At this point I really want to ask, again, why not plug an SSN into the power grid, using it's crew ashore and keeping air operations at sea where the ship can actually maneuver to optimize air capability?
Good question!At this point I really want to ask, again, why not plug an SSN into the power grid, using it's crew ashore and keeping air operations at sea where the ship can actually maneuver to optimize air capability?
We are indeed, but to be clear, the proposed notional CVLN's are US Coast Guard ships, intended for Humanitarian Relief/Disaster Relief functions as their primary role, as opposed to US Navy aircraft carriers.wait, so we are talking about nuclear power aircraft carriers as relieve/rescue ships?
Nothing at all wrong with a hospital ship, but can a hospital ship airlift massive numbers of refugees? Define the 'Massive Auxiliary Ship' you intend and/or envision as an alternative to the notional, full on CVLN? Does it include rotary wing aircraft? or what exactly? The only thing I would think my CVLN wouldn't have that an amphib would, would be the landing craft, and there wouldn't be any reason that existing amphibs couldn't work alongside the hospital ships and the CVLN's is there?Whats wrong with a hospital ship accompanied by some massive auxiliary ship that can do all sorts of good stuff, including repair, support, research and transport?
Welcome to the thread!
We are indeed, but to be clear, the proposed notional CVLN's are US Coast Guard ships, intended for Humanitarian Relief/Disaster Relief functions as their primary role, as opposed to US Navy aircraft carriers.
Nothing at all wrong with a hospital ship, but can a hospital ship airlift massive numbers of refugees? Define the 'Massive Auxiliary Ship' you intend and/or envision as an alternative to the notional, full on CVLN? Does it include rotary wing aircraft? or what exactly? The only thing I would think my CVLN wouldn't have that an amphib would, would be the landing craft, and there wouldn't be any reason that existing amphibs couldn't work alongside the hospital ships and the CVLN's is there?
Nothing is wrong with the amphibious ships, except all the space wasted for the well deck/landing craft. I may be thinking wrong, just like historically when the missile advocates wanted to remove 'guns' from america's jet fighters, only to discover that there were indeed situations where the gun was needed and preferable to the missile.So what is wrong with amphibious landing ships with helicopters? Helicopters can take tremendous loads, plus a lot of can also land rotary wing aircraft(which are basically helicopters) like Ospreys.
It does come close!Ōsumi-class tank landing ship - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Hyūga-class helicopter destroyer - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
doesn't this come very close to what you want?
Non-nuclear vessels have to devote space to fuel, that could otherwise be used to haul additional equipment/personal/supplies, and when this fuel is gone/runs low, they either have to bring more fuel in, or leave, so...All it lacks is the nuclear portion, which i guess you just find cool (i agree). because it really doesn't have to be nuclear, at all. its also not civilian of course, but lets face it, what else to conduct such a large and complex and long operation like a disaster relieve effort than the navy?
I just have a mental image, of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, where the relief effort was run by a private company, known and hated by its customers as "Comcast". It would give a whole new (and worse) meaning to the phrase, "It's COMCASTIC!!!"A private company?
Maybe some large barges could be pre positioned along each coast. These barges could have the appropriate switch gear, cables, transformers etc to allow banks of large industrial trailer mounted generators to be used to provide back up power. Fuel could also be stored on other barges.and batteries, don't forget the batteries
You get around 150-200W per sq. meter in good sunlight. Your typical marine propulsion nuclear reactor produces a few hundred megawatt. Lets say 200MW, so 'all' you need is a million square meters of solar ... but actually that's wrong .. what you really need is around 3 million square meters because you have to generate enough power whilst the sun shines to keep going in the dark. That's around 32 million sq feet. The batteries, on the other hand, seem to be 'easy' ... you only need to store say 18 hours at 200MW = 3600MWhours = 3,600,000 kWh to keep you going at night and on dull days ..... and it looks as if 1 kWh per 1 kg of battery might be possible, so that's 3,600,000kg or only around 4,000 tons ... and this assumes you never sail too far north (or south) in the winter, since you need at least 8 hours of good sunlight per day ....
Now the Nimitz class carrier is around 1,000 feet long x 250 wide = 250,000 sq feet. So for 32 million sq ft you need to cover an area equal to 124 Nimitz class carriers in solar to get the same power as a nuclear generator ...
