CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

[Daniel707]

Via @捣蛋就对 from Weibo

Its Type 055 Destroyer behind the Aircraft Carrier

 

[Tam]

Naturally, as one destroyer finishes its sonar fitting and leaves the dock, another comes in. There don't seem to be any more 055 in the fitting pool, what remains are now 052DL.

The Yuan Wang space tracking ship, is that the 8th? Aside from the two specialized cargo ships, also built in Jiangnan, meant to haul rockets and large ballistic missiles.

 

[Temstar]

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Suggested evidence of 003 being nuclear.

Jiangnan Shipyard is looking for someone to build a boiler room on land for testing purposes. Including facilities to take the steam via pipe onto ships. There's no direct evidence that this is intended for 003, however:

• if the boiler is intended eventually to go onto a ship, why build it on land first and pipe the steam onto a ship? Why not install it directly onto the ship in one go?
• 001 and 002 were all tested directly, generating steam from onboard boiler to test their turbines rather than doing such a round about manner
• if this test boiler is for 003 than by the same token, 003 cannot be gas turbine. And in any case 003 is almost certainly going for EMLAS and so does not have a requirement for lots of steam to test catapults
• the requirement ask for two steam lines, this suggest two sources of steam for 003, or in other words two reactors driving four turbines. If it's instead conventional power we would expect something like 8 boilers and 4 turbines, so we would expect in that case there should instead be 4 or 8 steam test pipes
• there's a similar request for another such facility at Huludao, home of the nuclear sub fleet. Surely Huludao isn't building submarines with conventional steam boilers

Thus this suggests this test boiler facility is indeed intended to test a nuclear powered ship's turbine system while the reactor remain offline to check for things like leak and to purge oxygen, before reactors are warmed up for the first time. You do not want to fire up the reactor before you first test the rest of the power system.

So why the requirement for the Huludao facility now, given they've been building nuclear subs for ages?

• Huludao's ship building capacity are being expanded right now, so new facility at this time makes sense
• previously there's never been a situation where more than 2 nuclear subs where in trial at the same time, the new expanded Huludao might have as many as six subs that need trial at the same time, plus the two from the original facility
• new generation of nuclear sub might be employing much more powerful reactors that before, thus previous testing facility might no longer sufficient

 

[halflife3]

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Suggested evidence of 003 being nuclear.

Jiangnan Shipyard is looking for someone to build a boiler room on land for testing purposes. Including facilities to take the steam via pipe onto ships. There's no direct evidence that this is intended for 003, however:

• if the boiler is intended eventually to go onto a ship, why build it on land first and pipe the steam onto a ship? Why not install it directly onto the ship in one go?
• 001 and 002 were all tested directly, generating steam from onboard boiler to test their turbines rather than doing such a round about manner
• if this test boiler is for 003 than by the same token, 003 cannot be gas turbine. And in any case 003 is almost certainly going for EMLAS and so does not have a requirement for lots of steam to test catapults
• the requirement ask for two steam lines, this suggest two sources of steam for 003, or in other words two reactors driving four turbines. If it's instead conventional power we would expect something like 8 boilers and 4 turbines, so we would expect in that case there should instead be 4 or 8 steam test pipes
• there's a similar request for another such facility at Huludao, home of the nuclear sub fleet. Surely Huludao isn't building submarines with conventional steam boilers

Thus this suggests this test boiler facility is indeed intended to test a nuclear powered ship's turbine system while the reactor remain offline to check for things like leak and to purge oxygen, before reactors are warmed up for the first time. You do not want to fire up the reactor before you first test the rest of the power system.

So why the requirement for the Huludao facility now, given they've been building nuclear subs for ages?

• Huludao's ship building capacity are being expanded right now, so new facility at this time makes sense
• previously there's never been a situation where more than 2 nuclear subs where in trial at the same time, the new expanded Huludao might have as many as six subs that need trial at the same time, plus the two from the original facility
• new generation of nuclear sub might be employing much more powerful reactors that before, thus previous testing facility might no longer sufficient

Could be setting up facilities for construction of carriers after Type 003. A massive submarine production facility was built in 2017 at Huludao yet theres no evidence of any new SSN/SSBN construction going on yet.

 

[halflife3]

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Suggested evidence of 003 being nuclear.

