On Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:36:20 +0100, John wrote:

Would be interesting to know the total costs for making a solar panel
not just for its useful life but from start to scrapping, as well as
how they are made and if that's good for the environment?

What sort of "solar panel" are we talking about? Thermal or photvoltaic,
the latter I suspect has a massive enviromental production cost to make
the silicon wafers and the process required to turn them into photovoltaic
cells. End of life disposal may have toruble with the chemicals/elements
that make the cells.

A simple thermal solar panel probably isn't to bad dfor production and
there isn't a "nasty chemicals" problem at end of life. A vacuum tube
based panel won't be so good.

--
Cheers
Dave.