The Nimitz/Ford prepared against AShMs impact on the same level like the Savannah.
The cubical thingy around the reactor is not to protect it, but rather to prevent the escape of fission products.
CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread
- Thread starter Jeff Head
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The cubical thingy around the reactor is not to protect it, but rather to prevent the escape of fission products.
Uh, not sure you got that I was joking, but warships need to be more heavily protected then cargo ships. Enterprise, Kirov, Nimitz and probably Ford(internals still secret) all have varying degrees of reactor armor. They are designed to resist explosive spall, but not direct hits from AShMs.
The military and civilian reactors has to fulfil the same degree of safety, means they have to survive without fission product release the sinking, collision or other extreme events.
Considering that the propulsion system can be disable by damaging the heat exchangers, piping, feed pumps , electrical controls and so on of the reactor, the most sensible strategy is decrease the chance of contamination of the ship with fission products due to direct hit, it is not possible to protect the reactor room against any AShM.
The designer of nimitz/ford moved the reactors far away, with containment. Most likely the other protection is the reactor vessel. This is the same that required for a civilian nuclear reactor.
Anything beyond this increase the ship mass, and decrease the capabilities of it. and a supersonic AShM could puncture battleship armour without any problem.
There is the containment of a ship reactor.
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Public information suggests pumps and steam generator of newer naval reactors are integrated within the reactor pressure vessel (RPV), similar to the small modular reactor. Keep in mind the reactor vessel has to withstand extremely high pressure, like 2000 psi at 300°C and so the wall would need be pretty thick. You can bet they have way more design margin than commercial reactors and wall thickness is likely many inches of steel (like a battle ship armor). Naval reactors have additional requirements to withstand extreme shock. With this configuration, all radioactive coolant are contained in the RPV. The secondary side is fairly clean, unless they have leaks in the steam generators.
The military and civilian reactors has to fulfil the same degree of safety, means they have to survive without fission product release the sinking, collision or other extreme events.
Considering that the propulsion system can be disable by damaging the heat exchangers, piping, feed pumps , electrical controls and so on of the reactor, the most sensible strategy is decrease the chance of contamination of the ship with fission products due to direct hit, it is not possible to protect the reactor room against any AShM.
The designer of nimitz/ford moved the reactors far away, with containment. Most likely the other protection is the reactor vessel. This is the same that required for a civilian nuclear reactor.
Anything beyond this increase the ship mass, and decrease the capabilities of it. and a supersonic AShM could puncture battleship armour without any problem.
There is the containment of a ship reactor.
I think nuclear containment needs to be the given thickness to protect against explosive shrapnel + containment, you think nuclear containmnet is the given thickness due to solely nuclear containment safety requirements.
Unless we had an example of the same reactor used in both a military and non-military ship, or an interview with a naval nuclear engineer, it seems not possible to determine the intentions behind the design.
The primer loop containment in Fukushima could withstand 500 kpa overpressure by design.
The blast of a 1000 kg tnt produce 500 kpa at 20m distance.
I think it is safe to say the civilian grade containment gives good protection against explosive blast.
The containment is designed to protect from external explosions, not internal explosion and so the 500 kpa overpressure capability is irrelevant to the referenced explosion pressure front. You are not going to be able to get 1000 kg of TNT into a containment. The containment is a structure of several feet thick reinforced concrete. In addition to contain radioactivity, it is designed to protect the reactor from external threats, such as an airplane crashing into it. It should be able to survive much higher external pressure. I am not sure if it would survive armor piercing ordinance.
Not all reactors got a containment dome, Chernobyl comes to mind.
Not all reactors got a containment dome, Chernobyl comes to mind.
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The containment per specification is designed to withstand the pressure generated by the full diameter rapture of a main feed/steam pipe.
Means every water cooled reactor has to have containment, designed to withstand worst case failure (considered by the regulatory authority).
The design pressure of the containment of Chernobyl was 314 kpa, Fukushima was 500 kpa . Difference was in Chernobyl they made an instable operation regime ,that generated magnitudes more energy than the normal operation. That destroyed everything (ten meters of concrete around the reactor would not make a difference)
In Fukushima the decay heat punctured the containment, and boiled away the Cs-137.
I am not going to debate you on the merit of a containment. It is a fact there are still operating reactors in the world without containment. The containment requirements came in later and in fact many of the early US nuclear research reactors were without containment (Five U.S. Reactors Lack Radiation 'Containment' ). The containment requirements only came into being with the formation of the regulatory body in the US and all of the western countries adopted the same standard. In fact, most of the countries in the world still follow US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulations, even China directly use much of the US regulation.
The Russian considered the RBMK reactor safe and did not want to increase the construction cost by building a proper containment. There may have been pressure chambers, not no real containment. Do you see a containment in the picture below?
The Chernobyl accident happened because of combination of several factors. By design, the reactor has a positive moderator coefficient under some conditions (graphite attached to the control rods and depending on the position could lead to positive moderator coefficient), emergency core cooling system was disabled in violation of operating manual, power reduced to a regime outside of test parameters that were deemed safe before test initiation (due to this many control rods were withdrawn to increase power - in violation of test parameters). The isolation of turbine generators and powering down of pumps during the test resulted in temperature increase. The temperature increase, in connection with the positive moderator coefficient lead to prompt critical reaction (a bomb) an blew off top of the building.
The containment of the Fukushima reactors were never breached. The explosions people saw were the aux buildings where hydrogen got to via pipes. The Japanese failed to take action immediately and resulted in the melting of the cores. Zirconium based fuel cladding oxidized in steam and generated a lot of hydrogen. Water injected to cool the core later were stored, but much were release into the ocean. Do not confuse RPV meltdown with containment breach.
One thing I note on this forum, there are people that want to endless argue their point, regardless if it is in context or not.
The Russian considered the RBMK reactor safe and did not want to increase the construction cost by building a proper containment. There may have been pressure chambers, not no real containment. Do you see a containment in the picture below?
The Chernobyl accident happened because of combination of several factors. By design, the reactor has a positive moderator coefficient under some conditions (graphite attached to the control rods and depending on the position could lead to positive moderator coefficient), emergency core cooling system was disabled in violation of operating manual, power reduced to a regime outside of test parameters that were deemed safe before test initiation (due to this many control rods were withdrawn to increase power - in violation of test parameters). The isolation of turbine generators and powering down of pumps during the test resulted in temperature increase. The temperature increase, in connection with the positive moderator coefficient lead to prompt critical reaction (a bomb) an blew off top of the building.
The containment of the Fukushima reactors were never breached. The explosions people saw were the aux buildings where hydrogen got to via pipes. The Japanese failed to take action immediately and resulted in the melting of the cores. Zirconium based fuel cladding oxidized in steam and generated a lot of hydrogen. Water injected to cool the core later were stored, but much were release into the ocean. Do not confuse RPV meltdown with containment breach.
One thing I note on this forum, there are people that want to endless argue their point, regardless if it is in context or not.