17 at 17:53
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    In fairness, can you explain why mass is a better measure of toxic waste than volume. If you are talking about filling up a dump, volume is the more relevant measure. – kingledion Jul 05 '17 at 18:44
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    @kingledion the better measure would be something about overall level of toxicity - something that spent uranium loses out on horribly, as compared to solar panels. – Ben Barden Jul 05 '17 at 19:00
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    @kingledion Mass is better because that's how we define ld50 and how the transport of bad stuff into watersheds and the like is expected to work. But I understand the common concern is about how bad is it to just bury it. Cubic miles of stuff you can later build housing developments over isn't as interesting as a few cubic meters you can't get anyone to agree to throw down a deep hole a hundred miles from where people live. –  Jul 05 '17 at 19:00
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    @kingledion Even if you are most concerned about landfill volume, you would have to compare the volume after the solar panels have been compacted using standard landfill practices... Attempting to compact the uranium would be a bad idea. – user3067860 Jul 05 '17 at 20:43
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    "is based on treating a cubic meter of used solar panels as being equivalent to a cubic meter of spent uranium", but thats not how the OP reads which specifically says "per unit of energy". Doesn't that imply that it is the amount of Uranium used to produce 100MW of power vs the amount of solar panels to produce 100MW of power? Many more solar panels would be necessary hence much more mass. – Octopus Jul 05 '17 at 20:48
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    @Octopus It's both. The "study" is rating toxic waste produced per unit of energy, and asserting that solar panels qualify as toxic waste. It's measuring that toxic waste by volume - pretending that the waste cost of a cubic meter of spent uranium is equivalent to that of a cubic meter of used solar panels. – Ben Barden Jul 05 '17 at 20:55
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    @user3067860 And of course if they were serious about comparing landfill size, they'd consider how much of the PV units can be recycled in 25 years. Already in 2017 we have [a company claiming to be able to recycle 96% of a used PV module](http://www.pvcycle.org/press/breakthrough-in-pv-module-recycling/), and that's despite the volume of PV waste not being particularly high yet. – user56reinstatemonica8 Jul 05 '17 at 21:06
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    Why does this answer call Slashdot’s description “pretty accurate” if it includes claims like “300 times more toxic waste” when the factor of 300 is based on, well, things that are not *toxic* waste? – KRyan Jul 06 '17 at 04:20
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    @KRyan, Slashdot summarizes the article and the summary is accurate. It makes no claims towards its veracity. – Celos Jul 06 '17 at 06:36
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    Mass vs volume: Uranium is very very heavy. One kilogram of dirty water is 1000 cubic centimetres. One kilogram of uranium is only about 50 cubic centimetres. So with the same amount, dirty water will have twenty times the volume. – gnasher729 Jul 06 '17 at 08:45
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    @gnasher729: Uranium is very *dense.* – phoog Jul 06 '17 at 13:41
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    Note that decommissioning of a nuclear plant involves dismantling at least the reactor vessel. There's lots more waste than the fuel. If you're just comparing the fuel weight, well, photons are massless ;) – JollyJoker Jul 06 '17 at 14:57
  • On "toxic waste" vs "waste"; a search shows even Wattsupwiththat edited their headline to remove the word "toxic" :) – JollyJoker Jul 07 '17 at 12:56
  • How much does it cost to decommission a PV panel? Someone has to disconnect and dismantle it. It must be transported to the recycling plant, and then actually recycled. – Martin James Jul 09 '17 at 10:19
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    @MartinJames In the EU, producers of panels are responsible for disposal and recycling. I tried to find some numbers on how that affects prices but gave up. – JollyJoker Jul 09 '17 at 12:52
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    Better metric to compare toxicity would be in amount of lethal dose units (amount of toxin required to produce 50% lethal dose for average human, e.g. LD50 in mg/kg for proportionate mix of all toxins involved x 62 kg) per unit of energy produced, imo. Of course toxicity to non-human environment will require different metric but these are the _lines_ one should be thinking along, I'd think. – The_Sympathizer Jul 10 '17 at 03:07
  • @JollyJoker It's hard to judge prices correctly in such a massively subsidised segment of the market anyway. I think it's safe to assume that if the recycling costs were to rise significantly, the subsidies would be increased to compensate again, unless the politicians find some new pet issue to support in the meantime :) – Luaan Jul 10 '17 at 08:17
  • When comparing volume, shouldn't the uranium waste also include the exclusion zone around the waste? As far as toxicity goes, does the uranium waste include the lead shielding used to contain the radiation? – John Deters Jul 10 '17 at 14:16
  • @JohnDeters what lead? If you're referring to uranium mine tailings, no shielding is used. As for very-high-level radioactive waste like spent fuel rods, water ponds, concrete and finally steel drums are typically used for shielding. – Martin James Jul 11 '17 at 11:02
  • Bias is not justification for dismissal. The primary issue with this study is that the study didn't come up with a toxicity measurement to make the comparison accurate. That said, Nuclear also could be improved significantly through the allowance of Breeder reactors that would substantially increase the amount of power generated per given measurement of waste. This study has holes to be sure, but it's also not far off on the value of the two solutions. (Remember, solar also requires batteries for grid operation, even more waste there...) – TChadwick Sep 09 '21 at 20:31
  • @TChadwick bias is not justification for dismissal. That's true. I do not dismiss their findings such as they are - by volume alone, I'm sure that solar does generate more "waste" panels than nuclear does spent fuel rods. As for toxicity measurements - of *course* they didn't. In context (which is what the bias note helps with) this wasn't intended as a scientific effort at all. It was purely a propaganda effort, and any sort of comparative toxicity measurement would have severely undermined their intended narrative. – Ben Barden Sep 10 '21 at 13:12
  • @TChadwick breeder reactors can indeed make nuclear more efficient... at the cost of generating weapons-grade nuclear materials that you then need to worry about people turning into bombs. There's a reason we don't use those so much. As for "not far off" - I find that assertion farcical on the face of it. If you truly hold it, though... feel free to post an answer to that effect, and we'll see how well your position holds up to actual scrutiny. – Ben Barden Sep 10 '21 at 13:15
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No. Nuclear energy produces far more toxic waste than solar.

