India mulls options for nuclear-powered aircraft carrier

TrueSpirit

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Reverting? Which UK carriers were nuke-powered again?
AFAIK, designers in UK were mulling the nuke option in the last decade for their latest gen. of AC's, only to relinquish it in favour of conventional gas-turbines.
 

TrueSpirit

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Pretty sure the French are happy with their ship, although they haven't yet decided what to do next. Besides speed and endurance, nuclear power has other special advantages in carriers, as it allows the dedication of more internal space to aviation needs as opposed to ship needs: no fuel bunkerage (except for the planes), more room for munitions, and no space-hogging intakes or uptakes for propulsion-exhaust (which also fouls equipment topside).

Disadvantages: Costs more to buy/operate... can't be mothballed in times of financial hardship (use it or lose it).
So, the question is whether to scale-up (with 1 nuke AC) or scale out (with multiple conventionally propelled AC) ...

Given our limited energy resources (conventional), I believe first approach makes more sense & that is what, IN would do eventually.
 

TrueSpirit

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Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carriers are not a good idea, ask France. They are too complex too build, too expensive, and we don't need worldwide power projection.
That's right. However, the origin of their difficulty lies in their short-cut approach that they leveraged initially, in trying to modifying a "nuke reactor-engine" complex meant for SSBN into that for AC.

However, the short-cut soon ran into problems & became an anecdote why nuke-propelled AC's are bad.

However, from India's standpoint, nuke-propelled AC's make a lot of sense.
 

TrueSpirit

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Would it be possible for IN to acquire a retiring USN carrier, if economically feasible?
What the IN really covets from USN is their proprietary AC catapult technology, in order to become a true blue-water navy with long-legs AC's...

& yes, IN does have global force-projection ambitions irrespective of what the conventional wisdom may suggest.
 

TrueSpirit

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How did America "sell" Trident SLBMs to UK ?
dsca.mil is down at the moment
One, it was before 1987 pre-MTCR era just like the good old Polaris. Anyway, it is retired now.

Second, after 1987, such transfers were done in the veneer of co-development programs, exploiting a loophole clause in MTCR.
 

trackwhack

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It will not cost $10 billion to build. Our reactors are supplied by BARC and its subsidiaries. Unlike US. If we draw plans to complete a nuke AC within 2025, the cost should be closer to $5B.
What's the budget allocated for IAC 1 btw?
 

Decklander

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IN is seriously on path to have only electrical propulsion for all its ships and subs. When I say electric propulsion it means that final drive shaft rotation will be by electric motors just like in subs. In a nuke carrier, you not only have unlimited endurance but you also have nearly double the aviation fuel capacity as you need to carry fuel for propulsion and you have smaller tanks for fresh water as you make so much fresh water in a day that the ship can't utilise all of it. And the nuke reactors take less space in a ship compared to normal steam turbine ships which have to rely on boilers.
 

Abhijeet Dey

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Will this proposed nuclear powered aircraft carrier by Indian Navy affect Indo-US civil nuclear deal?

It is obvious it will give more firepower to the Indian Navy.
 

Decklander

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Will this proposed nuclear powered aircraft carrier by Indian Navy affect Indo-US civil nuclear deal?

It is obvious it will give more firepower to the Indian Navy.
It will not. The military reactors have been kept out of civilian deal.
 

hit&run

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It will not. The military reactors have been kept out of civilian deal.
Also after defueling reactor the fuel can be reprocessed and used for nuclear weapon program. Wonder we will have enough fuel for military use in future.
 

hit&run

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I bet Indian planner will come up with cheapest way of building and maintaining such reactor. This news reflects the confidence of Chief mulling all options including nuclear.
 

TrueSpirit

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IN is seriously on path to have only electrical propulsion for all its ships and subs. When I say electric propulsion it means that final drive shaft rotation will be by electric motors just like in subs..
Any details, Sir ?
 

lookieloo

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Any details, Sir ?
AFAIK, only conventional submarines use electric-drive these days. A few American SSNs (3 or 4 I think) were built during the cold-war to experiment with the nuclear-electric idea (it has acoustic advantages), but it was found to be under-powered and over-complicated (plans are afoot to try it again... maybe). I don't really see what the point would be in a carrier. A number of modern, conventionally-powered ships use electric drive for its efficiency, but they are generally slower than their direct-drive counterparts.

A possible advantage: Nuclear-electric drive would allow the use of azipods (easier to port), though I'm not sure about real military utility.
 

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