Hello, what's your opinion about a 90-95,000t supercarrier with 4 CLWR B2 reactors? Each reactor has 190mwth and each turbine has 50mw which you'll multiply by 4.
4 CLWR B2 reactors for a supercarrier
- Thread starter enterprise65
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A Nimitz class super carrier has 2 reactors doing about 550 MWth. Thats 1100 MWth in all. Ford class? Even more.
OKAB produces 190 MWth. Even with 4 OKABs you will be around 760 MWth, not really near 1100 MWth mark. About 40% less (760 x 1.4 = 1064).
So, it wont really be a supercarrier of even 70s standard of USA. We can however build a Carrier of Charles de Gules class or may be a bit bigger. With two OKAB reactors (basically what CLWR B2 is), we can produce enough power to run shaft and electricity to run rest of the carrier and even more spare to run something like Rail Gun. So a carrier of IAC-1 or IAC-3 class is certainly possible (45 tonne or 60-70 tonne). France is also going for PANGS project with two 220 MWth reactors.
Running 4 reactors seems more trouble than worth it. You will have to have multiple teams to run all four reactors, multiple systems to manage like emergency shutdown systems etc. All of those take space. Simply put four may become space inefficient. Two have been seen in navies.
There are also results from statistics that prove two provide the maximum redundency benefit and additional units do not add much further redundency benefit. So two seems to be the number with which navies go.
Still a 60-70 tonne carrier will be pretty good for Indian requirements. I do not know if IN wants IAC-Vishal to go nuclear. 70 tonne carrier with practically unlimited range will allow it to be on station near melacca st and control it for very long time. Beyond melacca st, we have limited utility of deploying force.
What about something like 70-80,000t carrier with 100mw propulsion and 50mw electrical power?