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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

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You could take every PV panel ever made and just stack them up in the desert. It would hardly take any space and nobody would notice.

That is, if you refuse to recycle them, which would be silly.

Surely something with a higher energy output to waste ratio like nuclear energy waste would be an even better compromise then?

If you stack spent fuel bad things occur. And no, I don't agree. The volume and mass of PV panels in the world is already negligible and making the waste stream smaller is not important or relevant to anyone. Even in an extreme case nobody would pursue, it doesn't take any space. In a sane case it is a high quality silicon feedstock.

Yeah that plan works great for things like tires. It's not like there are multiple large tire dumps in the world with fires that are always burning in them.

Did you know that something like 70% of tires in America are recycled?

Also that 2,000 times more tires are made than PV modules? 55GT compared to 22MT annually.

That is simply a policy decision. Here in Norway such things are collected and recycled.

Damn, I didn't know solar panels were flammable.

How many miles do they get before you have to rotate them?

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