Nobody said it is, but it is declining and there is an effort to dedollarize.

The US maintains the trade of oil for dollars at the point of a gun.

They do this because it allows the US to create a perpetual demand for dollars worldwide. That demand maintains the value of the currency.

This allows for unequal exchange, where the US can purchase goods from around the world for significantly less than they are worth, maintaining poverty and thus cheap labor around the world.

It also simultaneously allows the US to maintain trade deficits without losing the value of its currency. Thus Americans can consume multiple times what other people around the world consume without having to actually produce it. It also allows US people to have an advantage in any transaction abroad.

All currency is convertible to another currency. The arguments that somehow accounting for fluctuating currencies makes the system easier ignores that the US dollar fluctuates in value just as every other currency does. The real reason for this arrangement is that it is a major part of US economic hegemony.

When the US controls oil via its financial systems and enforces this rule militarily, the US becomes, in a sense, the de facto ruler of the world as oil is a necessary resource for every modern economy.

The reason we are starting to see this break down is because the Chinese have shifted the world's economic center of gravity eastward while alternative forms of energy are becoming more and more viable. Oil will have to be abandoned for climate change eventually, so it makes sense for other countries to start pushing back now, rather than waiting for later.

It should be clear that the USD being the forced currency for oil is a great arrangement for the US and a shitty one for everyone else.

I love how the color arbitrarily changes just after Russia and China so they can appear to be in a worse category.

There are 15 counties in Russia's color group and they are 24th overall. There's 68 countries in China's group. Unless these colors groups are at specific and arbitrary intervals and China and Russia just happen to barely be on the one side of the threshold, then it means that this is an intentional decision meant to mislead.

Edit, yeah. Egypt is 117 and China is 119. Totally just made the decision to put China in a worse color for no reason. Why not make the cutoff a nice round number like 125 or 120, but no. 118. Brilliant.

Edit 2. If you divide 629 by 6, you get 104.8. multiples of that number should have been the cutoffs for these colors.

People say fucked up shit when they're having sex. One time I called this girl mom.

I agree. I would only consider nuclear in the event that there was some new reactor that could burn spent waste, reducing the half life of it, used no water for cooling and had minimal or no meltdown risk. We have solutions now to these problems that don't involve nuclear

Solar panels have a lifespan. Anything with moving parts has a lifespan. That includes wind turbines.

>2+ decades

7+ decades.

>supply of office furniture, toilet paper, mass produced meat etc are all very efficient and affordable

All of that stuff is significantly cheaper in China. Whatever perceived efficiency the US has is due primarily to unequal exchange.

The US is a failed state. See the TikTok debacle from today for all you need to know about how useless our regulators are.

Look at Chinese anything. We build light rail in the US for 202 million per mile. The Chinese build HSR for 14.7 million per mile. What's your point?

Comparing the US to China on building costs is apples and oranges. For one, steel, concrete, banking, and construction are all state enterprises in China. They don't contract out the construction of infrastructure or the materials to for-profit companies.

Consider the following inequality:

If A(>)0 and B(>)0 then,

A+B (>) A

Where A is cost and B is profit.

In theory, if it was commercially available and could be built out in less than 2 decades, sure

Neither of those things are true though.

New Nuclear should be confined to the laboratory until we have decarbonized, then we can build a nice shiny new reactor that has all the bugs worked out and uses some super common fuel like thorium once the existing renewables start to reach their end of life.

It probably has a place in that future, but going after it now doesn't make any sense. We have serious problems that require immediate solutions and nuke just ain't it.

What I said:

>All it means is that you want to have your power system producing enough power to meet the minimum load over a unit of time.

What the first sentence of your link says:

>The base load[1] (also baseload) is the minimum level of demand on an electrical grid over a span of time, for example, one week

If that isn't a near perfect paraphrase, then I don't understand English.

>You clearly didn't read the literal definition of base load being the minimum level of demand. Its not a layman term, its a literal grid term. But nice try.

I literally design power systems for a living. I've been doing it for more than a decade. Nobody in the industry refers to "base load". What we concern ourselves with is meeting the loads at any given point in time. We have countless tools at our disposal to do this. Base load is antiquated. It was a much bigger concern before SCADA systems gave us control over power flow and instantaneous feedback about grid conditions on a station by station, line by line basis.

>Capacity factor of nuclear plants is literally the highest out of EVERY energy source

Wow. You are the literal definition of a layperson. Capacity factor is the ratio between nameplate capacity and actual power delivered.

Dispatchability is the ability of a generation asset to ramp up or down quickly to meet the real time variability of loads.

You ought to be embarrassed by how confidently wrong you are.

Capacity factor isn't a meaningful concern. At fucking all. You design your system for the power that will be delivered by any asset. Since this is a known quantity and renewables, even with their CF between .25-.35, still outperform every other generation type in cost.

