Households with solar roofs will produce 30 to 60 percent more electronic waste than households without solar roofs, a new study finds.

A study published earlier this week shows that the proposal to power the US on wind, water and solar rests on a single, gigantic lie — and an opportunity for policymakers, informed citizens and journalists to understand how the energy density of fuels largely determines their human and environmental impact. 

Nowhere is the relationship between energy density and environmental impact more clear than in the production of toxic waste.

While we hear a lot about nuclear, a new EP investigation has discovered that solar panels produces 300 times more toxic waste than nuclear plants, and no nation outside of Europe has a plan to prevent them from contaminating water supplies in Asia and Africa.  

How big of a problem is solar waste?

Environmental Progress investigated the problem to see how the problem compared to the much more high-profile issue of nuclear waste. 

We found:

• Solar panels create 300 times more toxic waste per unit of energy than do nuclear power plants.

• If solar and nuclear produce the same amount of electricity over the next 25 years that nuclear produced in 2016, and the wastes are stacked on football fields, the nuclear waste would reach the height of the Leaning Tower of Pisa (52 meters), while the solar waste would reach the height of two Mt. Everests (16 km). 

A $14 million-a-year anti-nuclear outfit called Food and Water Watch refuses to say who is funding its last minute TV ad blitz aimed at killing New York's largest source of clean energy in the state legislature.

The group has expanded its efforts with advertising in New York — one of the most expensive media markets in the country — with the apparent goal of killing the historic legislation passed last year by the New York Public Service Commission, which recognized the importance of nuclear as a source of clean reliable power last year. 

Please don't climate march.

It's an effort to kill off our best hope at saving the climate.

All environmental groups, whether pro-nuclear or anti-nuclear, should publish a list of their donors.

Experts have long recognized the negative impact of fossil fuel air pollution on public health, and the relative safety of nuclear power. But prior studies have been limited in their ability to directly measure health trade-offs from moving from nuclear to fossil fuels. 

Now, a new study in Nature Energy by a young economist at Carnegie Mellon University, finds that the temporary closure of two nuclear plants in the early 1980s led directly to lower birth weights — a key indicator of poor health outcomes later in life.

The study could play an important role in catalyzing action to keep nuclear plants on-line.

Britain has been one of the shining hopes for a nuclear renaissance. Committed to strong climate action, and concerned over the security of its energy supplies, the island nation has plans to build 12 reactors.

But now, the bankruptcy of Westinghouse has put into question all of those plans.

In a new piece for the British newspaper, The Financial Times, I argue that the crisis brings an opportunity for the UK government to save nuclear power — not just for itself, but also for the world.

The key? Standardize a single, simple design, and build it over and over again. History shows that the experience afforded by standardization is the key to making nuclear cheap.

The looming insolvency of Toshiba has set off a chain reaction of events that now threatens the existence of nuclear power in the West.

The Japanese and French governments will be compelled to act for economic reasons — their nuclear industries are too important to their economies to fail.

Even though it lacks its own nuclear industry, Britain is emerging as the strongest of the three nations because it has a significant number of planned nuclear plants that involve Japanese and French companies.

The new conservative government of Theresa May has expressed more interest in industrial policy than prior conservative governments, and has already begun talks with the Japanese government about the UK government coming in as an investor on two of its planned plants.

The question is whether anyone in the three governments will have the vision and strength to make the right choices. The right choices will be the most difficult ones because they will require standing up first to the nuclear industry and next to ideologues on the Left and the Right.

But crises bring opportunities and there are large ones for reformers within the industry and within governments to do what should have been done 40 years ago: standardize designs, reorganize and consolidate the industry, and implement a vision to scale up plants while bringing down costs.

They can take inspiration from the success of Boeing, and the courage of Sully.