Jiangnan Shipyard is looking for someone to build a boiler room on land for testing purposes. Including facilities to take the steam via pipe onto ships. There's no direct evidence that this is intended for 003, however:

• if the boiler is intended eventually to go onto a ship, why build it on land first and pipe the steam onto a ship? Why not install it directly onto the ship in one go?
• 001 and 002 were all tested directly, generating steam from onboard boiler to test their turbines rather than doing such a round about manner
• if this test boiler is for 003 than by the same token, 003 cannot be gas turbine. And in any case 003 is almost certainly going for EMLAS and so does not have a requirement for lots of steam to test catapults
• the requirement ask for two steam lines, this suggest two sources of steam for 003, or in other words two reactors driving four turbines. If it's instead conventional power we would expect something like 8 boilers and 4 turbines, so we would expect in that case there should instead be 4 or 8 steam test pipes
• there's a similar request for another such facility at Huludao, home of the nuclear sub fleet. Surely Huludao isn't building submarines with conventional steam boilers

Thus this suggests this test boiler facility is indeed intended to test a nuclear powered ship's turbine system while the reactor remain offline to check for things like leak and to purge oxygen, before reactors are warmed up for the first time. You do not want to fire up the reactor before you first test the rest of the power system.

So why the requirement for the Huludao facility now, given they've been building nuclear subs for ages?

• Huludao's ship building capacity are being expanded right now, so new facility at this time makes sense
• previously there's never been a situation where more than 2 nuclear subs where in trial at the same time, the new expanded Huludao might have as many as six subs that need trial at the same time, plus the two from the original facility
• new generation of nuclear sub might be employing much more powerful reactors that before, thus previous testing facility might no longer sufficient

I wouldn't take the author of that thread seriously, reading through the posts, he is quite combatively defensive and seriously leans toward the Type 003 being guaranteed to use nuclear propulsion. Despite some obvious and logical responses on why Type 003 WILL NOT be nuclear powered, he gives off the impression of a person who thinks he's always right and others are always wrong.

Although personally, I believe Chinese shipbuilders can absolutely be able make 003 use nuclear propulsion instead of conventional using current available technologies. I just do not think the navy will invest in a such a ship that has not gone through the necessary technical verifications. Doing so would lead China creating its own version of the USS Enterprise.

I expect the very first CVN of China's navy to be analogous to the Nimitz class and not the Enterprise class. There is a reason why only one Enterprise was built, the US Navy was clearly not satisfied enough in the design and a new one has to be considered. The Enterprise's nuclear propulsion system was not a fully mature development. There is a reason why Nimitz uses only two reactors instead of eight submarine reactors on the Enterprise.

It took 14 years after Enterprise for US Navy to commission it's second CVN, the first Nimitz class CVN. And in between that period, the US did use the time to build numerous nuclear powered cruisers and even built one nuclear powered civilian ship called the NS Savannah before the first Nimitz carrier enter service.
And like what previous posters said, it is too risky to use existing technologies on nuclear powered aircraft carriers.
It is strongly in my opinion that for such a strategic vessel and for China, all major technologies must be entirely developed and proven before construction of such a vessel commence. China's first nuclear aircraft carrier must be at least like the Nimitz with all systems matured and developed. It is the only logical step, hence a nuclear powered icebreaker needs to be built before the first Chinese CVN.

 

[halflife3]

Yes, people have suggested nuclear consistently over the last couple of years. But the theory never really took off (or was dismissed as unrealistic) because it's ambitious to the point of being very unlikely.

The problem with the American and French evolution directly to CVN is that in hindsight, it turned out (somewhat) to be an unwise decision on both their parts. The Enterprise had eight reactors because its propulsion system was essentially a copy of the one used by the Forrestal-class, except with the four boilers replaced with four nuclear plants (two reactors each) instead. And perhaps also because they were already building and operating nuclear submarines with similarly-sized reactors.

Each of the four nuclear plants were designed to run with one reactor active, or both reactors active, while exchanging steam to a specific turbine or turbines if necessary. However, this sort of extreme redundancy involving eight reactors and a traditional steam piping system was very expensive and took up a lot of space, and was considered overkill. Using large reactors was much more cost-effective and made the engineering relatively simple, hence why each Nimitz only has two large reactors.

This is the first concern the PLAN would have had to address. If they just shoved submarine-sized reactors into an aircraft carrier, they need to be prepared for the expenses and the technical challenges that will likely come with this decision. The USN found out the hard way with the Enterprise. To their credit, the Enterprise ended up being the fastest carrier ever.

As for the French, they messed up in their own way. They just slapped a pair of submarine reactors on a 40k ton carrier and called it a day, and that's why it tops out at 27 knots. Like, come on, 27 knots is just sad.

