00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread

[weig2000]

I don't know if this is relevant. It is a JNCX shipyard recruitment for technical personnels for military ships dated way back in 2015, for 2016 graduates. I believe this was the start of a program for nuclear powered surface ships, most likely a nucleared powered aircraft carrier and other combat ships.

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I was aware of this recruitment requirements for nuclear power talents. But this one might not indicate an immediate start of a nuclear-powered carrier - this was in 2015 before even 003 had started construction. It could be just JNCX had started to develop a labor and skill base for nuclear-powered ships including carriers, which would take a long lead time.

That said, that Dalia builds another conventional CATOBAR carrier a la 003 and JNCX goes on to build the first nuclear-powered carrier after 003 are not mutually exclusive. They would make beautiful sense.

 

[Han Patriot]

I remember @Deino mentioned a while back that he had read somewhere (PDF?) that someone talked about Dalian recruiting people at JNCX to work on the next carrier at Dalian. I hope that wasn't from you. If not, then we have multiple independent sources telling the same thing. If there is no change in plan, perhaps we will start to see modules for the 4th carrier at Dalian in a year or two.

It's about time.

I will keep quiet now. =)

 

[Andy1974]

What other surface vessels could get nuclear power apart from carriers? Would they use the same reactor type, or is a whole family of different sizes needed?

Ice breakers are already in service, how about new Comprehensive Supply Ships, Huge support vessels?

Or even… a Chinese cruiser?

 

[luosifen]

What other surface vessels could get nuclear power apart from carriers? Would they use the same reactor type, or is a whole family of different sizes needed?

Ice breakers are already in service, how about new Comprehensive Supply Ships, Huge support vessels?

Or even… a Chinese cruiser?

Didn't the Russians order some floating power plants to be built by China that could be hooked to remote Arctic communities and other installations in the far North? Or was the contract just for the hull and the Russians would install the reactor themselves, I can't remember the details.

 

[Andy1974]

Didn't the Russians order some floating power plants to be built by China that could be hooked to remote Arctic communities and other installations in the far North? Or was the contract just for the hull and the Russians would install the reactor themselves, I can't remember the details.

Russia supplies the reactor, China supplies everything else, so they do have an ideal, debugged platform for new reactors to be slotted in to.

 

[gelgoog]

delete

 

[sferrin]

Absolutely. The so-called zero total failure rate is in particular unbelivable.

I remember an General of PLANF had semi-officially claim that their EM cat. is much better than that on the US Navy a few years ago. The figure he mentioned is hundreds to thousand times of test have been done, and no failure at all.

If what he claimed before at the early stage was true, and the figures of the weibo article above is also true, it is very very impressive for a whole new system that can perform such kind of stablility.

Is there even one video out there of it being tested?

 

[taxiya]

I was aware of this recruitment requirements for nuclear power talents. But this one might not indicate an immediate start of a nuclear-powered carrier - this was in 2015 before even 003 had started construction. It could be just JNCX had started to develop a labor and skill base for nuclear-powered ships including carriers, which would take a long lead time.

That said, that Dalia builds another conventional CATOBAR carrier a la 003 and JNCX goes on to build the first nuclear-powered carrier after 003 are not mutually exclusive. They would make beautiful sense.

The marine nuclear power-plant construction and test facility is in Liaoning.

 

[Michaelsinodef]

Maybe this video has been posted before (also more than 1 year old) but eh, I think it might be a bit relevant in regards to future chinese aircraft carriers (well, the construction of them).

Basically, it's about how a new 'ship' (ChangXing 8th, visible at like ~7 secs into the video) will help in reducing the construction time of future aircraft carriers (when constructing, able to make fewer but larger sections before assembly). This was something that was utilized in building the recent british carriers, with 1 of the sections apparantly weighing ~10000 tons.
And well, this new ship can apparantly hold up to ~32k tons.

The gist is basically, it's probably fair to expect future carriers to be build quite fast (less construction time than US carriers).

 

[Godzilla]

Maybe this video has been posted before (also more than 1 year old) but eh, I think it might be a bit relevant in regards to future chinese aircraft carriers (well, the construction of them).

Basically, it's about how a new 'ship' (ChangXing 8th, visible at like ~7 secs into the video) will help in reducing the construction time of future aircraft carriers (when constructing, able to make fewer but larger sections before assembly). This was something that was utilized in building the recent british carriers, with 1 of the sections apparantly weighing ~10000 tons.
And well, this new ship can apparantly hold up to ~32k tons.

The gist is basically, it's probably fair to expect future carriers to be build quite fast (less construction time than US carriers).

Isn't that just a barge? lol.. I don't think it plays any critical or unique role in carrier construction.
CSSC definitely has plenty of experience playing with barges / RORO ships to move large modules around. I mean, one of the regular ships I use, Mighty Servant 1, makes plenty of port calls to their yards and it carries 40,000 tons max. China makes most of the new generation of RORO now, COSCO has plenty of them. Also, the only reason you use it is if you don't have enough space or labor in your assembly halls, and have to assemble them in a satellite yard then move to the dry dock.

Anyway, aside from the modules on the lower level, which can be much larger since it is being moved into place by SPMT, all the other modules on the ship is limited in size by the gantry crane load capacity. I think the one in Jiangnan is 1600 ton capacity. The biggest breakthrough for China in recent years is that it makes its own SPMTs now, instead of buying off Schurlle or use ALE/ Mammoet, thus its alot cheaper and no need to have these external guys in. Its even got the single axel going to plenty of flexibility in the module geometry. 2 years ago we made multiple 9,000-10,000 ton (100mx40mx35m high) full plug and play O&G modules in China, alot of the guys were labor hires that regularly work on CSSC contracts too so you would expect them to build very fast!

The key thing is if the Chinese maritime engineers can design the ship to take advantage of the large module sizes and maximize the subsystems that can be commissioned before the final assembly, as well as run the logistics trail well enough so the long lead items can be installed in these modules before erection. E.g. have the boilers delivered to the assembly hall and installed in the module and pre-aligned, before doing the final alignment when everything is set in place, which would save a hell of a long time on the schedule and save keeping all those access holes open!