Posted on 06/11/2015 3:40:10 AM PDT by Berlin_Freeper
... The electromagnetic system will replace the steam-driven catapults that operate aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.
(Excerpt) Read more at military.com ...
Each shaft has 2 turbines. So a four screw large warship i.e. a carrier would have 8 gas turbines. So from your reference 8 x 50,000 would be a total of 400,000 SHP for a GT ship. So the Nimitz total would be 4 X 72,000 288,000.
Don’t forgetyour original premise, “no need for steam”. Those 8GTs would need to provide hotel loads as well. Those loads are not handled by the main propulsion steam turbines in an A4W plant. Then there is the amount of fuel needed to keep them operating and on station. We calculated the fuel usage rate (gas mileage if you wish) of the A4W reactor plant on each of the ships I was assigned to and found that, on average, each traveled over 8,000 miles on a gram of fuel. At current enrichment and core loading levels that gives each reactor a useable core life of at least 35 years before experiencing Xenon preclusion. The amount of fuel necessary to keep a gas turbine running for that long is astronomical, and the sourcing for that fuel is not always USA friendly. In the long term nuclear power is much more economical than fossil, specially if you are launching planes around the clock.
A CVBG is made up of ships that are not nuclear. The only nuc is the CVN. Hotel service are no big deal. Every one of this screening ships refuels about every 4 days. The spaces that would have been used for the exotic glow in the dark tea pot could be used to store fuel.
Not that much fuel
My parents met at NNS in the early 1940s and married in 1946. Both had long careers there, retiring in the mid-1970s.
Small world. Thanks for posting that. I showed it to my wife, telling her, “see shipyard marriages last”. She laughed. We’ve been married almost 23 years.
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