Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!att!cbnews!military
From: gwh%typhoon.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
Newsgroups: sci.military
Subject: Re: nuclear powered ships
Summary: Some Info...
Keywords: nuclear
Message-ID: <11865@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 1 Dec 89 04:20:24 GMT
Sender: military@cbnews.ATT.COM
Organization: ucb
Lines: 41
Approved: military@att.att.com



From: gwh%typhoon.Berkeley.EDU@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU (George William Herbert)
In article <11822@cbnews.ATT.COM> siyt@cbnewsl.ATT.COM (p.jayne) writes:
>
>The subject of nuclear powered surface ships has come up in other
>contexts, but not as a direct topic.  The idea of nuclear powered
>submarines is too clear to question, but I'm curious about surface
>ships.  The navy has had lots of experience by now.  Do nuclear
>ships pay for themselves in fuel savings (vs. reactor maint.) alone?
>What are the other advantages -- more time on station?  What about
>disadvantages?  At what point does ship size become a factor?
>And so on.

Whether they pay for themselves is a Bookeeping question.  No, on fuel,
because it is expensive to refine uranium, but when you consider the
infrastructure for petroleum storage and transportation it comes closer 
to parity.  THe reactor is much more expensive to start with, though.

Operationally, a Nuclear ship can spend lots more time on station...
more in fact than you want to do [crew sanity] in peacetime.  Big 
atvantage.  THere are no big disatvantages, the plant is on same
rough level of power output per pound and volume as other types.
[Somewhat heavier, if i remember correctly].

Reactor size and scaling problems mean that it's best to use bigger plants.
The current sub reactors are pretty much the smallest economical 
installation.  You can get smaller, but it isn't worth it usually.

All the above from Freshman Intro to Naval Architecture class here, and
memory may be a bit muddled.  \


*****************************************************************************
George William Herbert   UCB Naval Architecture [On schedule? at UCB? Yes!]
gwh@ocf.berkeley.edu gwh@soda.berk... maniac@garnet.berk...  
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