09V/09VI (095/096) Nuclear Submarine Thread
- Thread starter Hendrik_2000
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Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
What make you think China submarine progress depend on Russia?
China has thriving and world class civilian nuclear reactor borne from building reactor for military submarine. They are completely independent from Russia They have complete supply system of components. Chinese civilian nuclear power plant is something like 95% domestic. In fact China is THE ONLY PLACE that still build nuclear power plant All other countries has stopped building reactor even decommission nuclear plant. In fact bill Gates new era Reactor contract the design to Chinese company. Westinghouse went bankrupt. Areva, Siemens bought by Framatome
They have been experimenting with type 93 series and now building huge facilities to build the next gen submarine. China is leading when it come to IPS and recently unveiled compact 20MW turbo gen
They have like 30 years of experience in building nuclear submarine
Civilian reactor technology is transferable to military and vice versa The difference is Military reactor use highly enriched fuel to reduce reactor and turbine dimension and provide high quality steam and less refueling
Civilian use slight enriched uranium because space in not consideration Steam quality is poor that is why they need large steam turbine and large reactor And it has to be refuel after couple years which is impossible in confine space of submarine
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If India can import nuclear technology from Russia, what would make it impossible for China? Only reason would be that China would want much more advanced technology than India and that would make Russia reluctant to share.
First you say they have complete supply, then you say they have 95% ?
Really?
china has more than 30 years of experience in this, so do the US and russia. The difference is that the US and ussr/russia had much more resources to dedicate to R&D.
So, what you are saying is that what andrew erickson wrote in that article (not that article, but another from NI that it cited, i placed a link here) is not truth?
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Problem with the submarine reactors is the infrequent refuel time.
IF the reactor doesn't need refuelling during its lifetime then the mass/construction / operational benefits are so huge.
BUT.
The design/verification become very challenging.
In commercial reactor the fuel used to spend 3 years typically, now the 4 is the norm, and the 5 is the cutting edge.
But a commercial reactor stop periodically, in every year (2 years the cutting edge) and they can inspect/reshuffle the fuel rods.
With a sealed reactor it is not possible, if the submarine lifetime is 30 years ,spending 25% of time on duty, then the expected lifetime of assemblies is 7.5 year, without the opportunity to inspect and reshuffle the fuel rods.
It took good 60 years to get to the 5 years time ,so it is not a fast learning.
But it is more difficult with the submarines, there is a need to introduce burnable neutron poisons , and very robust fuel elements.
Now, if you want to test them on shore , and they fail at year 5 say, then what ? modify the fuel elements, start again the test, and if it is fail again before year 7.5 then repeat it.
And even if it is reach the 7.5 then it is just one reactor, so there will be a need to validate at least for 3-12 full core lifetime the design/manufacturer, to have robust design.
So ,to have good submarine reactor design you need lot of experience, collected over the design/manufacturing/operation of these cores over 30-40 years.
China had long term (20+ years ) experience with only 6 submarine with first gen reactors, and it is very questionable of the working years of those subs, it can be only few years.
There submarine program seriously started only around 2000, so there is no more than two full lifetime design cycle passed since that .
So, it needs at least 10-20 years and one-two more submarine generation to be on par with the Russian/USA quality.
No, you are in the dark. Don't presume to speak for anyone but yourself.
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Most of the pressurized water reactors in the US operate on 18-month cycles, a few on 24-month cycle. All boiling water reactors in the US operate on 24-month cycles. That is they refuel every 18 or 24 months. Many reactors outside the US operate less than 18 or 24 months cycle for economic or power demand reasons (sometimes complex reasons related to fuel cost and tax). It is not an indication of of technology achievement if you operate at 12, 18 or 24 months, it is mostly economics. Operating shorter cycle lengths allow more opportunity to move fuel around to even out power between fuel assemblies, easier to meet design/safety requirements, and above all allows higher fuel burnup (more energy output) for the same initial enrichment (relative to longer cycles). On the other hand, longer cycles means you have less refueling outage where you are not generating power. Most of the fuel assemblies in 18-month cycle operate for 3 cycles, that is equivalent to 4.5 years. Number of cycles a fuel assembly operates typically increases with shorter cycle length, for example, sometimes a fuel assembly may be operated for 6-7 cycles for 12-month cycle length. Since all the energy in a cycle need be loaded at the beginning of a cycle, longer cycles will need more neutron poisons (absorb neutron without fission) to suppress power at the beginning of the cycle and this wastes neutrons that could be used to split atoms/generating power. In a military reactors, economics is not quite the same and everything is likely designed with much more safety margin not to challenge the fuel over expected period of power generation.
Hendrik_2000
Lieutenant General
I don't know what are you talking about China submarine program started very early in late 1950's when Mao ask Khruschev to help China with submarine program but Khruschev refuse So China has to do their own design starting with compact reactor. At that China has built conventional submarine based on russian design But no reactor they might have small research reactor but that is about it So china has been working on it since 1960's eventually design their own small reactor and launch the type 91 in 1974 The problem has nothing to do with the refueling rate or replacement fuel rod. YOU HAVE FERTILE IMAGINATION IT IS ALL BS!
The early chinese submarine suffer from radiation due to improper shielding of the reactor. In commercial nuclear plant you don't have this problem because the reactor and the turbine are separated. The reactor in encased in concrete dome completely isolated from the turbine house But in the submarine there is no separation! and you cannot en-cased it in concrete! So for the next 20 years they are working on solving this problem and reducing noise at the same time.
Noise is caused by high pressure feed water pump that pump high pressure water to the reactor It is noisy So the solution is integrated all the components of fuel pump, steam generator and reactor into single unit.
To completely reduce noise you need to eliminate pump completely instead relying on natural circulation of reactor.Also put all the noisy component in a single raft and isolated from the body of submarine So from 1974 to type 93 china is working on it But natural circulation reactor is not easy and the problem has to be approached stepwise starting with 25% and keep going up that is why we see experimentation with type 93. Then of course eliminate gear box completely and using IEP and use DC motor propeller Better still eliminate the shaft completely. so the next Chinese submarine will be revolutionary And has nothing to do with refueling rate.
It does not make sense to mass produced submarine that is only marginally better than type 93 wait for truly breakthrough sub
The Chinese naval nuclear power program started in July 1958 when the gave approval to start the 091 submarine project. Mao Zedong declared that China would build nuclear attack submarines even if it took ten thousand years. was the first chief designer of this project. The first submarine in the class, the Long March I, was commissioned in 1974; the last was launched in 1990. In 1983, Peng shifted from military to civilian sector in application of and his duty at the nuclear submarine project was succeeded by .
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I made a question in the forum and got two forum members saying that it is unknow. It seems that its not me alone. I didnt get an answer from you, but if you have information that hasnt been posted, please share it.
It was an evolution/improvement over time .
They operate with this strategies now.
To go for several years long cycle the fuel assemblies has to validated for that burnup, it needs burnable poisons .
Most importantly it needs experience and validation.
Like the aircraft engine validations for transatlantic flights.
CCCP/Russia and USA designed/manufactured/operated close to 300 nuclear submarines EACH.
China up to this date built 18 nuclear submarines, two third of them been built in the past 15 years.
Do you seriously think that the experience and capability of the Chinese comparable to the USA/Russian ?
It will take at least 50 more submarine and 15-20 years to see really capable nuclear submarines from China.