Distribution of the fake news story

The fake news that began circulating at the end of June 2017 stems from a self-described "study" conducted by the nuclear industry advocate, Environmental Progress (EP). James Hansen, a nuclear proponent previously a lead in climate modelling at NASA, has unfortunately been dispersing this disinformation. In February 2018 he said he had been unaware of the method used to produce the graph he displayed. EP published the graph only in their blog, where they described their method: "The study defines as toxic waste the spent fuel assemblies from nuclear plants and the solar panels themselves." They used TrinaSolar module specifications, assumed a 25 year lifetime, and used the module's entire installed volume as the volume of toxic waste. For nuclear, they used only the spent fuel assembly. They arrived at the two numbers displayed in a bar graph and repeated in various articles and Hansen's presentation: 34,000 cubic meters per TWh for solar and 101 cubic meters per TWh for nuclear. (Deasi and Nelson 2017).

The blog was immediately embellished by several conservative news outlets, including SlashDot and the the National Review. Some articles added to the strange logic. One, for example, did a life cycle cost analysis comparing solar to nuclear by using the assumption that this solar panel waste will need to be buried in 2-5 km deep boreholes being considered for spent nuclear fuel. (Middleton 2017). Another article in the Daily Caller explained why solar panel waste should be considered more dangerous than nuclear waste: nuclear waste is radioactive and will therefore go away, while after 30 years on your roof, the solar panel module doesn't radioactively decay and will have to be disposed of permanently. (Follet 2017).

Toxic waste stream of solar PV

The majority of a solar panel module's mass is glass, which can be recycled. The steel housing is also recycled. The panel itself is usually silicon, which is also non-toxic and can be recycled into new semiconductor material. A fraction of solar panels use CdTe as the semiconductor material. Lead and silver are captured in the waste stream for all solar panels, but the cadmium is the most problematic waste generated by manufacture and disposal of solar panels is cadmium. Even for CdTe solar panels, nuclear power generates more cadmium waste on per-unit-energy basis. (Mulvaney, 2014) Manufacturers of CdTe panels monitor for worker safety and environmental emissions and have 0 incidents across ten years of US manufacturing. (Heard, 2014)

Even if you only look at cadmium and make the faulty assumption that solar panels will be disposed of instead of recycled, nuclear power generates more cadmium in waste than solar panels use in the entire manufacturing process. Nuclear power generates a wide variety of toxic waste materials, and one minor constituent is cadmium. Even as a minor constituent of the total nuclear waste, it is still significant compared to cadmium produced by other energy sources (Mulvaney, 2014):

  • Coal: 3.0 g Cd per Gwh
  • CdTe PV: 0.3 g Cd per Gwh
  • Si PV: 0.0 g Cd per Gwh (or 0.9 g Cd per Gwh if manufactured with electricity sourced from coal)
  • Fission: 0.5 g Cd per Gwh

Toxic waste stream of nuclear

While nuclear fission produces more cadmium waste compared to CdTe solar panels, cadmium is hardly the only waste from fission. Nuclear waste includes many categories of radioactive waste, all with different storage requirements. Spent nuclear fuel is a small fraction of total radioactive waste.