The reason why people like the icebreaker argument because it's a cautious (maybe too cautious) evolutionary step. It's a slow and steady approach that fits with what we traditionally believe the PLAN might do. We expect them to take their time developing a new, large marine nuclear reactor like the A4Ws on the Nimitzs, and test this technology on an experimental platform like an icebreaker before using a finalised version of the large reactor design on the future CVN.

Ultimately, the argument boils down to: "Putting existing reactor designs in an aircraft carrier is too risky, as proven by the American USS Enterprise and the French CDG. Those carriers are not examples of good evolution - they were mistakes." And that is completely fair to say.

But the nuclear 003 theory also has merit. The PLAN can't spend time that it does not have, unlike the early 2000s when they could test 051/052 variant after variant without the US breathing down their necks. They could just throw a bunch of submarine reactors onto the 003, or perhaps they've developed a brand new large reactor design in complete secrecy. But both of these options are higher risk. What if things don't go to plan? Now you have a brand new 80k ton carrier with a super hefty bill, or a crappy powerplant, or both.

So we just have to wait and see. I would be surprised (but not shocked) if the 003 does turn out to be nuclear.

I absolutely agree that US' and France's path to nuclear carrier development are flawed and should not be emulated. I believe Chinese naval planners share this same view and will not follow their approach. Which adds more reason why Type 003 will not be nuclear powered, unless they want it to end up like the Enterprise or Charles de Gaulle.

 

[Anlsvrthng]

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Suggested evidence of 003 being nuclear.

Jiangnan Shipyard is looking for someone to build a boiler room on land for testing purposes. Including facilities to take the steam via pipe onto ships. There's no direct evidence that this is intended for 003, however:

• if the boiler is intended eventually to go onto a ship, why build it on land first and pipe the steam onto a ship? Why not install it directly onto the ship in one go?
• 001 and 002 were all tested directly, generating steam from onboard boiler to test their turbines rather than doing such a round about manner
• if this test boiler is for 003 than by the same token, 003 cannot be gas turbine. And in any case 003 is almost certainly going for EMLAS and so does not have a requirement for lots of steam to test catapults
• the requirement ask for two steam lines, this suggest two sources of steam for 003, or in other words two reactors driving four turbines. If it's instead conventional power we would expect something like 8 boilers and 4 turbines, so we would expect in that case there should instead be 4 or 8 steam test pipes
• there's a similar request for another such facility at Huludao, home of the nuclear sub fleet. Surely Huludao isn't building submarines with conventional steam boilers

Thus this suggests this test boiler facility is indeed intended to test a nuclear powered ship's turbine system while the reactor remain offline to check for things like leak and to purge oxygen, before reactors are warmed up for the first time. You do not want to fire up the reactor before you first test the rest of the power system.

So why the requirement for the Huludao facility now, given they've been building nuclear subs for ages?

• Huludao's ship building capacity are being expanded right now, so new facility at this time makes sense
• previously there's never been a situation where more than 2 nuclear subs where in trial at the same time, the new expanded Huludao might have as many as six subs that need trial at the same time, plus the two from the original facility
• new generation of nuclear sub might be employing much more powerful reactors that before, thus previous testing facility might no longer sufficient

You need test the steam system regardless of the generation of steam.

And use shore steam source instead of the boilers on the ship is a good strategy my opinion, considering the ship systems are more expensive to make/operate and maintain, in the case of conventional steam plants as well.

Finally , if they issued the PO just recently then it can not be for the ship under construction .

 

[aerostar]

Jiangnan, at least the current one at the new location, never build a steam powered, nuclear or conventional, ship at the current location. So a new steam generator on land does not exclusively conclude that the shipyard is building a nuclear vesicle; it only suggest that they are building a steam powered vesicle.

 

[Temstar]

Jiangnan, at least the current one at the new location, never build a steam powered, nuclear or conventional, ship at the current location. So a new steam generator on land does not exclusively conclude that the shipyard is building a nuclear vesicle; it only suggest that they are building a steam powered vesicle.

Wouldn't you use gas turbines for power if your carrier doesn't use steam catapult?

 

[Blitzo]

Wouldn't you use gas turbines for power if your carrier doesn't use steam catapult?

Not necessarily.
If you have the requisite steam turbine technology already available, it makes sense to go for that solution if you don't have gas turbines that are sufficiently powerful for a carrier.

A steam powered carrier can have steam catapults, EM catapults or no catapults.