Oh. Oh. It appears that those solar cells on which we bet the atmosphere...

[NNadir]

...don't last very long.

Solar Industry Anxious Over Defective Panels

This comes from that right wing publication The New York times

LOS ANGELES — The solar panels covering a vast warehouse roof in the sun-soaked Inland Empire region east of Los Angeles were only two years into their expected 25-year life span when they began to fail.
Related

Coatings that protect the panels disintegrated while other defects caused two fires that took the system offline for two years, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenues.

It was not an isolated incident. Worldwide, testing labs, developers, financiers and insurers are reporting similar problems and say the $77 billion solar industry is facing a quality crisis just as solar panels are on the verge of widespread adoption...

...But a review of 30,000 installations in Europe by the German solar monitoring firm Meteocontrol found 80 percent were underperforming. Testing of six manufacturers’ solar panels at two Spanish power plants by Enertis Solar in 2010 found defect rates as high as 34.5 percent...

Um...the failed solar cells have all become electronic waste, and nobody knows what to do with electronic waste.

I'm sure that the 60 years of mindless cheering for solar energy, along with the hundreds of billions of dollars, euros, yen and yuan thrown at it over that period while maligning the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy has paid off. I mean just because a 77 billion dollar industry can't produce half an exajoule of the 520 exajoules humanity consumes each year doesn't mean that we should lose faith.

Our faith based approach for solar energy is surely paying off.

All week long the figures at Mauna Loa have reported values over 400 ppm, but for the last two days the readings have been 399.99 ppm and 399.60 ppm. Finally the grand experiment of betting the future of humanity on wonderful "free" solar energy is paying off.

Heckuva job anti-nukes. You must all be very, very, very, very, very, very proud.

[hlthe2b]

1. Your comment: "Heckuva job anti-nukes"

What an obnoxious comment.... As though the nuke industry has had no "issues", technological setbacks (let alone the horrendous safety issues)


Good gawd. I think if you want to be pro-nuke, you can do so without the intense hyperbolic attack on solar.

[kestrel91316]

10. He can't. He only has one mode: nasty.

[FogerRox]

14. Behaves the same way @ Daily Kos

[djean111]

2. Venomous hyperbole aside, I'd rather live next to failing solar panels than a leaky nuke reactor.

What do we do with nuclear waste? We bury it and hope for the best, I suppose.
Or shoot it at middle easterners.

[bahrbearian]

6. "Or shoot it at middle easterners", it just became clear to me why we invaded Iraq.

[BlueToTheBone]

11. Right now, we're radiating the Pacific ocean.

We'll see how well that works out.

[wtmusic]

39. So is the sun.

Run and hide.

[BlueToTheBone]

40. You are going to equate sunlight and nuclear

radiation?

[wtmusic]

44. I can't do that, can I.

Sunlight is far more dangerous - skin cancer from exposure to the sun kills millions every year. The number of people who die from "man-made" radiation are in the thousands each year, the vast majority due to residual radiation from weapons testing in the 1950s.

Natural sources of ionizing radiation like radon gas, radiation from the ground, and cosmic rays from outer space dwarf even weapons testing casualties. You get about the same dose of ionizing radiation at altitude on a commercial airline flight as you do standing next to Chernobyl Reactor 4.

[Downwinder]

3. If we cannot build a solar cell with no moving parts

without defects, can we build a nuclear plant without defects?

[Democracyinkind]

4. You lost me at

"nobody knows what to do with electronic waste"... You might want to peruse other threads in this forum to disabuse you from that notion.

No technology was ever scaled up successfully without going through major setbacks.

[bahrbearian]

5. Thats why I switched to Burning Coal.

[intaglio]

7. My, my

How very Zzzzzzzzzzzzz

So a manufacturer ripped off a company or failed its quality control, an installer failed to ensure that it's inverters or it's switchgear and its blocking diodes were up to scratch. Millions of people were exposed to radionucliotides as a result.
.
.
.
Oh, wait - no they weren't so exposed

Let me tell you a story about a nuclear power station, it was built really early on in the nuclear era and nothing went wrong. It didn't meltdown like 3 reactors at Fukishima or the one at Chernobyl or Idaho Falls or the one at Luzern 1962 or Sosnovyi Bor in 1975. It didn't kill workers by radiation like the one in Tokaimura. It didn't poison vast areas of the Irish Sea and contaminate the surrounding countryside like Windscale. It was hardly involved in poisoning the countryside at all unlike Chernobyl or the Kyshtym dump or the Hanford nuclear reservation.

