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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for confirming my suspicion! When I read phrases like "Battery cells require electrode coating with toxic solvents (NMP), electrolyte handling, and formation cycling. This is exactly why Tesla's Gigafactory went to Reno." I (as someone not very familiar with the subject) thought it's strange that California should regulate what kind of chemicals can be used in an industrial process. Of course, they don't - but they regulate that industry can't release toxic chemicals into the environment. But because Elon thinks it's too expensive to make sure that no NMP gets out of his factory, he goes to his Republican pals in Texas or Nevada who don't worry about pollution...

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That's certainly one interpretation. Most of the workers there keep doing what they do to protect the environment though, so it's entirely plausible that they are taking precautions to save the environment, but find the method in which the regulations are implemented to be slow or arcane. If it's anything like cybersecurity in the government, the laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals.

If there's anything I have learned with age it's that regulations have bizarre unintended consequences. The incentives are too numerous and too precariously balanced to muck with without tipping someone's seesaw right into a volcano.

>laborious process of filling out irrelevant paperwork is orthogonal to actually accomplishing the initial goals.

Well yes, it's designed so that a handful of teenagers can't just clone the IRS database, for example.

...because dumping stuff into the middle of what is already a barren wasteland isn't actually a problem.

I'm not aware of many (non-manmade) barren wastelands on Terra. Even the Empty Quarter has wildlife. About the only place I can think of would be something like the Dead Sea.

NMP in particular readily biodegrades in aerobic environments, both in water treatment plants and just in water. Bacteria seem to crack it quickly. It's also not volatile. You have to protect yourself while working with it, but it's not comparable to really nasty stuff, like heavy metals.

The Gigafactory is less than 20 miles from a drinking water reservoir (and recreation area) in one direction, and the city of Reno in the other.

~30 miles to Lake Tahoe.

And according to https://www.reno.gov/home/showpublishedimage/4088/6351980817..., it's about two miles from the watershed that feeds it.

20 miles is a very long way away

Surely you must know what a watershed is.

The desert is not a "barren wasteland." It is a valuable, vibrant ecosystem no different than any other.

The desert is an ocean with its life underground, and the perfect disguise up above.

Under the cities lies a heart made of ground, but the humans will give no love.

It’s not like the health of the public stopped Lonnie from installing a bunch of generators near poorer neighborhoods in Tennessee.

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