Nuclear power waste includes: (IAEA 2018)

  • HLW (high-level waste) includes spent fuel and requires containment for tens of thousands of years
  • ILW (intermediate level waste) radioactive wastes requiring containment for thousands of years
  • LLW (low-level waste) "requires robust isolation and containment for periods of up to a few hundred years" but can be stored in near-surface facilities
  • VLLW (very low-level waste) can be disposed of in special landfills

HLW is only 0.06% of the total radioactive waste, and only 1% of the HLW is solid, the portion of waste that includes spent fuel. So less than 0.0006% of nuclear waste is the spent fuel assembly, the only part of the waste included in the EP blog. Said differently, nuclear power creates 160,000 times more radioactive waste than the spent fuel assemblies alone. (IAEA 2018) Per unit of energy, this means nuclear produces 500 times the waste compared to solar panels, but only if you count the entire solar panel and ignore the waste produced by nuclear plant decommissioning.

Spent nuclear fuel rods must be contained for several thousand years. In the case of breeder reactors such as a thorium reactor, the 0.0006% of the nuclear waste stream that is spent nuclear fuel is recaptured. From the spent fuel, the plutonium is separated, introducing the additional hazard of nuclear weaponization. (Ford and Schuller 1997, p111)

References

Desai, J. and Nelson, M. (2017). Are we headed for a solar waste crisis? Retrieved from http://environmentalprogress.org/big-news/2017/6/21/are-we-headed-for-a-solar-waste-crisis

Follett, A. (2017). Solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste than nuclear reactors. Retrieved from http://dailycaller.com/2017/07/01/solar-panels-generate-300-times-more-toxic-waste-than-nuclear-reactors/

Ford, JL and Schuller, CR. (1997). Controlling threats to nuclear security: A holistic model. Washington DC: National Defense University Press.

Fthenakisa, V. and Kim HC. (2010). Life-cycle uses of water in U.S. electricity generation. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 14. pp2039-2048. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364032110000638/pdfft?md5=e76eb25e7a96a5886503e1aaf0d282d7&pid=1-s2.0-S1364032110000638-main.pdf

Heard, A. (2014). Response to Mulvaney. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718514001705

IAEA. (2017). Trend in electricty supplied. Retrieved from https://www.iaea.org/PRIS/WorldStatistics/WorldTrendinElectricalProduction.aspx

IAEA. (2018). Status and Trends in Spent Fuel Radioactive Waste Management. Retrieved from https://www-pub.iaea.org/books/iaeabooks/11173/Status-and-Trends-in-Spent-Fuel-and-Radioactive-Waste-Management

Middleton, D. (2017). Waste from solar panels: 300 times that of nuclear power. Retrieved from https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/06/29/toxic-waste-from-solar-panels-300-times-that-of-nuclear-power/

Mulvaney, D. (2014). Are green jobs just jobs? Cadmium narratives in the life cycle of photovoltaics. Geoforum 54 pp178-186. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016718514000281

World Nuclear Association (2017). Radioactive Waste Management. Retrieved from http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/nuclear-wastes/radioactive-waste-management.aspx

