The only thing we know for certain is there will be jealous people posting "news" articles claiming there are "cracks" on the deck of the Type 004 carrier and China "copied" the technology.
00X/004 future nuclear CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter AETHER
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antiterror13
Brigadier
I will be surprised if it is the case
Yes, that would surely be a radical departure from PLAN conservatism. They built 002 with a ramp, they built 003 conventional, and now suddenly they're abandoning all caution and jumping into two clean sheet CVNs? There's "not having technical issues," and then there's "not wasting billions on a premature investment." I'm very skeptical this is anything more than overexcited imaginations. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I agree.
There's some pretty wild claims floating on the internet.
Supposedly China is currently building 2 Thorium powered super carriers. The proponents of this theory have failed to explain what military advantages would thorium have over uranium in regard to CVN's. Furthermore we do not have a good understanding of how much would it cost to convert thorium 232 into uranium 233. Is it any cheaper than just enriching uranium?....probably Not.
Anyway, realistically speaking, the Type 004 is going to be powered by uranium PWR reactors.
The only thing that is left for speculation is what will the enrichment rate be:
Medium --- 20% enriched uranium or
High --- 90% enriched uranium
I am going to stick my neck out and make a wild guess and say 20% enrichment. Why? A 20% enriched naval reactor opens up the possibility of using a civilian grade naval reactor which can be mass produced, bringing the costs down. Cost effective Nuclear marine propulsion would be a game changer.....or I could be totally wrong.
seems 3cats and 3eles for 004 and built by Dalian
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This image of unknown origin was discussed extensively last year. There is nothing to guarantee that this image is a future type 004.
There is a possibility you could add driver fuel (enriched U-235 / Pu-239) to a fuel rod with thorium blanket for once through use. if I remember correctly, th-232 has a higher neutron absoprtion coefficient than U-238 and so more of it can be converted to U-233 than similar mass of U-238 to Pu-239. In a commercial reactor, 50% of the power comes from Pu-239 (that was transmuted from U-238 by neutron absorption) near end of fuel life. The advantage of using Th is that if you breed the fuel during operation, reactivity control could be easier (i.e., you don't have to load all of the fuel upfront that require activity suppression at beginning of life, but this is only a small gain in Th). This may more attractive for military use since they do not care about energy capture efficiency (lower operational temperature) and so metal Th (higher atomic density relative to oxide) blanket could be used in improve transmutation.
If you do two steps (i.e., irradiate Th and then separate U-233, tecnically can be done easily), the fuel during irradiation does not produce in highly active and long lived transuranics and the fuel could be safely disposed of after only a few hundreds years. I supposed you have a little more energy advantage as described above since more Th could be convereted than using U.
We are not looking at a large energy return advantages.
It's my observation that advocates of Thorium nuclear power always propose the Th being converted to U-233 at each power plant.
Technically it is the U-233 that gets fissioned not the Thorium.
I have an idea.
Why not build a large centralized Thorium-232 to U-233 converter factory on dry land and "produce" all the U-233 that will be needed?
The U-233 can be loaded into naval nuclear reactors directly. Wouldn't it make more sense to Convert the Thorium to U-233 on dry land where space is practically unlimited instead of on a ship where space is always in short supply?