Nuclear Cleaner Than Solar?

Waste From Solar Panels: 300 Times That of Nuclear Power

Last November, Japan’s Environment Ministry issued a stark warning: the amount of solar panel waste Japan produces every year will rise from 10,000 to 800,000 tons by 2040, and the nation has no plan for safely disposing of it.

Neither does California, a world leader in deploying solar panels. Only Europe requires solar panel makers to collect and dispose of solar waste at the end of their lives.

All of which begs the question: just how big of a problem is solar waste?

Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste.

We found:

• Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.
• If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km).
• In countries like China, India, and Ghana, communities living near e-waste dumps often burn the waste in order to salvage the valuable copper wires for resale. Since this process requires burning off the plastic, the resulting smoke contains toxic fumes that are carcinogenic and teratogenic (birth defect-causing) when inhaled.

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.

There is, however, a distinct difference between the properties of the nuclear waste and the solar panel waste. The radioactivity of fresh waste from a reactor is intense, and it can be deadly to spend even a few minutes near unshielded waste. The toxic properties of the metals and plastics in solar waste won't jump out to kill you. The intense radiation fades after a few years, and the waste can be handled with some reasonable precautions.

I'm a supporter of nuclear power but making an assertion like this without this qualification is misleading at best.

However, it is useful to help point out that nuclear power produces the best steady source of power with the least environmental footprint.

Wombat-socho chimes in with "Late Night With Rule 5 Monday: All-American Catgirl".

The Economics of the Ash Bin

Really big ash bins. A pretty good post at Bacon's Rebellion about the economic of coal ash disposal, with reference to particular local power plants.

The debate over coal ash hasn’t gone away — it’s just morphed. For much of the year, public attention focused on how to de-water millions of tons of coal-combustion residue that utilities and industrial companies accumulated over decades in large retaining ponds. Discussion centered on how to ensure that the water released into rivers and streams did no harm to aquatic life and human health. Now attention is turning to what to do with coal ash once it’s dry.

The October 17 deadline is fast approaching for industrial-scale coal burners to file written closure plans for their coal ash ponds. Each company must choose whether to go with the “closure-in-place” option or the removal option. Closure in place could spare ratepayers billions of dollars in added costs, but “removal” could reduce long-term health risks from potentially toxic metals that could leach from the coal ash pits into the groundwater and, from there, into rivers and streams.

Here in Virginia, Dominion Virginia Power has laid out plans to consolidate coal ash on-site at its power stations, and to cap the material with an impermeable plastic lining and vegetation to prevent rainwater from percolating through. Environmentalists say that won’t prevent groundwater from migrating through the ponds and picking up heavy metals in the process. As evidence, they point to water quality tests that show elevated levels of metals appearing in locations outside Dominion’s facilities. Clouding the matter, however, the state Department of Environmental Quality says that its tests show contradictory results.

In a recent conference call with media, Jim Roewer, executive director of the Utility Solid Waste Activities Group, emphasized the high cost of transporting the ash to lined landfills, as environmental groups have called for. In an informal survey early in the regulatory process, he said, four out of five utilities said they expected to go with the closure-in-place option. That preference reflected the economics of coal ash disposal at their particular locations. A June Tennessee Valley Authority study concludes that it would cost about $280 million to close its six coal-ash sites using closure-in-place but $2.7 billion using the cheapest combination of truck and train — almost ten times as much.

Dominion has said that the tab for the removal option could run the clean-up cost to as much as $3 billion. Virginia environmental groups have pointed to decisions by Duke Energy, Santee Cooper, and SG&E in the Carolinas to transport the coal ash to landfills, arguing that Virginia citizens should have no less protection from exposure to toxic levels of chemicals than those of North and South Carolina.

Many environmentalist simply want to punish the power companies as much as possible. If the cost to haul away the ash for very little or no added environmental benefit, they will try to force that action, for no more reason than spite.

Green Fail in Baltimore

Baltimore Scraps Its Waste-to-Energy Plan: Plans for an incinerator in South Baltimore have been halted, and the community could be better off that way.

A years-long, youth-led campaign to prevent the construction of a waste incinerator in the south Baltimore neighborhood of Curtis Bay has inched closer to victory.

Last week, the Maryland Department of the Environment alerted the New York-based company Energy Answers International that its permit to build an incinerator that would convert trash into energy is no longer valid. The proposed plant would generate 160 megawatts of electricity by burning an estimated 4,000 tons of solid waste per day. The facility would spread over 90 acres, making it the largest incinerator in the U.S. if built, according to the Environmental Integrity Project.

The incinerator would also sit just a stone’s throw from a number of schools and parks, not to mention hundreds of homes that are already in close proximity to a cluster of pollution-producing facilities. This is why students from those schools and their families have been protesting the construction of the waste-to-energy plant since Energy Answers began building it in August 2013. The Curtis Bay neighborhood already suffers the worst levels of air pollution in the state.

The map and chart below, created using the EPA’s EJ SCREEN mapping application, shows that the area within a mile of the proposed incinerator site registers extremely high levels of ozone and particulate matter emissions. Both of these air pollutants are responsible for asthma and respiratory disease-related deaths, especially among children and people of color. It may even play a role in increasing urban violence.

It is a rather nasty area in Baltimore. You can even smell it as you drive through. While I suspect that the added dangers due to this plant are being exaggerated, it is an area of the world that could be made better.

So what happens to the waste that would be incinerated? Likely it will get shipped out of Baltimore on a truck or ship and buried in some nice rural landfill, where it will provide a few jobs denied to the unemployed in Baltimore.