CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

Totoro

Major
VIP Professional
Does anyone have a terraserver account? They offer 90 days old images for they cheapest plan. And they update their image database often, sometimes evea a few times a month.
 

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
judging by pace of previous carrier this unit will likely together very fast

I expect to see forming in 2019 and launch early next year

this will be the jewel in the crown, 2 x STOBAR and 1 x CATOBAR, thats 2 x 24 and 1 x 36 fighters respectively
 

asif iqbal

Lieutenant General
This is what future looks like

w0mkiR4.jpg
 

Hendrik_2000

Lieutenant General
Could China’s ‘experimental’ ship be the world’s biggest nuclear-powered icebreaker?
  • State-owned firm China General Nuclear Power Group invites bids to build vessel similar in size to Russian nuclear icebreakers
  • Project could be stepping stone to building nuclear aircraft carriers
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Published: 12:16pm, 20 Mar, 2019

How China could move closer to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers
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The deadline for interested parties to tender was Wednesday, with no bids permitted from outside mainland China.

The ship will be able to be fitted with two 25 megawatt compact pressurised water reactors with thermal power output of 200MW, which could propel the ship to a maximum speed of 11.5 knots, according to CGN’s project description.

Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said the vessel’s size was very similar to that of Russian nuclear icebreakers.

Russia is the only country that operates nuclear icebreakers. Its two classes in service are the Taymyr-class vessel – which is 150 metres long, 29 metres wide and has 21,100 tonnes of displacement – and the Arktika-class vessel, which measures 148 metres long by 30 metres wide, and comes in at 23,000 tonnes. An even larger class of icebreakers – 173 metres by 34 metres with displacement of 33,540 tonnes – is under construction.

In June, state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC) also invited bids for a nuclear-powered icebreaker project that will be powered by floating small modular reactors.

Having an icebreaker is important to China as it expands its operations in the
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. Its first domestically built, conventionally powered polar icebreaker, Xuelong 2, was launched last year to boost China’s
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and expedition capacity. The ship will enter service later this year.
If experiments using icebreakers went well, the technology and experience could be used for next-generation aircraft carriers, Song said.

“This vessel can verify and experiment with the technologies,” he said.
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This follows the approach that the former Soviet Union took in its development of nuclear aircraft carriers. The Soviets had built five nuclear icebreakers before cutting steel in 1988 for their first nuclear carrier Ulyanovsk, which was never completed.

China has two conventionally powered aircraft carriers: the
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, a former Soviet Kuznetsov-class vessel bought from Ukraine, and the Type 001A, a domestically-made vessel based on the Liaoning and to be
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.
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The reactors to be fitted on the planned CGN vessel are relatively small, which means several of them would be needed to power a carrier. In a similar case, the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the world’s first nuclear aircraft carrier, commissioned in 1961, had eight reactors of 150MW each.

By contrast, the present US Nimitz-class carriers use two reactors of 550MW each, and the Ford-class two of 700MW each.

Besides aircraft carriers, nuclear reactors can be fitted to other large surface vessels, both civilian and military. These include cargo ships, science survey ships and tracking vessels such as the Yuanwang-class ships deployed to long distances by the Chinese navy to track satellites, transmit space communications and monitor intercontinental ballistic missiles, Song said.
 

gelgoog

Brigadier
Registered Member
The numbers talked about on the first paragraphs are kind off though. Typically a nuclear reactor has like half the MWe (electric) of its MWt (thermal) power rating. This is because of Carnot efficiency. Also the power comparison with regards to the carriers is kind of too simplistic.

For example. The Charles de Gaulle has 2x 150 MWt reactors.
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It also has like 42500 tonnes displacement. I think this is a better match to the Chinese nuclear carrier than a supercarrier. The Chinese nuclear carrier initially will allegedly only have a bit more displacement than the Type 001A. A carrier would need less power than an icebreaker of similar displacement because it does not need to break thick ice to move.
 

Intrepid

Major
A carrier would need less power than an icebreaker of similar displacement because it does not need to break thick ice to move.
To catapult aircraft needs more power than to break ice. Carrier lose speed when catapulting aircraft. For 30 knots without ice you need more power than with 10 knots in the ice.

(the range with 30 knots is one fourth of the range with 15 knots or with other words: to double speed you need fourtimes more energie)
 

Biscuits

Major
Registered Member
The numbers talked about on the first paragraphs are kind off though. Typically a nuclear reactor has like half the MWe (electric) of its MWt (thermal) power rating. This is because of Carnot efficiency. Also the power comparison with regards to the carriers is kind of too simplistic.

For example. The Charles de Gaulle has 2x 150 MWt reactors.
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It also has like 42500 tonnes displacement. I think this is a better match to the Chinese nuclear carrier than a supercarrier. The Chinese nuclear carrier initially will allegedly only have a bit more displacement than the Type 001A. A carrier would need less power than an icebreaker of similar displacement because it does not need to break thick ice to move.

Not really, the 001A has almost twice as much displacement as the de Gaulle.

The first CVN is likely to be analogous in size to the Enterprise class, and maybe also feature the same awkward nuclear propulsion using many SSBN reactors instead of “real” carrier reactions.

If China is interested in a small CVN, it would be better to fit the 075s with nuclear propulsion. Liaoning isn’t a small carrier by any standards -it’s the third largest carrier class in the world and the 2nd largest warship ever built outside N.America after the Yamato class, which only displaced more by a couple of hundred tons.
 

snake65

Junior Member
VIP Professional
This follows the approach that the former Soviet Union took in its development of nuclear aircraft carriers. The Soviets had built five nuclear icebreakers before cutting steel in 1988 for their first nuclear carrier Ulyanovsk, which was never completed.

Development of nuclear icebreakers had nothing to do with development of Ulyanovsk, which was designed with double powerplant from Kirov class cruiser (2x300 MW).
 
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