For the first time, a group of U.S. researchers has concluded that China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor to power future aircraft carriers.
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FILE - In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, China's third conventionally powered aircraft carrier, the Fujian, conducts a maiden sea trial on May 7, 2024. China’s navy is already the world’s largest numerically, and it has been rapidly modernizing. Adding nuclear-powered carriers to its fleet would be a major step in realizing its ambitions for a true"blue-water” force capable of operating in seas far from China in a growing global challenge to the United States.
“The reactor prototype at Leshan is the first solid evidence that China is, in fact, developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier," said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury and one of the researchers on the project."Operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an exclusive club, one that China looks set to join.”
Satellite mages from 2020 to 2023 have shown the demolition of homes and the construction of water intake infrastructure connected to the reactor site. Contracts for steam generators and turbine pumps indicate the project involves a pressurized water reactor with a secondary circuit — a profile that is consistent with naval propulsion reactors, the researchers say.
“From the identifying reports, co-location with other naval reactor facilities, and correlating construction activity, I think it can be said that it is likely the Longwei Project is housed at Base 909, and it could potentially be located at the identified building,” she said. The Type 003 Fujian, launched in 2022, was the country's third carrier and its first to be indigenously designed and built. It employs an electromagnetic-type launch system like those developed and used by the U.S. Navy. All three carriers are conventionally powered.
Nick Childs, senior fellow for naval forces and maritime security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the Chinese “have taken an incremental approach to their carrier development with a number of ambitions that will evolve over time.” “As well as obviating the need for the ship to refuel regularly and therefore giving it much greater range, nuclear power means that without the need to carry fuel oil for the ship there will be room aboard for fuel and weapons for its aircraft, extending their capabilities,” Childs said.
The U.S. is obligated by a domestic law to supply Taiwan with sufficient weapons to deter invasion, and it could provide assistance to the island from its bases in the Pacific in the event of an invasion or blockade. Tensions also have risen in the South China Sea between China and neighboring nations over territorial disputes and maritime claims.
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