A friend of mine also suggested Liaowang 1 as a possiblity. It certainly tracks most with the timeline and also with its civilian role most cleanly.
Chinese Marine Propulsion
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A friend of mine also suggested Liaowang 1 as a possiblity. It certainly tracks most with the timeline and also with its civilian role most cleanly.
But Liaowang-1 is a military ship operated by uniformed personnel of the PLA Aerospace Force? Explicitly military, not paramilitary or militia or dual-use or whatever. Those guys are very much not civilians.
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Although sodium reactor may have higher power density, I don't think anyone will choose it for submarine after USSR tried it once. Sodium reactor is dangerous due to its reactivity in air.
The advantage of molten salt reactor especially the type that China is pursuing is safety over any other operational reactor including PWR. Power density wise, the 1st and 2nd loop is molten salt instead of pressurized water, I think that reduces the size of footprint therefor better density over PWR in the same way as sodium reactor but without the risk of combustion.
Think about the 3 loops. 1st and 2nd loops are molten salt instead of pressurized water. The 3rd loop is supercritical CO2 instead of liquid water and gastrous steam. The pumps run at different speed and are moving different fluid of different density and heat exchange characteristics. The turbines are pushed by different fluids and very different in sizes. The vibration must be different.
For one thing, if the fluid has higher heat exchange capacity, its flow rate can be reduced therefor its pump runs slow, lower noise. Molten salt could be better than water in heat exchange due to its higher density.
Is Liaowang-1 explicitly a military ship operated by uniformed personnel?
I believe it is under the purview of the Aerospace Force, but I have not seen direct evidence of it being crewed by uniformed personnel.
As a vessel, I interpret it as an auxiliary, and one that is not purely military in the way the a regular PLAN or PLAGF ship is, in a similar vein to the Yuanwang ships which are also under the civilian moniker rather than military even though it is under the purview of the Aerospace Force (and before that, Strategic support).
I'm not sure what the video has to do with anything, it doesn't directly reference Liaowang-1.
My understanding is that the Yuanwang/Liaowang ships are commanded by uniformed military personnel, despite hosting a sizable contingent of civilian technical professionals. Which was (one of the reasons) why India was so upset about them showing up in Sri Lanka.
I'm not sure if they are under the command of military personnel -- I do know there is a contingent aboard, but in the way it operates it's more of a quasi-civilian auxiliary and the PRC tends to treat it as so.
Of course in practice all space tracking ships help to serve strategic and military uses as well, but what we care about is more how the PRC (and its associated shipbuilders) view them.
Well in the context of the original document, it refers to 民用型大型水面舰船。I'm not sufficiently familiar with shipyard nomenclature to know whether that's an appropriate desigation for a PLA-owned ASF-operated ship with a crew of civilian techs.
whether the Yuanwang/Liaowang ships commanded by uniformed military personnel or civilians, the Indians will spit the dummy!
Another big factor to consider if you want to assess vibration characteristics is viscosity at different pressures.