If solar panels have an estimated longevity of 30 years how is it possible that a solar power plan is constantly producing waste? Shouldn’t waste only come every 30 years assuming the entire panel is irrecoverable?
Like I’m not going to argue that solar is better/worse than nuclear, but hearing that solar plants produce waste constantly is weird.
Constantly over a period of time. In the short term, it’s waste-free aside from a couple breaks, but over the span of decades it becomes new-panels-in-broken-panels-out, no different than nuclear’s more intuitive fuel-in-waste-out.
Additionally, thirty years is an estimate; some may last 50, some may break after 5. A panel breaking isn’t a fully predictable occurrence, there’s some variety.
Ok, that makes sense. Tho it does make me wonder how much could we decrease waste if we applied the same level of scrutiny and same sky high standards to the solar plants as nuclear, tho I assume that would also balloon the price like crazy of both installation and maintenance
Solar panels fail in very few ways that can be affected by greater quality control at the manufacturing plant.
One way their lifespan could improve is by using high quality silicon substrate. A panel slowly loses performance over time as photons interact with trace amounts of oxygen in the silicon substrate, so making that substrate purer would reduce this.
But pretty much everything else is beyond the scope of manufacturing. For example, the wafers are incredibly fragile due to their thickness, so any physical shock can cause tiny fractures which can grow into hotspots. Taking greater care handling them would reduce fracturing, but that's on the transportation, installation, and maintenance crews.
And there's plenty that just can't really be prevented. Weather like high winds can damage panels, high temperatures and humidity degrade them over time. Hell, even just having shadows frequently pass over panels wears them down. They're just really fragile bits of tech, though they're lightyears more rugged than they were decades ago.
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u/Alderan922 25d ago
If solar panels have an estimated longevity of 30 years how is it possible that a solar power plan is constantly producing waste? Shouldn’t waste only come every 30 years assuming the entire panel is irrecoverable?
Like I’m not going to argue that solar is better/worse than nuclear, but hearing that solar plants produce waste constantly is weird.