If one is even remotely familiar with industrial practice - I've stood in chemical plants with reactors 4 stories tall - these glib assurances are rather naive.
One of the biggest environmental problems in the world is the chemotoxic effects, well documented, of recycling electronic waste, electronic waste being what solar cells become in about 20 to 25 years of use, depending on the weather patterns where they are used.
If one enters the terms (electronic waste recycling lead) one gets over 900,000 hits on Google scholar, many of the top ones referring to lead levels in children living near electronic waste recycling facilities. Over 16,000 have been published in 2024, and the year's not over yet.
Generally, these toxic recycling facilities are located in areas inhabited by poor people. Now that China has become a wealthy country, it's moving to places like Bangladesh...
Blood lead, cadmium and hair mercury concentrations and association with soil, dust and occupational factors in e-waste recycling workers in Bangladesh
...and Ghana:
Ecotoxicity of heavy metals in soil around long-term e-waste recycling sites in Tema and Ashaiman areas of Ghana
One of the reason we are experiencing the environmental disaster now before us is that people do not look seriously into the implications of these kind of notions, which often amount to handwaving.
The solar industry, which has soaked up trillions of dollars in the last decade for no measurable environmental advantage, is not sustainable owing to the mass intensity, the land intensity, the toxicological implications all of which are greatly exacerbated by the unreliability and the horrible unsustainable implications of energy storage presented, again with extreme naiveté, as a "solution" to this intractable problem.
The solar (and the wind) industry will never be as clean or as sustainable as nuclear energy. The world is slowly (too slowly, too little, too late) waking up to this reality.
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