It is true that intermediate level waste was the source of at least 1 hydrogen explosion and that the intermediate level waste was sunk in a shaft filled with groundwater. It is also true that remains of fuel rods litter the sea floor nearby and that the beaches have been closed for the foreseeable future.

Part of the establishment, it is true, were test reactors but apart from their additional load of waste they hardly feature. No the reactors I am talking about were designed to produce electricity, electricity too cheap to meter. They have produced a lot of electricity but every single watt has been subsidised from the public purse as all nuclear reactors are subsidised; be it in France, England, Japan or the good old US of A. Never have the reactors I am describing produced electricity at a price sustainable by the market.

And now they have to be dismantled. Amazingly this is supposed to be complete by 2025, the hundreds of tonnes of contaminated coolants, the 10s of 1000s of cubic metres of soil and similar volumes of liquors and similar volumes of intermediate wastes. This clean up is supposed to include the 100s of tonnes of high level waste in the nuclear reactors an environment only just imaged for the first time in 50 years. This dismantling is supposed to be done by robot because no human can survive in the containment building. Except no-one has built a robot that can function in high radiation environments for more than a few hours.

Next we come to the elephant in the room, all this waste will not just vanish; no magician will wave a magic wand and the radioactivity vanish in a puff of fairy dust. Every single cubic metre and tonne will have to be treated, cased, diluted and buried except there is no facility that can do this as yet, there is no safe burial site and every single gramme and cc will have to be subsidised by the public purse.

Tell me again how good nuclear power is ... I need a laugh.

[MjolnirTime]

8. Someone woke up on the dumb shit side of the bed this morning, eh?

[NNadir]

19. Do you mean the New York Times, or do you mean the people who can't understand the words in it? n/t

[kestrel91316]

9. Like the proverbial bad penny, you just keep turning up, don't you?

And with the same nasty, gloating, meanspitrited attitude as always. I've never yet seen you support a single liberal cause. Your only reason for coming to DU has ALWAYS been to shill for the nuclear industry.

I guess they forgot to tell you you'd catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. You haven't convinced a soul. You've probably driven hundreds screaming from the very idea of nuclear power.

[Starboard Tack]

12. Sounds to me like you have a dog in this fight.

If you honestly think that nuclear power is better for the environment or survival of the planet than solar, then I can only conclude that you are delusional.
I have been living with solar panels as my principle source of energy for 6 years and they work perfectly. I am currently adding a wind generator, which should eliminate the need for any fossil fuel generation of electricity. That will leave me with approx. 1 pound of propane/week for cooking.

What is your experience with solar energy?

[Yo_Mama]

13. They DO last

These are problems with manufacturing processes which are highly correctable. It's probably due to overcapacity and crashing prices.

Up until a few years ago, solar panels produced in the modern era had been outperforming expected lifetimes and predicted performance.

[FogerRox]

15. NNadir would you buy Nuclear fission reactors from China & install it in your home state?

SolarBuyer, a company based in Marlborough, Mass., discovered defect rates of 5.5 percent to 22 percent during audits of 50 Chinese factories over the last 18 months, said Ian Gregory, the company’s senior marketing director.

[wtmusic]

16. Excellent point

but your figures for the cost of solar have been based on those cheap Chinese panels, haven't they?

[FogerRox]

17. That would be wind. & who is the number 1 turbine manufacturer in the world?

Its a US company.......

[wtmusic]

18. To stay on topic

you would agree that quality solar would be even more expensive than is quoted now?

[NNadir]

35. You are aware - actually I doubt it - that all of the magnets in every damn gas entrenching wind...

...turbine on this planet has lanthanides mined in <em>Chinese</em> mines?

No? You don't know anything about it?

I raised this point - the dependence of the fracked gas entrenching wind industry on lanthanides - with Arun Majumdar the great materials scientist who headed Arpa-E under Steven Chu in the first Obama administration, during a lecture he gave at Princeton, that there isn't really enough neodymium on the planet to really make wind into a significant source of energy, and he sort of waved his hands and said, "Well if we could find a way to stabilize iron nitride, we might be able to make comparable permanent magnets.

