Solar Panel Waste Vs Nuclear

Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

Solar panel waste vs nuclear.

A path forward on solar panel waste. Cost to build solar power vs. And very much like the previous point as well nuclear power is the more expensive route. Industrial estimates reveal that you need around five acres of land to produce 1 mw of solar energy.

Ep assumed that worldwide each nuclear reactor has a similar burnup. Solar requires 15x more materials than nuclear. Said differently nuclear power creates 160 000 times more radioactive waste than the spent fuel assemblies alone. Solar in this analysis exclusively refers to solar photovoltaic.

For a 1 000mw plant you need 5 000 acres. For example if solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016 and the wastes are stacked on football fields the nuclear waste would reach 52 meters the height of the leaning tower of pisa while the solar waste would reach 16 kilometers the height of two mt. They also contain lead cadmium and other toxic even carcinogenic chemicals that cannot be removed without breaking apart the entire panel. Jeff terry a professor of nuclear physics.

The problem with waste from solar is that it isn t handled as well as nuclear waste dr. Perhaps the biggest problem with solar panel waste is that there is so much of it. The more hazardous nuclear waste can be safely disposed of for about 0 003 per kwh. If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016 and the waste is stacked on football fields the nuclear waste would reach the height of the leaning tower of pisa 52 meters while.

As you have read already the efficiency of photovoltaic panel is about 11 15 and the efficiency of a nuclear power plant is around 33. The comparison is roughly 33 000 cubic meters of solar panel toxic waste per twh vs. For the analysis ep assumed that each solar panel would last 25 years. Somewhat an extension to the previous point another noteworthy difference between the two is the cost it takes to build the facilities.

Solar panels generate 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than nuclear power plants. Iaea 2018 per unit of energy this means nuclear produces 500 times the waste compared to solar panels but only if you count the entire solar panel and ignore the waste produced by nuclear plant decommissioning. Ep estimated that a typical 1 gw nuclear reactor produces 27 tonnes of waste annually.