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Comment by dqpb | Hacker News Reader

> the cost of storing fuel rods onsite for decades

This environmental remediation cost is generally missing in comparisons with all other energy sources.

That's a good point. Carbon is dumped in the air - for free! That's because there is no cost resulting from it. (Edit: Yes, the last sentence is sarcastic.)

It’s generally missing from the other energy sources as well.

What remediation costs do solar or wind have?

There are massive mining/smelting/manufacturing costs in metal for solar and wind. Solar panels in particular generate massive waste due to the rare earth metals through mine waste, concentrator tailings, leftover leach solution, solution-extraction-electrowinning waste, slag, transportation fuel, etc. Let's not forget the massive fuel costs involved.

Solar panels may be tiny but they generate dozens of tons of waste material per panel.

There is a good reason all the large mining companies and several of the large oil companies market/lobby their contribution to 'green energy' so zealously. https://www.fcx.com/sustainability/environment#climate

(I used to work in this vertical)

Wind turbine blades are next to impossible to recycle or (at the scale we're talking about) re-purpose.

'What What happens to all the old wind turbines?' (bbc.co.uk) [2020]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22265321

Even if that was always the case (I'm confident it won't be), compare it to, say, coal fly ash. In my country, coal ash is 1/5th of all waste generated (by weight, I think) over a year. 12 million metric tonnes per year [1]. And that's before even thinking about CO2 and other air pollutants.

Wind turbine waste is almost nothing compared to that. Still worth fixing, but perspective is important.

1. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-03-10/coal-ash-has-become-o...

Oh, I don't think this is a significant problem - and agree that the volume of this fairly inert waste product is trivial in comparison to the huge volumes of nasties that come out of fossil fuel power stations.

I'm sure these turbine blades will likely continue to be iteratively re-designed to be increasingly recyclable or at least re-purposable as times goes on.

I was just answering the question about remediation costs for wind turbines, as this feature of the current popular implementations is often a surprise.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/09/cement-production-to-use-old...

https://www.siemensgamesa.com/es-es/-/media/siemensgamesa/do...

https://www.ge.com/news/press-releases/towards-circular-wind...

There are 100% recyclable blades (including production byproducts) currently being tested. They are using Elium as the composite material which can be chemically broken down back into glass fibre and resin for reuse.

https://www.lmwindpower.com/en/stories-and-press/stories/new...

And mining too

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