I would expect lifecycle costs to be largely underestimated for solar.
Regulations are way more relaxed to dispose panels in comparison to nuclear waste, for obvious reasons. Nonetheless, panel disposal is still expensive, we're just leaving the bill for future generations, just like with nuclear, unfortunately...
A PV module has a weight of about 0.05 kg/W. If it costs $0.20/W, that's $4000/tonne. The disposal cost of waste in a landfill in the US is about $60/tonne. So, even with no recycling at all, the cost of landfilling old PV modules is not a significant part of the cost of PV here. And much of the cost of PV installations (the steel mountings and earth anchors, the aluminum frames of the modules, the glass covers) is highly recyclable.
I mean, if we're concerned about using a renewable energy source, shouldn't we be concerned that its materials are also renewable?
How much does it cost to renew that $4000/kg solar panel so that it can continue to be used?
I bet renewing will cost more than $4000/kg. If that's true, we're taking a 50-75% discount on the expense of future generations, as I said. Solar is more expensive than we are lead to think it is. This should be accounted in decision and policy making.
Of course it's sustainable. The notion that landfilling somehow isn't sustainable is based mostly on silly aesthetics.
About the only concern with sustainability in PV is silver for contact wires, but that can be substituted for. It's being used now because it's marginally cheaper.
To clarify: not the landfill in itself, but the materials are finite. If we don't reuse them, we'll run out of them eventually. Future generations will have to dig through our landfills to recycle them. And that will be quite expensive. That's the future bill I'm mostly concerned about.
So, exactly which material for PV were you concerned about?
This also goes against your original expression about lifecycle cost. Later shortage of some critical material doesn't affect the lifecycle cost of PV built now.
The cheapest PV panels today are cadmium-telluride, with 8g/m^2 of cadmium. That will be valuable reclaimed. Anyway you don't want it in your landfill.
My main worry about the cadmium is whether a house fire makes your neighborhood a superfund site.
