How much noxious chemical waste, and by volume, is produced in the manufacture of the many thousands of solar panels and wind turbines though for the same power?
A bit of an odd response. I neither "like" or "dislike" any "answers" to lifecycle analysis.
What I definitely do not "like" is the dismissal of nuclear by saying "nuclear waste" without considering all the forms of waste associated with other supposedly "greener" solutions.
Solar panels and the stands they are placed are shipped (half way round the world) wrapped in acres of plastic, cardboard and polystyrene for shipping that is then just discarded at worst, and possibly partly recycled at best. Broken wind turbines, which happens frequently, are often just buried, and so on. Digging the raw materials out of the ground and refining them causes waste. Doping chemicals to get the rare earths cause waste. Just because in the West we recycle much of this, doesn't mean that, in the race to the bottom, factories in Asia aren't just dumping this stuff out of sight.
Sure, and we bury spent nuclear fuel and supposedly is a problem according to some groups. If we bury it deep enough, remote enough, and remove access to it, how is it a danger? If the human race loses the ability to read warning signs to stay away, I suspect we've probably lost the ability to tunnel a thousand metres underground as well. It's really not the problem people make it out to be. We have signs around cliffs, electric pylons, and other things with a much higher risk of actual death, and people obey those...
It's like I said in another post, nuclear is held to some mythical higher standard of scrutiny than other forms of energy generation despite it being better in every way except for up-front cost. All the spent nuclear fuel, ever, takes up less volume than the picture in the bbg article.
It seems impossible to get an actual breakdown out of anyone. Every asshole wants to spit out some "number" that makes their favorite solution look good. Nobody wants to give you a breakdown of the environmental cost of various power sources in terms of site prep/construction, continued operation, etc.
Intuition says hydroelectric dam is almost carbon free for a century or more after you build it (not counting watershed disruption). Solar is basically free up front but the panels wear out quick and so the supply chain must run. Nuclear and wind seem to be in the middle with nuclear being closer to the damn and wind being closer to solar. But there is no good way to actually get the numbers and other stuff you need make the comparison.
Hell, even just trying to compute the amount of diesel used per kwh over a given timeline (and this should be a really easy thing to quantify in a demonstrably honest way) is basically impossible because you wind up having to sift through reams and reams of material written by people who are just lying with plausible deniability.
I don't care what my power source is. I just want to be informed. And the amount of lying I have to identify and discard on my way to being informed is too damn high.
> Probably a roughly similar amount to what is created building a nuclear, or any other, power station.
I'd love to see some figures that prove or disprove that. I'm inclined to disagree and say that more waste is produced making solar panels and wind turbines due to the sheer volume of them that are being mass manufactured.
> What's your point?
My point is that everyone talks about nuclear waste, but no one talks about the toxic chemical waste produced the mass manufacture of hundreds of thousands of solar panels and turbines, versus the one-off construction of a few hundred nuclear power stations, and the extraction of a relatively small-by-weight amount of fuel.
Nuclear power is always under minute scrutiny compared to "green" power.
The sheer mass of nukes is revealed by their cost. That cost is for concrete and steel, both with well-documented impact. The cost of solar and wind equipment is concentrated in high-grade material refinement involving very small actual mass.
So, your inclination misleads you, and you seek to similarly mislead others.
The effective opposition to nukes is based on thoroughly rational analysis of costs. Simply, by any rational accounting, nukes cost much more than favored alternatives.
