Quote:
Originally Posted by mental4astro
Tic toc, tic toc, goes the clock with the cadmium used in the photovoltaic cells on peoples roofs... There's a nasty surprise sitting on top of our roofs, and no one seems to notice. Can't chuck the stuff into land fill. Think asbestos is tricky?
Tic toc, tic toc...
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Well, OK, they're out there, but that's a bit misleading.
Some PV cells (around 5%) contain Cadmium Telluride, more usually found in industrial scale installations and "thin film" applications. CdTe cells are allegedly recyclable to recover the CdTe ... though that may not be proven on an industrial scale. From what I've read, the CdTe
proportion of PV cells is likely to go down, not up, though the
population may increase overall.
Also, CdTe is a highly-stable crystalline structure that is orders of magnitude less dangerous than either Cadmium or Tellurium in their raw form.
Domestic rooftop PV cells in Australia are predominantly silicon (either mono- or poly(multi)-crystalline) - no Cadmium in those - but you can get CdTe cells in some systems as well as those based on Germanium or Gallium.
So, yes, CdTe is toxic, but it is less dangerous than the headline "Cadmium" might suggest, and most rooftop PV systems
don't have Cadmium in them.
(PS: I used to work with Cadmium-coated metal parts, so I'm well aware of the dangers).