Nuclear power plants can last up to eighty years.

By contrast, the output of solar panels declines one percent every year, for inherently physical reasons, and they as well as wind turbines are replaced roughly every two decades.

As for circularity, solar panels and wind turbines are rarely recycled because the energy and labor required to do so are much more expensive than just buying raw materials.

As a result, the vast majority of solar panels and wind turbines are either sent to landfills or join the global electronic waste stream where they are dumped on poor communities in developing nations.

Forbes lays out the drawbacks and the reasons that solar and wind investment has increased energy prices everywhere in the world it’s been used.