Re:Activists who embrace nuclear power
by epistasis on Sunday February 21, 2021 @10:41PM
(#26220619)
A tremendous amount of material goes into building a nuclear reactor, ton after ton of rebar and concrete. If you look at the total mass of materials for a GW reactor, it's not so different than a GW of solar panels.
If you are honestly worried about this, compare the amount of material that goes into a solar panel to the quantity of fuel needed to generate an equivalent amount of energy in that panels lifetime. Yet the damage we complain about with fossil fuels is not the mining damage, it's the change to the atmosphere. If this amount of material is really so stressful to you, compare the amount of material we use to just build the housing necessary for the world, to the amount of material needed to provide their energy needs. A typical single family roof has more than enough square footage to fully provide for all the energy needs of a household, now think of the orders of magnitude more material that are below that roof than the solar panels consist of.
However far more of the panels are recyclable, and valuable enough to be recycled. There's aluminum, glass, etc.
Solar also really works very well dual purposed with other land uses. Whether that's farming, or over parking lots, or on roofs. For dual purposing solar and farming on the same land, each use loses less than 50% productivity.
Land use and pane waste are complete red herrings that don't pass a sniff test. They persist because there are powerful forces that keep on repeating these concerns, but to be truly concerned about them, one should be far far far more concerned about every single aspect of modern life. Since I never hear the people bemoaning solar pane waste also advocate for banning single family homes and more than 30 m^2 of living space per person, I'm not sure these complaints can be taken as good faith.
If you are honestly worried about this, compare the amount of material that goes into a solar panel to the quantity of fuel needed to generate an equivalent amount of energy in that panels lifetime. Yet the damage we complain about with fossil fuels is not the mining damage, it's the change to the atmosphere. If this amount of material is really so stressful to you, compare the amount of material we use to just build the housing necessary for the world, to the amount of material needed to provide their energy needs. A typical single family roof has more than enough square footage to fully provide for all the energy needs of a household, now think of the orders of magnitude more material that are below that roof than the solar panels consist of.
However far more of the panels are recyclable, and valuable enough to be recycled. There's aluminum, glass, etc.
Solar also really works very well dual purposed with other land uses. Whether that's farming, or over parking lots, or on roofs. For dual purposing solar and farming on the same land, each use loses less than 50% productivity.
Land use and pane waste are complete red herrings that don't pass a sniff test. They persist because there are powerful forces that keep on repeating these concerns, but to be truly concerned about them, one should be far far far more concerned about every single aspect of modern life. Since I never hear the people bemoaning solar pane waste also advocate for banning single family homes and more than 30 m^2 of living space per person, I'm not sure these complaints can be taken as good faith.