1st. I think you didn't follow the small discussion or didn't understand what I meant. In a multi-ship program the risk assessment/feasibility will be calculated differently then a single ship program. Yes, putting different new systems into the only ship for a single ship program certainly increases the risk. *But* if you put everything new in a *lead ship* for a multi ship program it may actually decrease the risks and delays for the whole multi-ship program. That is why we called Nimitz class. It can be done in phases, too like we have seen with 052 if the tech is not ready which brings me to 2nd.
2nd. Nothing changed for me for the last 3-4 years. Only thing we had was China may be developing a nuclear ice breaker. I think this had very little to do with aircraft program anyway. We simply know very little about Chinese naval nuclear reactors. There can be 4-6 smaller reactors that is developed for 096 put in this ship. It is a possibility. Enterprise had 8!. Or maybe there is already a upscaled one.. The point is PLAN already has nuclear powered vessels. That is the difficult threshold which was already overcome decades ago. This ship is a behemoth which requires a lot of power to go fast and for EMALS. It is possible that it will go with 2-4-6 reactors rather then 8 boilers. We do not have leaked information from the navy or shipyard regarding the propulsion to date. If we do, please refresh my memory I may have missed it.
3rd point. I actually find nuclear propulsion unnecessary when I think about the whole naval strategic imperatives for the coming decades. I think the carriers will be smaller in the future a.k.a. 076! But if you are going to stick with super carriers and plan to build 4-6 of them nuclear might be smarter choice and the earlier it is implemented the better.
I'll give you a sort of quote from Seymour Cray one of the biggest innovators in computer hardware. Putting one new technology in a new system is hard enough, two is asking for failure, three is guaranteed failure.
The Nimitz class was preceded by the Enterprise class. If you look at the Enterprise they basically used the design of an older chassis and replaced the oil boilers with nuclear reactors on a 1:1 basis to reduce risk. Afterwards they figured out this wasn't cost effective and reduced the amount of reactors on the Nimitz with a lower number of larger reactors.
You want to put everything on the same ship? You might end up with something like the Ford which has been nothing but a disaster. The program will be delayed and there may be a political temptation to compound on the failure by committing to block purchases of the type to "reduce further delays" just like what happened with the Ford class. One way to reduce these sorts of issues is to test the new technologies like heck on a test stand before integration. And making a test stand specifically to test for systems integration problems afterwards before actually putting those technologies on the new platform. Neither of those things were done with the new technologies on the Ford class and that is one reason why it failed so hard. The land based test catapult and arrestor gear was not made to the same specifications as the ones that would be installed on the final ships. They only did subscale testing of partial systems with degraded performance. AFAIK there were zero land based tests of EMALS with aircraft and everything was done with mass simulators which didn't even have the same mass as the aircraft let alone similar stress limitations compared to an aircraft airframe. They never did proper land based testing of systems with the required reliability levels. AFAIK there was little to no integration testing of the different systems like the catapult and arrestor gear together either. AFAIK the electric weapons elevators weren't even tested by themselves at all.
Why didn't they make a better land based test platform? Or even do a barge test which would take into account things like salt corrosion which can't be easily tested on a land based test platform. Instead they just added several immature technologies to the same design and the result was as can be seen.
With regards to the nuclear reactor and why it is unlikely to be used in Type 003. Well. The thing is before it goes into a carrier the reactor will have to be tested in a land based platform and quite likely a naval platform. The naval platform doesn't need to be an icebreaker. It can just be a barge like the Akademik Lomonosov. AFAIK there are one or two reactor designs which might be useable in a carrier which are planned to be land tested. But thing is we have no reports of those reactors having finished land based tests nor of being put in a naval platform for tests yet. Until that happens it is highly unlikely we will see a nuclear reactor on a carrier.
The ACP100 reactor is one of those designs. They completed component tests a couple years back. It is supposed to be built in a land based test facility at Changjiang. According to these articles.
Just look at the figures in pages 10-11 of this.
It is a compact reactor design not too dissimilar from the Russian RITM-200. It is kind of low powered to use on a supercarrier but if the design works it can be scaled up like the Russians are doing with the RITM-400 or they might simply add a bunch of them to the ship.
The ACP100 reactor is planned to begin operations on the land based test facility in 2025. So I don't think you'll see any Chinese nuclear carrier before that. So I think they'll build two conventional carriers including 003 before the nuclear carrier gets built in the second half of this decade. Like everyone has been saying for years.
If we believe this news report:
and this presentation:
The ACP100S floating platform with the sea based version of the reactor will be built at Yantai, Shandong.
Like I said the ideal reactor for a carrier would have twice the power i.e. an ACP200S but the ACP100S would work with enough of them.
PS: There are more Chinese SMR nuclear reactor designs which might be useable for naval applications as listed here.
These include the APCR100, CAP200, NHR-200, HTR-PM. Some are more or less suitable or more or less risky. The ACP100/S/200/200S family of reactors seems to be the most advanced in terms of testing and construction at least if you look at press releases.
Of course it might be some of the other reactor designs is more advanced with progress being secret but I think that is unlikely. I think the ACP100 program is a good metric for the progress of Chinese naval reactor design.
So like I said I don't expect a nuclear power plant in a Chinese carrier before the second half of this decade.