Um...um...I found that answer kind of unsatisfying, since the tragedy of climate change is something that will take place if and when we figure out how to stabilize iron nitride, but it's happening now

If...

If...

I didn't press him on this point, since there would be no point at this point to point out that his point was dubious.

Well even if it is a little late - a lot late actually - for the same damn "if's" and "coulds" that the renewable advocates who screwed the atmosphere have relied upon for the last six decades, if you want to make wind turbines you need lanthanides, hundreds of thousands of metric tons of them.

So if you want to make wind turbines anywhere on the whole damn planet, maybe you should reconsider that China hatred thing.

After all, Chinese miners are the people who suffer the risks for your fantasy of a wind powered world, which by the way, won't happen either.

Rare Earth Mining In China Comes at a Heavy Cost to Local Villages

http://www.rural21.com/english/a-closer-look-at/detail/article/the-real-price-of-rare-earths-0000296/

As of today, 97% of all lanthanides, including the neodymium for every damn wind turbine on the planet, and all the lanthanum for every Prius (and many other hybrids) on the planet, comes out of unsustainable lanthanide mines in Baotou, China. People labor over garbage cans filled with nitric acid, with predictable effects on their lung tissue, so Westerners can indulge their silly and unworkable "wind power will save us" fantasy.

"Wind power will save us?" It didn't and it won't.

As I recall from your profile at Daily Kos, your proposal for saving the world involves doing it "one guitar at a time."

Um...um...um...OK then...

It might be better for you to stick to cutting down Amazon flora to make rosewood fret boards than to wade into the field of energy, which is involved with science, a subject that I've observed from my long and unfortunate tenure there that the membership of "Nuclear Free DKos," present company included, has zero experience.

Arguably, afterall, it is precisely such cluelessness about how things work that has brought us to this abyss. But I wouldn't - to be realistic - expect someone who thinks that the answer to the world's problems is guitar playing to grasp that much, so maybe the issue is moot.

Enjoy the coming week.

[NNadir]

22. The Chinese are world leaders in the construction of nuclear reactors today.

They are simply better than we are at high technology, although when pressed and prodded to make junk, they can do so.

There has not been one nuclear reactor - and I'm including Chernobyl here - that has proved as dangerous as fossil fuels and the so called "renewable" biomass industry - which combined are responsible, via air pollution, according to the World Health Organization, kills 3.3 million people per year, half under the age of five.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs313/en/index.html

That works out to about 100 million people every three decades or so. The nuclear industry is a mature industry, more than half a century old. Except in the bizarre fantasies of stupid people, it killed nothing like 100 million people in 30 years. So why are you appealing to me to have a special fear of nuclear reactors made by Chinese or anyone else?

I'll tell you what I don't want in my fucking state: I don't want fossil fuel plants built by anyone: American assholes, German assholes, or Chinese assholes.

How come you didn't ask me that question? Very few nuclear plants have ever killed anyone, whereas there are zero dangerous fossil fuel plants that didn't start killing lots of people the moment they were turned on. Which killed more people, the nuclear reactors at Fukushima or the fossil fuel plants that replaced them when they were destroyed, to much mindless cheering?

The fact is, that the destruction of nuclear manufacturing infrastructure through the mindless application of fear and ignorance about the world's largest, by far, source of climate change gas free primary energy, as left all of humanity, as well as the majority of other species, up the creek without a paddle. Nuclear energy, developed by Nobel Laureates, some of the world's greatest scientists, men like Seaborg, and Fermi and Wigner and Bethe was the best form of energy ever invented, and while some people around the planet know that - the great climate scientist Jim Hansen recently published a widely read paper quantifying how many lives nuclear energy saved - the technology was pissed away in service to fear and ignorance.

Now, let's consider the denialist claim about the fact that almost all of the solar infrastructure on this planet under performs when it doesn't fail outright.

The article in the opening post says that 80% of the solar cells in Europe are under performing.