>ALL of your grid with renewables would require an absolutely stupid amount of storage

No, storage is not a major requirement. It is only necessary if you don't want to overbuild. But having too much energy at any point in time allows for all sorts of technological solutions that can be turned on or off by grid operators. On when we are over producing. Off when demand is approaching production. Things like making fertilizer, desalinating water, using carbon capture technologies, pumping water, recycling and many many other things. It would have huge consequences for reducing production costs of nearly everything and lead to a post scarcity in energy. Overbuild should be the GOAL, not something to be feared. It also ensures that you are ready for future demand increases.

>I'm a big proponent of hydrogen storage

Of course you are. Sigh. You are demonstrating that you haven't really thought about and lack the engineering background to separate the wheat from the chaff. You are literally a walking popular mechanics magazine. Hydrogen will never be a solution to anything but coking steel.

>too expensive as a base load option versus throwing up a natural gas plant.

This is the second time you have brought up the cost of gas plants. The only energy in the world more expensive than nuclear is gas peaker plants.

>most likely not economically feasible

You clearly haven't done the math on any of this stuff. The cost to completely decarbonize the entire US energy and transportation system is in the neighborhood of 7 trillion. That's electricity, gas heating, and meeting the grid needs of a national fleet of only EVs (something that absolutely shouldn't be done, but that's the math). $7 trillion is less than a decade of military spending, less than 3 years of what Americans spend on their personal cars, less than a decade of projected annual climate change costs, and about 2 years of federal spending.

We aren't talking about an insurmountable task here. The only part of it that's insurmountable is the political will to do it, which is no doubt stunted by laypeople throwing their erroneous opinions into the political ring and shouting over the people who actually do this shit for a living.

>Solar + storage. Way to take something out of context.

K. When you show your own math on this, we'll talk. For now, 82% of the new generation coming down the pike is renewables.

Baseload is a term used by laypeople that don't understand the grid.

All it means is that you want to have your power system producing enough power to meet the minimum load over a unit of time.

You people act like it's a magical thing that has to come from a particular source.

What you want is dispatchable power. Then it doesn't fucking matter.

Wind and solar aren't dispatchable, but then, neither is nuke.

Instead, have geographically distributed renewables and the transmission assets to move that power to where the demand is. Make enough power that you are always overshooting demand. Take the excess power and do something useful with it, like desalinization, producing fertilizer, whatever useful shit you can. You only need a small amount of dispatchable power to make up any anomalous dips in production met by pumped water, hydropower, batteries, flywheels, geothermal, or other non-emitting dispatchable power sources. You can also do load shedding and many other operations that stabilize the grid.

Baseload is just a nonsense word that laypeople use because they heard it on a documentary somewhere and they think it makes them sound smart.

>solar just isn't there yet in terms of cost feasibility,

Literally every electric utility in the country disagrees with you, so there's that.

Can I just say that so many of you all finally getting it about nuclear makes me happy. Im an ex nuclear employee, EE.

Already existing nuke is fine enough; expensive power, but I'm not going to crusade against it either.

But I have been debunking building new nuke for a long time, often on this very sub, and getting downvoted to hell for it. I cite everything and the arguments are fucking watertight. Some layman will post one article about a SMR that's like 20 years out from commercialization as if it's a rebuttal to any of the 15 points I made prior.

As a professional engineer in power, these people make my blood fucking curdle.

Me too. I was gonna go off.

Does it grow your dick faster than your gut? As long as it's visible, you're ok.

The eye of the cougar.

Go ahead and look up CD Howe institute's funding. You might get a sense of why they come out pro-nuclear. But let pretend they don't have a financial incentive to publish bullshit.

How many SMRs are in service in Canada today?

https://www.power-technology.com/features/where-will-the-first-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-be/

Oh yeah, fucking ZERO. And in my last comment, we saw how well nuclear prices are forecasted. By that I mean, they aren't. At all. Ever. So your first link is a rosy little dream number made up by a for-profit think tank that's funded by just about every fossil fuel company in Canada.

Check your sources, brojob.

As long as we are talking sources, world nuclear association is a outlet comprised of the all the biggest nuclear companies from mining to refining to power to reprocessing to storage. Everything you read on that website should be cross checked against another source. Some of their info is good. A lot of it is half truths and outright lies.

BTW, I love how you just post a long ass article and then say nothing about the contents of it. Did you even read it? You also didn't even address anything I said.

You're actually throwing out an LCOE argument for nuclear? Lol.

Lazard is the industry standard analysis on LCOE.

https://www.lazard.com/perspective/levelized-cost-of-energy-levelized-cost-of-storage-and-levelized-cost-of-hydrogen/

Utility scale solar: $28-41/kWh

Wind: $26-50/kWh

Nuke: $131-204/kWh

And that's the unsubsidized cost! Nuke is looking pretty shit for investors and consumers, guy. Subsidized wind is about $9/kWh. Fucking ouch.

And guess what else?! As a bonus, we'll throw in that nuclear is getting MORE expensive over time. Wind and solar are getting CHEAPER with every passing year.

Better build them nukes fast. Oh shit. You can't. It takes at least a DECADE to build one reactor in the US.

