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Two interesting articles on an analysis of the Future of the US Submarine force
Two interesting articles on an analysis of the Future of the US Submarine force
A 2 part article with some intriguing ideas and concepts for future nuclear submarines. It includes abandoning current reactor design and going to a higher temperature, lower pressure and safer molten salt reactor. Food for thought and discussion.
By Duane J. Truitt The U.S. Navy is faced with several big challenges in maintaining undersea warfare dominance – the domain of the fast attack nuclear submarine or "SSN." These challenges include the reemergence of a near peer naval threat that is a direct challenge to the entire U.S. Navy, including our SSN force. The…
Read Part One here. By Duane J. Truitt As discussed in Part I, it is clear that NAVSEA needs to undertake a project now to completely re-engineer the next generation of SSNs. The old bloated SSN(X) (now "New SSN") concept should be rejected entirely because it is more of the same, but bigger and more…
Very well structured proposal.....and looks very promising.
It will be (would be?) interesting to see how the molten salt reactor would be restarted upon a complete loss of power and the salt has cooled back to a solid. I seem to recall that the Soviets had to (essentially) scrap an Alfa hull due to a similar problem with a lead-bismuth reactor.
Jeff,
I was surprised at the enormous amount of technical literature out there I could collect on Molten Salt Nuclear Reactors. Apparently they are being pursued actively as a new commercial energy sources and can use fuel spent rods from current nuclear reactors as sources. It seems that most of the energy is still in the spent rods, it is other factors that limit their use. There is also extensive literature on potential issues with molten salt, such as embrittlement of the metal containment vessel from intermediate neutrons. But, it is inherently safer than current PWR designs. It seems from what I can gather that the solid to molten transition is part of the normal reactor startup and not the same kind of intractable problem as the Russian lead-bismuth or Seawolf sodium reactor issue.
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