[cjlars]

>The report projected that the United States would have a cumulative total of 7.5 to 10 million metric tons of solar panel waste in 2050.

This compares to 292 million tons of total landfill waste in 2018 alone [1], putting solar panel waste on the order of 0.1% of total waste produced in the US between now and 2050.

[1] https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-...

[photochemsyn]

There's a huge differential when it comes to processing different panel types, such as First Solar's CdTe panels (cadmium is a toxic heavy metal) versus the monocrystalline silicon panels that China is making (apparently only China has managed to scale up monocrystalline silicon, with the machines as tightly held secrets as ASML's EUV systems).

You'd think that would be a primary point of discussion in any article on solar panel waste, but no.

[clomond]

That is because CdTe is actually a stable molecule that isn’t water soluble, turns out the problem of panels from a toxic leeching perspective is largely from the small amounts of lead used at soldering points which is a common point with most silicon PV panels.

No reason tin can’t be used instead/lead free panels can’t be made except for the saving of a few pennies by skimping on the solder - no regulations to ensure they should be lead free. Unfortunately waste processing decades into the future isn’t often accounted for and those few pennies at design time add up across hundreds of thousands of panels on a single site…

[hoseja]

Have they actually made a decent lead-free solder yet?

[Doxin]

Yes. You just need to set your iron a fair bit hotter and learn to live with matte solder joints.

[nousermane]

Also, typical lead-free solders oxidize in air at their soldering temperature much more readily than near-eutectic Pb-Sn at its respective soldering temp.

That oxide film tends to interfere pretty badly with wetting of surfaces being soldered. In other words - it's much easier to end up with a "dry" joint - even with adequately increased temperature - unless better and/or more flux is used.

[Doxin]

Not doubting the facts you've mentioned, but in my experience I've had no problems getting the surfaces to wet, though that may just be due to using rosin core solder that happens to have a good flux in it.

[pmlnr]

Nope.

[pencilguin]

Nowadays everything is "ROHS", even in the US, so not even lead.

[stephen_g]

In Australia we generate 12 million metric tons of coal fly ash per year. It's our largest single waste stream, literally almost 1/5 of all waste generated in the country [1]. I'm sure in the US at least that amount is generated from coal. So 10 million tonnes of cumulative waste from solar panels is not huge in comparison (and this is before even considering the CO₂, NOx, SOx, etc. emissions from that coal)...

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-o...

[askvictor]

Don't forget that it's also more radioactive than nuclear waste: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/coal-ash-is-more-...

[pvaldes]

And banana plantations (or granite mountains, or the sun) are more radioactive than both because you have a lot of bananas with weak radioactivity each one, but the sum of all bananas in fruit shops is not how we measure radioactivity danger.

Coal is accumulated and relatively low, nuclear is concentrated and can reach several orders of magnitude more. Really, is not so useful to compare both cases except for whataboutism.

[askvictor]

It is very much useful to compare them in the contexts of energy sources and the dangers that these pose to populations.

[Gordonjcp]

> Coal is accumulated and relatively low, nuclear is concentrated and can reach several orders of magnitude more. Really, is not so useful to compare both cases except for whataboutism.

That's nice but you still have to wear a dosimeter around fly ash.

[morsch]

Note that this figure is from the 2016 EPA report which the article claims (based on a new paper) may be overblown.

[epistasis]

And to give some further context to the over-inflated 10M tons of solar panel waste stat (over 30 years), our carbon emissions from fossil fuels are about 570M tons per year into the atmosphere. That doesn't count all the equipment used for extraction of fossil fuels, all the massive amounts of toxic waste water that comes with fossil fuel extraction, all the ash from coal, etc.

Which is to say, all the concern, even on inflated numbers, was FUD and a distraction from real problems.

[weaksauce]

> was FUD and a distraction from real problems.

or actual malice from the bad actors paid for by the fossil fuel companies to spread distrust in the transition to a more sustainable clean energy system.

[therealdrag0]

Proportion of total is interesting, but less interesting IMO then comparison with other energy producers. Kinda like how we have kWh per square km, would be nice to have kWh per X and Y unit of waste.

[PragmaticPulp]

I normally appreciate links to studies with numbers in the comments, but as the others have pointed out: This article is referring to that study.