And then there's the water consumption. One cooling tower consumes more water than the entire residential population of Los Angeles annually. Guess that leaves out the entire American southwest. Oh, 💩!

Dude, I'm done here. I'm an engineer. I do this for a living. You're just an internet nuke fanatic that doesn't know the difference between then and than.

>How is 10 000 acres of solar panels cheaper then what is used on an aircraft carrier

And as for the answer to that question:

Why do you think a million pencils are cheaper than a Tesla? Because they're easier to make. Derp. Idk if you know this, but nuke plants take up a LOT of space.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://docs.wind-watch.org/US-footprints-Strata-2017.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjjov_RiaH8AhU1lWoFHQwbC-IQFnoECDEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1NYQRj1l1hqWCQrTgOqeFt

Yeah, actually on a per megawatt basis, nuke is less than 4 times more efficient than solar, but the difference is that solar can exist in a multipurpose space. You can grow plants under them, you can let animals feed under them. You can park cars under them. Can't do that with nuke.

And as long as we are talking about land use, nuclear, in the overwhelming majority of cases, must be built on a body of water. Solar and wind can be built anywhere, even in the remotest parts of the world. Nuke can't do that either. So the land costs for nuclear are significantly higher than they are for a larger solar job, because solar can be sited where land is cheap and waterfront is never cheap.

I worked nuke in the midwest. I'm an electrical power engineer. It's not misinformation.

Want sources?

On overruns: let's look at the last two construction jobs in the US: watts bar 2 and Vogtle 3&4.

Watts bar 2 (from the Wiki):

>Unit 2 construction started in the 1970s.[3] Unit 2 was 80% complete when construction on both units was stopped in 1985 due in part to a projected decrease in power demand.[4] In 2007, the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) Board approved completion of Unit 2 on August 1, and construction resumed on October 15.[5] The project was expected to cost $2.5 billion, and employ around 2,300 contractor workers. Once finished, it was expected to employ 250 people in permanent jobs.[6] The final cost of the plant is estimated at $6.1 billion.[3]

So, it cost 244% of what it was supposed to cost and took 42 years to build.

Vogtle 3&4:

https://www.powermag.com/vogtle-expansion-cost-jumps-again-in-service-dates-set-for-2023/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vogtle_Electric_Generating_Plant

Groundbreaking began in 2009, permit submitted in 2006. Original cost was expected to be 14 billion. The original ISDs (in-service dates) were 2016 and 2017. As of today, neither are online, though unit 3 has had fuel loaded and testing is in progress.

The most recent updates on cost show it now at $30.34 billion or 217% of the original specced cost.

https://www.gpb.org/news/2022/05/09/georgia-nuclear-plants-cost-now-forecast-top-30-billion

Or we could talk about FE divesting their nuclear into a separate company. They don't want it on their books.

https://www.technologyreview.com/2015/05/28/167951/why-dont-we-have-more-nuclear-power/

Here's MIT talking about how much more expensive it is than even unsubsidized wind and solar.

Why? Because of the personnel. In the watts bar wiki above, it talks about how reactor two alone would produce 250 permanent jobs. To run, defend, maintain, licence and provide engineering support. Most of those jobs are engineering jobs. Many of those are contracted. Those guys pull like $300 an hour.

In contrast, a solar farm creates about 12 permanent jobs in maintenance and operations. Most of those workers clean the panels. Some of them do electrical work. Maybe a person or two in operations is an engineer. The cost of labor isn't even close. Even though nuclear has a capacity factor of 90% and solar's is just 25%, the cost of the power coming out of the nuke plant is more than double after subsidies. It's easily 50% more without them.

Nuke is dying because the economics of it are terrible. Everyone in power understands this. Now go ahead and back up your claim that I'm spreading misinformation.

Nuke Will suffer for many many more reasons than that.

Nobody wants to build them because they're too expensive, always overrun and are the most expensive type of energy to operate.

That's not entirely true. While old large trees represent significant stores of carbon, forests that are early in their maturity absorb more carbon from the air. As they get older, they reach a steady state where the decomposition of old material reaches relative parity with the atmospheric absorption for new material.

China did lockdowns and spent a bunch of money and they don't have inflation either.

China absolutely killing it, as per usual.

The Pentagon has sounded the alarm many times that the US lacks effective ways of dealing with hypersonic weapons.

I'm not an expert on these weapons, but I am an expert in electrical engineering and from what I can see, the US is far behind in this area.

The good news is that it really doesn't matter unless the US attempts to start a war with China or Russia as neither of them have shown any interest in engaging the US intentionally.

I doubt it. The Iron Done missiles fly at mach 2.2.

Hypersonics are mach 10.

Well, the 20mm automatic cannons that intercept missiles fire projectiles at 3600fps.

Hypersonic missiles fly at something like 11,250fps.

There really isn't a reliable way to shoot them down right now and, even if there were, they can just be launched in numbers that overwhelm the defenses.

Very cool, but there's a problem. Uranus looks nothing like myanus.