Re: Latest PLAN Aircraft Carrier Info & Photos
You make the classic mistake of confusing size with cost. If you want it cheaper, it's the weapon and sensors you have to cut back on as well as manpower. An aircraft carrier's raison d'etre is to carry and operate aircraft, and it's ability to do so is entirely related to it's size. Efficiency increases exponentially with physical size, hence the Nimitz class for example with only point defence weapons. take an Invincible class, keep the weapon and sensor fit the same but double the size of the ship (from 20,000 to 40,000 tonnes) and you do not come even close to doubling the cost. You do get a far more effective carrier and have the option of configuring it for CATOBAR ops.
The morale of the tale is if you want it to cost less, cut everything else before you cut back the hull!
I don't want to cut back, I want to redesign. If you say the larger the better, then why are USN aircraft carriers 100 000 tons and not 150 000 tons? Surely because other factors come into the considerations.
PLAN wants effective aircraft carriers according to its own needs. A major design consideration for USN is the ability to maintain a bombing campaign against some small or medium sized country.
PLAN would call that interfering in the affairs of that country and won't provide this capability in the
next half dozen or more carriers. So it doesn't need magazine space for these bombs and missiles.
I was reading a few days ago about the decision of the Chinese government to develop nuclear reactors using a liquid Thorium fluoride mantle around the reactor space. In the mantle U233 is bred, which is then introduced in the reactor space where it is fissioned to provide the power.
These reactors work at a temperature of 900 or 1000K, versus a LWR working temperature of about 600 K. This gives a very much higher thermal efficiency, so for a given output power the thermal power necessary is much lower. This thermal power is about commensurate with the number of atoms split per second (U235 in the LWR, U233 in the Thorium reactor. A specialist will likely object, but I have not investigated refinements).For each split atom 2 or 3 neutrons are produced. In a steady state one of these leads to the splitting of another atom, while the other neutrons are absorbed or escape. Escaping neurons must be absorbed in shielding. In a Thorium reactor another neutron would be absorbed by the Thorium to produce another U233 atom, reducing the neutron flux very significantly.
If such a reactor were to be used in a ship it would be much smaller and lighter than a LWR and its shielding would also be much lighter.
These reactors promise to be much cheaper than LWR's. They can be effective in large and small sizes.
So imagine an aircraft carrier with such a power plant. It would be much smaller than a USN carrier even before you reduced its capabilities. If the escorts also used similar power plants the carrier would not carry fuel for these escorts.
If PLAN then specifies an aircraft carrier around 2020 it might indeed be much smaller than 100 000 tons.
