Tellurium supplies, as related to CdTe solar cells (First Solar Inc.)

[phantom power]

Using their 72 watt panel, I actually get 109 metric tons per gigawatt, but I don't think that alters the nature of the problem.

According to USGS and Arizona State Geologist Lee Allison, the world produces anywhere from 160 to 215 metric tons of tellurium a year.

Tellurium was traditionally used in metal alloys and other uses. Demand from emerging new applications, like DVD discs, digital camera, computer flash memory and CPU thermoelectric cooling, among other things, has caused a severe shortage in recent years, and drove the price from below $4 a pound to over $100 in 2006, according to Lee Allison. Jack Lifton on Resource Investor suggested that investors could sense the shortage and start to hoard physical tellurium, adding fuel to the fire and causing a huge tellurium price run.

How much tellurium does FSLR use? They use about 7 grams of cadmium and about 8 grams of tellurium in each of the 2 feet x 4 feet CdTe solar panel. That's roughly 135 metric tons per each 1 giga watt (GW) of products. They have signed a bunch of sales contracts with per watt price fixed and mandated to go down 6.5% yearly, and they are aggressively building new factories and expanding production capacity. After finishing a new factory in Germany, they are building four brand-new factories in Malaysia.

(...)

But, where are they going to obtain all the new tellurium supplies needed for future expansion, at a price cheap enough to ensure profitability, and a quantity large enough to keep the new factories running? On Nov. 8, 2007, the CFO publicly commented that "we have identified terawatts levels of tellurium availability." He seemed to have no idea what he was talking about. One terrawatt is 1000 GW. Nowhere on earth does this amount of tellurium even exist underground, let alone available in a secret vault somewhere.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/54614-dark-future-ahead-for-first-solar

[AlecBGreen]

1. Quick!

There's Tellurium in Iran! And North Korea! Lets go get it!

[jpak]

2. CdTe modules comprise less than 3% of global PV production

most (95%) are made from silicon

not to worry about running out of Si....

[phantom power]

3. I guess the implication of this analysis is that it's going to stay < 3%.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. Or looked at another way

They will need to reformulate (but that does not mean their R&D has been wasted.)

[phantom power]

5. I'm dubious, for the following reason:

They want to scale to terawatt capacity. (And they should, because that is what any energy source needs to do, before it can be taken seriously as an energy source)

Now, the numbers from that analysis say: that to produce a terawatt worth of panels would require several hundred years worth of our current yearly production of Te. The yearly production seems to vary, but let's assume a mid-range figure, which gives (roughly) 700 years worth of production per terawatt of PV.

If they reformulate and achieve a major breakthrough of requiring only 1/10th of the Te they currently use, that's still 70 years of yearly Te production per terawatt. Or, if they achieve a practically magic breakthrough of 1/100th the Te usage, it's still 7 years of production per TW.

And all this is ignoring the other point made in the article, which is that many other industries are now also competing for Te supplies.

So, I rather doubt that any Te-based PV technology will ever be able to scale up to the terawatt production level. Barring an enormous increase in worldwide Te production, such as a 100-fold increase. There is absolutely no reason to suspect that is going to happen.

[hunter]

6. We could get it by transmutation in nuclear reactors...

:P

Recovery of Noble Metals (Ru, Rh, Pd, Mo) and Tellurium from Fission Products

C. Jouault*, R. Boen**, X. Deschanel**, M. Allibert*
* LTPCM, INPG / 1130 rue de la piscine, BP 75, 38402 St Martin d’Hères Cedex, France
** DCC - RRV - SCD ,CEA/ Valrho-Marcoule, BP 171, 30207 Bagnols sur Cèze, France

Prior to the pyrochemical actinides / lanthanides separation, easily reducible species, such as cesium, noble metals and other elements, must be extracted from fission product mixed oxides. The process begins with a treatment of the mixed oxides by carbon monoxide : the easily reducible species are reduced to the metallic state and among them, cesium and tellurium volatilize. After a treatment by gazeous fluorhydric acid (to transform the oxides of actinides and lanthanides into fluorides), the metallic species (noble metals, Ni, Sn, Sb… ) are extracted from the fluoride salt by digestion in a liquid metal.

http://www.nea.fr/html/science/pyro/abst-p.html

[Nihil]

7. Oh hunter ...?

:spank:

That was cruel!

The future of solar energy requiring the use of the dreaded "nuke"? :dilemma:
Why, some people might have to compromise and accept that there *are*
several different components to the global solution!

:rofl: