WI:The uk goes nuclear?

In the 1960,s what if great britain builds its first nuclear Aircraft Carrier? What would it take for the Admiralty to get what it wants?
 
In the 1960,s what if great britain builds its first nuclear Aircraft Carrier? What would it take for the Admiralty to get what it wants?

An ASB? I mean they had to get a USN reactor for Dreadnought, not too mention the fact that you'd most likely need to not have the Eagle and Ark Royal completed in the 50's.
 

GarethC

Donor
Some kind of fire on Ark or Eagle renders them a TCL, or the Cuban thing goes hot - well, lukewarm rather than full-on End of The World As We Know It - and one of them eats a torpedo or a Raduga KSR-2.

A new CV is now necessary, and the CVA-01 plans get dusted off (or just not cancelled).

How viable is it to shove 5 of Valiant's Rolls-Royce PWRs in instead of the conventional boilers in CVA-01?
 
France developed its own naval reactor using low enriched uranium caramel fuel in curved plates, so there is no technical reason why Britain couldn't do something similar. Financial problems would be the biggest hurdle, the British developed hydrogen peroxide submarines rather than incur the expense of a nuclear program.

Perhaps the British could just buy the A3W reactors developed for the JFK, they had 140;000shp. However the case for nuclear power plants for surface warships wasn't fully justified until the late 60s with the A4W reactor.
 

Delta Force

Banned
Some kind of fire on Ark or Eagle renders them a TCL, or the Cuban thing goes hot - well, lukewarm rather than full-on End of The World As We Know It - and one of them eats a torpedo or a Raduga KSR-2.

A new CV is now necessary, and the CVA-01 plans get dusted off (or just not cancelled).

How viable is it to shove 5 of Valiant's Rolls-Royce PWRs in instead of the conventional boilers in CVA-01?

Submarine reactors are packaged around a submarine hull, so there would be optimization issues with using the same design for submarine and surface propulsion. The Astute class attack submarines have issues from using reactors designed for the Vanguard class fleet ballistic missile submarines (in particular a higher displacement than for submarines with purpose built reactors) and in that case they were even sharing a reactor designed specifically for submarines.
 

Delta Force

Banned
France developed its own naval reactor using low enriched uranium caramel fuel in curved plates, so there is no technical reason why Britain couldn't do something similar. Financial problems would be the biggest hurdle, the British developed hydrogen peroxide submarines rather than incur the expense of a nuclear program.

Perhaps the British could just buy the A3W reactors developed for the JFK, they had 140;000shp. However the case for nuclear power plants for surface warships wasn't fully justified until the late 60s with the A4W reactor.

There's also the issue of nuclear propulsion being unneeded for as long as the Royal Navy has a global presence and the facilities inherent to that, after which it becomes unneeded because the ships don't need the range.
 
France developed its own naval reactor using low enriched uranium caramel fuel in curved plates, so there is no technical reason why Britain couldn't do something similar. Financial problems would be the biggest hurdle, the British developed hydrogen peroxide submarines rather than incur the expense of a nuclear program.
1) a joint plan with the French would make the most sense, build 3 carriers jointly, and hope at least one is usable when you need it. (1 undergoing refit, 1 in port, 1 at sea, that kind of thing.) Costs will be lower per unit spread over multiple units.
1a) if you can get some commonality with nuke plants in subs, all the better.
2) British H2O2 subs. Boy, they worked out well. (NOT) HMS Exploder and HMS Excruciating. They are poster children for why to use nukes in subs.
 
Top