CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

hkvaryag

New Member
Registered Member
Isn’t China building mobile floating reactors to help support its SCS islands? Would seem the perfect way to test future carrier nuclear reactors while also getting maximum utility from the expenditure.
That just something like SMR, the power is not quite enough for CV........
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
SMR is not small at all, one of China's SMR is 180MWe. Nimitz' two A4W reactors provides total 194MW shaft.

The problem isn't the power output, like I said, but the pebble bed modular reactor might not be suitable for non stationary applications. I know of some designs which are, but not necessarily this one.
 

gelgoog

Lieutenant General
Registered Member
Well that is a good point. But it depends on the design really. I remember reading about a pebble bed reactor which used liquid hydrogen as the coolant which was a lot more dense than this reactor should be for example. Problem is hydrogen likes to erode the carbon typically used to cover the fuel pellets leading to radiation leaks. Oops. I suppose they could use liquid helium but that is even harder to keep at temperature.

This is why I say something kind of like the ACP100/S design with integrated components inside the same casing would make a lot more sense. Only thing that design does not have is high fuel lifetime but they can handle that by changing it to use higher grade fuel or more of it.
 

AndrewS

Brigadier
Registered Member
Well that is a good point. But it depends on the design really. I remember reading about a pebble bed reactor which used liquid hydrogen as the coolant which was a lot more dense than this reactor should be for example. Problem is hydrogen likes to erode the carbon typically used to cover the fuel pellets leading to radiation leaks. Oops. I suppose they could use liquid helium but that is even harder to keep at temperature.

Each pebble is inspected every time they leave the reactor. The ones that don't pass are stored.
 
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