Your excuse for this miserable performance is to announce that "it's all China's fault!" Are you saying that 80% of the solar cells in Europe - they've been throwing hundreds of billions of euros at this shit for more than a decade with no meaningful result - were all manufactured in China?

Personally, I'm sick of "it's all China's fault!" Fuck that shit. While we turn out reams and reams of useless MBA's they turn out reams and reams of people called "scientists."

I spend much of every weekend reading the primary scientific literature, scanning sometimes hundreds of papers. We hate science in this country, but they don't hate it in theirs. At least 40% the quality papers I read are from Chinese scientists.

The fact is that China has a rational plan to phase out fossil fuels, and the United States and Europe don't.

All the racist remarks in the world about China do not make them responsible for the poor performance of solar cells all around the planet. They've only begun to dominate the market recently, and only because this toxic junk has a popularity that outweighs its utility. They're in it for the money, just like their in the Christmas doily business for the money. There's a difference between cheap electronic junk - which is what the solar industry is - and a nuclear power plant.

The solar talisman has always been shit, no matter who's producing the crap - as the records of its energy output clearly show. The industry is 6 decades old, and despite decades of mindless cheering for it, it has failed to produce even one exajoule of the 520 exajoules humanity consumes each year..

By the way, I'm not here to advocate for nuclear energy. Nuclear energy will not save very much at this point. Fear and ignorance have lead us to a point where it is impossible to do anything with it. It's too fucking late.

I am merely here to vent my anger at the destruction of the planetary atmosphere that fear and ignorance have wrought.

In monitoring the carbon dioxide at Mauna Loa I've noticed that 2013's increase over 2012 for monthly averages year to date is 2.69 ppm. In 2012 - the second worst year ever observed - it was 2.25 ppm up to May 2012 over 2011. In 1998, the worst year ever recorded, the year to date had an average of 2.37 ppm over 1997. The final figures for 1998 and 2012 were respectively 2.90 ppm over 1997, and 2.65 ppm over 2011.

February and March of 2013 were both the worst months ever recorded for increases over the previous year. It seems very clear to me that 2013 is well on track to be well over 3.00 ppm for a single year's increase, an all time record. And rest assured, 2014 will be worse, and 2015 worse than that.

I note that of the five worst years ever observed for carbon dioxide increases over the previous year, four of them have taken place in the same decade plus that I've been reading denialist horseshit here - run on coal and gas powered servers - about how solar will save the day. It didn't and it won't. It's trash, expensive trash. It doesn't work.

It doesn't matter at this point that the solar junk was a cheap carny prize, whether made in China, the US, Europe or elsewhere. We're out of time, here, in China, in Europe, everywhere.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend.

[jpak]

46. LOL!

[NickB79]

20. A side-effect of China's massive PV boom

When you have Chinese solar panel companies being created almost overnight, and factories going from blueprints to pouring foundations to 5,000 line workers all in a year, you're going to see a lot of subpar product going out the door.

Besides that, it's fucking China, which has never been synonymous with "high-quality products".

[GreenPartyVoter]

31. That was my first thought as well.

[Warren Stupidity]

21. Um, uh, they come with a warranty against this sort of defect.

[NNadir]

24. Um, um, um...making worthless toxic junk over and over and over because it can't be manufactured...

...correctly the first time is a pretty bad environmental strategy.

The alleged "payback time" in what is called in the scientific literature as "life cycle analysis" has been often grotesquely misrepresented. Any infrastructure that fails before reaching the alleged "payback time" represents environmental destruction, although solar advocates are pretty glib when they demonstrate how shallow their environmentalism actually is.

If there are enforceable warranties...and if you make a claim that these warranties justify the existence of the industry you are merely stating what I have known for many years: That the solar industry has nothing at all to do with concern for the environment and everything to do with people hearing what they want to hear so as to avoid reality, a point that the general set of responses to this post makes very, very, very, very, very, very clear.

The unsustainable solar industry has a very questionable toxicological impact, and the fact that your solar installer may come back in his big carbon dioxide and PAH spewing diesel truck to replace the toxic junk, throwing the cadmium laced crap to be replaced in a landfill, does not wash away the concern of people called "environmentalists."

