If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much Toxic Waste?

Re:If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much... by bilbo0s on Monday December 24, 2018 @11:08AM (#18752720)

Why do so many people out there keep harping on nuclear? Are they willing to pay for it? No. They'll be the first ones complaining when their rates shoot through the roof.

Look, if you want nuclear power, then the government will need to finance it. Some of these other sources are at 1-2 cents a kWh, how is a private investor supposed to finance a nuclear power plant that competes with those rates? Even if there were no safety or environmental regulations at all, you still couldn't get there. I'm sorry, but there exists no private investor dumb enough to finance a power generation facility that expensive, that would reside that far down the dispatch stack. It just won't happen.

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Re:If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much... by beefield on Monday December 24, 2018 @11:22AM (#18752788)

> Even if there were no safety or environmental regulations at all, you still couldn't get there

I am not so sure. I mean, if you really do not have to care about safety and waste, how expensive it can be to dig up uranium, centrifuge it for enrichment and mold it to a shape that heats stuff around it?

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Re:If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much... by bilbo0s on Monday December 24, 2018 @01:24PM (#18753442)

Ask the Indians and Pakistanis, it's not at all cheap. Certainly something that only a state would take on. It's just beyond the capacity of most private investment groups. It would really require government backing to make it happen.

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Re:If Solar Panels Are So Clean, Why Do They Produce So Much... by Apocryphon on Monday December 24, 2018 @04:01PM (#18754249)

SpaceX for nuclear fission is an unsettling thought.

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