Bennett Brown
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  • *HLW is only 0.06% of the total radioactive waste*. That number is not right. The Swedish final repositories will receive 16 000 cubic meters high level waste, and the mid- and low-level repository will have a capacity of 200 000 cubic meters. Source: [SKB](http://www.skb.com) . Also... the mid to low-level repository will only need to store the material for 500 years. The toxic waste from solar plants, last **forever**. So before you cry "fake news", I think you need to take a second look at your numbers. –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:32
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    @MichaelK Why do you say that the toxic waste from Solar plants last forever? Do you have any sources for that? – T. Sar Mar 01 '18 at 17:34
  • @T.Sar Well you tell me: what is the half-life of Cadmium and other toxins from mining operations? (Hint: that is a trick question). The whole "Nuclear waste" debate is ludicrously fraught with tunnel vision because nuclear waste is the only waste that **ceases** to be dangerous over time, because the very thing that makes it so that it must be stored, is also the thing that destroys it. Radioactive **decay** is the process in which the material annihilates itself. Things that are not radioactive do not annihilate themselves. –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:35
  • @T.Sar To take one example: the waste **Mercury** that is being collected by nations all over the world... that is a basic chemical element. That will never go away. It will never decay. That Mercury — every milligram of it that we have today — will still exist, on this planet, in a few billion years when the Sun becomes a red giant and scorches everything. That toxic waste will exist **forever**. –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:44
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    @MichaelK Cadmium is also a regular waste from nuclear power plants, so I don't get where you are comming from. By your logic, then nuclear power plants also have toxic waste that lasts forever! – T. Sar Mar 01 '18 at 17:45
  • @T.Sar That is entirely correct. It is just that calculated per kWh, nuclear produces a lot **less** toxic waste than every other non-fossil energy source. –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:46
  • @MichaelK That is debatable. Lead is both stable and toxic, and is produced in large amounts by nuclear power plants, for example. We still have several other things to consider. I'm not saying that you're wrong, mind you, but a bit skeptical that the things are as clear cut as you're claiming they are. – T. Sar Mar 01 '18 at 17:51
  • @T.Sar I dare say that I think you are not **skeptical**. I think you are are **doubtful**... because the implications bother you greatly. There is a prang of cognitive dissonance that is rattling you. Also this is not a subject for **debate**. This is a matter of numbers, not opinion or interpretation. And the numbers are clear: nuclear comes out on top in almost every category when it comes to footprint. –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:53
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    @MichaelK Not exactly. At the moment, I was show some evidence that nuclear power plants produce more waste than solar panels (as provided by this answer), but I'm open to change my mind if someone pops up with something that shows that this answer is wrong. I'm not sure about the need for the personal attack. – T. Sar Mar 01 '18 at 17:57
  • Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/73904/discussion-between-michaelk-and-t-sar). –  Mar 01 '18 at 17:58
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    Just considering the cadmium in the fission products alone, and considering only the minority of solar panels which use CdTe semiconductor, fission power produces twice the cadmium per GWh compared to CdTe solar panels. – Bennett Brown Mar 04 '18 at 02:36
  • The comparison of cadmium in fission products vs. CdTe panels is in Mulvaney 2014, a peer reviewed article. – Bennett Brown Mar 04 '18 at 02:43
  • Regarding inherent prliferation risk of any facility set up to separate plutonium, see ford and Shuller 1997. The concentration of Pu-240 rises as uranium fission proceeds over the lifetime of the fuel assembly. Removing fuel early provides plutonium with weapons-grade concentrations of Pu-239 among the plutonium. – Bennett Brown Mar 04 '18 at 02:46
  • @MichaelK, are you disputing the accuracy of the 2017 IAEA summary of radioactive wastes in storage and disposal from power plants? 34 million cubic meters solid radioactive waste vs. 22 thousand cubic meters HLW. That's less than 0.06%. – Bennett Brown Mar 04 '18 at 03:03
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    There is no toxic waste from solar panels that must be disposed of; it gets recycled into the material inputs. The vast majority of nuclear waste must be stored and cannot be recycled, even in a scenario in which spent fuel is reprocessed. – Bennett Brown Mar 04 '18 at 03:06
  • @BennettBrown "Just considering [...] and considering only" ....is a convenient trick to change the facts to fit one's opinion. The numbers I quoted regarding waste are from the Swedish Nuclear Fuel and Waste Management Company. They are an accurate quote of what they will actually build to deal with the Swedish nuclear waste. Are you disputing **those** numbers? And regarding: *"There is no toxic waste from solar panels that must be disposed of"*. Oh really? So all the steel, aluminium, copper and rare earth metals used to build them appear out of thin air, hm? –  Mar 05 '18 at 09:41
  • @MickaelK steel, glass, aluminium, copper and most rare metals can be recycled. – Evargalo Mar 07 '18 at 00:00
  • @MichaelK "considering.." quoting me: My argument is as generous toward nuclear as possible, yet nuclear turns out the big loser in the comparison. The "considering..." quote compares Cd to Cd: the worst part of the worst of solar panels - compared to a miniscule portion of nuclear waste. Yet nuclear produces 200% the Cd waste of that subset of panels. – Bennett Brown Mar 12 '18 at 02:57
  • @MichaelK I'd be happy to review the data from Swedish SKB if you provide a reference. The SKB company home page does not appear to support your claim that spent fuel is a large portion of nuclear waste. Other sources [ http://llwrsite.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/NWP-REP-134-International-Approaches-to-RW-Classification-Oct-2016.pdf ] indicate SKB doesn't even deal with the majority of nuclear waste and focuses only on the portion that is highly radioactive and requiring storage for 500+ years. Total nuclear waste is thousands of times more. – Bennett Brown Mar 12 '18 at 03:12