[Kolesar]

23. Flame bait and overall RW nuttery in his seven sentences of commentary. He started another flame war

A randomly-selected Jury of DU members completed their review of this post at Sat Jun 1, 2013, 09:53 AM, and voted 3-3 to keep it.
-
Your crappy post was alerted within an hour of its posting.

[NNadir]

25. It's too bad that the "I hear what I want to hear" squad can't alert a DU Jury to articles in the...

...New York Times.

Maybe then then they could prevent the larger world, as opposed to a bunch of chanters on a backwater website, from hearing anything but more of the sixty years of propaganda that the "solar will save us" nincompoops have put out.

I am unsurprised, of course, that there was an immediate response from the ostriches here who give not a rat's ass about the accelerating collapse of the atmosphere. It's not like these folks are cognizant human beings who ask questions or even know how to frame them.

I have long given up on hearing a rational response to the tweaking of quasi-religious dogma about the sacred cow represented by the failed, toxic, solar industry. The tragedy of it of course, is that it sucked hundreds of billions of euros, dollars, and trillions of yen and yuan out of a planet where real poverty and real human tragedy exist.

If this money - thrown to satiate the religious dogma of people who aren't well educated - were worth shit, we wouldn't have 400 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

I recall our many pleasant interactions over the years and am pleased to inform you that you have won.

Fear and ignorance have prevailed, and the tragedy of climate change will proceed at an accelerating pace as the figures in every carbon dioxide observatory on the planet reveal.

Heckuva job.

Congratulations. You must be very, very, very, very, very, very, very proud.

Now stick your head back in the sand and enjoy the rest of the weekend.

[Renew Deal]

26. The NY Times is RW Nuttery?

[rurallib]

29. they have their share

[Warren Stupidity]

30. See for example their cheer leading the Iraq war.

[Kolesar]

33. Key words: "his" and "commentary" ... eom

[caraher]

32. "RW nuttery?"

Yeah, NNadir is always going to rub a lot of people the wrong way, but I see zero evidence for "RW nuttery" in his posts. Flame bait, OK, but being outspokenly anti-solar PV and pro-nuclear for the reasons he gives is hardly "right wing" unless RW is simply code for "extremely unpopular here." In which case, let's just agree to say that instead.

[kristopher]

34. It is classic "RW nuttery"

He promotes nuclear power - period; that is his reason for being.

To that end he attacks renewable energy because that is the threat to his preference. His reasoning is riddled with failures of logic, complete historical blindness, and the application of "facts" in a manner that can be called nothing except deceitful. He has no interest in climate change, for if he did he wouldn't place primacy on his preordained conclusions nor would he willfully attempt to deceive people. His "environmentalism" is nothing more than a transparent sham.

[caraher]

36. Nuclear is certainly his obsession; but that's not the issue.

If I read you correctly, your evidence for his being a right winger begins and ends with his promotion of nuclear energy and disdain for solar (and other renewables). That probably works for you as proof, but for most people it's by no means a foregone conclusion. Sure, he could be a "plant" - or perhaps just an outlier.

If you think his advocacy of nuclear is, in and of itself, RW nuttery, you should alert on pro-nuclear posts, explaining that advocating nuclear power is a RW position, and see how many DUers agree that this is prima facie evidence that they don't belong here. I think we both know how successful that campaign would prove. NNadir gets plenty of hides - maybe not enough - but due to his trademark abrasiveness, not for being a wingnut.

[kristopher]

41. "RW nuttery" is rooted in their methodology

They start with an ideological or religious belief and all reasoning and fact is forced into confirmation with that belief or religion.
Nuclear power is Nnadir's religion with the consequence that all of his reasoning and facts are perverted to fit the tenets of his beliefs. He has no scruples or ethics that supersede his need to distort and lie.

That is what makes his posts Classic RW Nnuttery.

You, too, demonstrate a strong affinity for nuclear power, but I'd not classify your contributions in that manner because you make a legitimate effort to temper your preference with a set of ethics guiding you away from dishonesty and deception.

[Renew Deal]

27. I'm not sure the choice is Solar vs. Nukes

And Solar will get better as time goes on. But the failure rates in that article are too high.

[kristopher]

42. That article is worthless as a measure of the actual failure rate of solar panels.

Read it carefully and consider that hundreds of millions of panels are installed each year.

It is nothing more than a hit piece on solar.

