It is usually assumed that the bulk lifetime is constant throughout a silicon wafer. In this paper, we show that as a result of contamination and gettering processes during solar cell fabrication, lifetime-killing impurity profiles can be nonhomogeneous throughout the wafer, producing a nonuniform lifetime profile that can have a relevant effect on the behavior of solar cells. The existence of steep nonhomogeneous impurity profiles is predicted by simulations of gettering processes in silicon. Solar cell equations are solved for nonuniform lifetime profiles, showing that their electrical performance cannot be accurately described using a constant lifetime model.