[NNadir]

47. There's no such thing as a competition between solar and nuclear energy.

Nuclear energy has a capacity utilization of close to 90% in this country. Solar energy - even when the solar cells aren't breaking apart and spilling cadmium telluride into the environment - is lucky if it has a capacity factor of 10%, making it totally unreliable.

Solar energy will never be as clean, as sustainable, as reliable or as cheap as nuclear energy. Comparing nuclear energy with solar energy is rather like comparing Willy Mays to third string outfielder in the worst team in the Little League A level.

Nuclear energy works, solar energy doesn't. Nuclear energy produces about 30 exajoules of primary energy, making it the world's largest, by far source of climate change gas free primary energy. It did this while being criticized loudly by people who can't think very well.

By contrast, solar energy, with six decades of mindless cheering, can't even produce a half an exjoule of energy, despite unjustified popular enthusiasm, an absurd cost, the requirement for vast government subsidies without which it would die, and its need to entrench the dangerous natural gas industry forever, or at least until the atmosphere stops functioning because of the amount of waste in it.

And how old is the cheering? Here's a 1954 ad from the discoverer of the photovoltaic cell telling us that solar energy will bring us limitless energy:



I quote:

If this energy could be put to use, there would be enough to turn every wheel and light every lamp that mankind would ever need

http://www.beatriceco.com/bti/porticus/bell/belllabs_photovoltaics.html

Where have I, um, heard that before? Um...um...um...I don't know...maybe in the endless delusional day dreaming posts I've read here since about 2002.

And what has been the result of all this solar faith?

In 2002, the concentration of carbon dioxide as observed at Mauna Loa was 373.22 ppm.

Today, a little under 11 years later its, um, 400.03 ppm, for the week ending May 26, 2013.

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

I guess, sixty years later, there are lots of wheels and lots of lamps that "mankind" (sic) needs that solar can't do shit about.

At least in 1954, when they composed this ad, they didn't have 60 years of failure behind them. They, at least, had an excuse for naive optimism.

There are zero forms of energy on this planet that solar energy can replace, because it doesn't work.

[Laelth]

28. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be.

Plus, kudos to NNadir for the post and for taking the time to respond to hostile posters and to educate DU's readers. Allow me to add that many liberals, like me, are skeptical of solar power as a viable, reliable, workable, and efficient source of energy.

We all need power that works and that will not exacerbate climate change. On that, most DU denizens agree. We are discussing (sometimes in a civil way, and sometimes not) how best to achieve that goal. I agree that, so far, solar power is not a viable replacement for coal or natural gas. By all means, I don't mind dumping some cash into further R&D to see whether solar power can be made to work, but I remain skeptical. The idea of trying to get electricity out of a source that's only available for half of the day seems counter-intuitive to me. I think we demand 24/7 electricity these days, and I do not see that changing in the near future.

-Laelth

[muriel_volestrangler]

45. NNadir was pre-emptively hostile

So I don't think he should get any credit for continuing the hostility that he started. His replies are littered with insults.

You say "I don't mind dumping some cash into further R&D to see whether solar power can be made to work"; NNadir does mind. He talks about "mindless cheering for solar energy", "faith based approach for solar energy", "the grand experiment of betting the future of humanity on wonderful "free" solar energy", "gas entrenching wind turbine", "the renewable advocates who screwed the atmosphere", "silly and unworkable "wind power will save us" fantasy", "cheap electronic junk - which is what the solar industry is", "The solar talisman has always been shit, no matter who's producing the crap", calls solar "worthless toxic junk", "the "solar will save us" nincompoops", and more. That's just in this one thread. He has been trashing renewables for years on the site.

He hates renewables, with a passion. He also hates fossil fuels. The only form of power generation he'll accept is nuclear (well, perhaps hydroelectric, but I can't be bothered to search his diatribes for evidence - they are the most tedious reading on DU).

[BlueStreak]

37. When a solar cell fails, how many pregnancies end up in birth defects?

What is the BFD here?

If a solar cell fails, replace it. What is so complicated about this?

[wtmusic]

38. Depends on how much cadmium in the replaced panel enters the food chain.

Could be quite a few.

[kristopher]

43. Simple fix - mandatory recycling.