PS That's ignoring the wind generators. If you can guarantee some 'average' wind speed, then you can up the batteries and reduce the solar ... problem is, a couple of days of low wind speeds could then see you stuck at sea with flat batteries ...
Of course, what you REALLY need is back-up generators for dull no wind days
Interesting thoughts.
Is anyone else having a bit of trouble with the new forum software, in respect to breaking up a post that you want to respond to into smaller, bite sized pieces? The old software I had down to a tee, but this new stuff is causing me some problems. The cost of progress, lol.
Nothing is wrong with the amphibious ships, except all the space wasted for the well deck/landing craft. I may be thinking wrong, just like historically when the missile advocates wanted to remove 'guns' from america's jet fighters, only to discover that there were indeed situations where the gun was needed and preferable to the missile.
We already have the good, useful, multi-role amphibious ships, but let's say the beaches/shoreline are so smashed up as to be impassable/useless, ships that are designed to bring their loads into action are then left without the ability to intercede quickly, and while there is still the ability to operate a limited number of helicopters and ospreys, this will be less than that offered by my notional CVLN, which concentrates is full loaded aboard volume to operations independent of the conditions on the beach/shoreline, and thus more deliverable aid per ton of ship.
One need look no further than the America class ships, to see this very debate/design choice played out, albit with a military rather than civilian function in mind.
It does come close!
It is also a matter of scale, though. Those ships are far to tiny to provide the material aid that I envision being needed in a major disaster. For example, what numbers of folks ashore would be able to count on fresh water deliveries from such ships? Their light displacements make me think that they would have limited capabilities to create and deliver fresh water, and no real capacity to bring in supplies/equipment for dealing with the cleanup.
Non-nuclear vessels have to devote space to fuel, that could otherwise be used to haul additional equipment/personal/supplies, and when this fuel is gone/runs low, they either have to bring more fuel in, or leave, so...
I just have a mental image, of the Hurricane Katrina disaster, where the relief effort was run by a private company, known and hated by its customers as "Comcast". It would give a whole new (and worse) meaning to the phrase, "It's COMCASTIC!!!"
I like your input. My own (as yet undisclosed) ideas centered around offshore platforms being built far enough out to allow for deep water ships to make the ship to shore connections.Maybe some large barges could be pre positioned along each coast. These barges could have the appropriate switch gear, cables, transformers etc to allow banks of large industrial trailer mounted generators to be used to provide back up power. Fuel could also be stored on other barges.
There's a big difference between an offshore power plant (which does not have to move and can be more or less arbitrarily big) and a nuclear-powered ship.So, there seems to be some doubts about offshore Nuclear Power plants being safe, or cost effective, or even feasible and I just wanted to post the following three links to get further (informed) opinions about this aspect of my notional CVLN's missions.
Some links:
Link #1
Link #2
Link #3
It looks to me like offshore Nuclear power plants can, and actually are going to be built going forward, which puts to rest the arguments of cost and feasibility. Safety we will just have to wait and see about. Hopefully, I can get new votes on the poll, that reflect the changing perceptions on just how possible some aspects of my idea actually are.
I appreciate your approach but i think you are overlooking a few things.
I mentioned the japanese helicopter carriers because they are pretty new and modern, but the America class you mentioned yourself are at least twice as big(40,000 tons). They can easily carry hundreds of tonnes of supplies.
Did you know that a Super Stallion can carry almost 30 tons of supplies? Have a dozen of those on board, the relief effort is highly efficient. No need to land either.
You seem to be confused with fuel being a waste of space whilst suggesting replacing it with nuclear reactors, each with 2 steam turbines, those things are huge. The bigger the ship the bigger the steam turbines too, if you want to go to the 100,000 tons range. And if they have to do what you want them to do(supply power) they are gonna need 3 of them, so thats 6 steam turbines. I'd say that takes up more than fuel does, plus these things take a lot of maintenance space and safety protocols with them.
Imagine they can put the fuel on the lowest deck, spread out over the entire bottom. Way more efficient than 3 nuclear powerplants with steamturbine of a couple of hundred thousand HP.
Besides, fuel based carrier have an operating range of over 12000 kilometers. Where do you want them to go? All you need is some tankers ready to refuel them, occasionally.
True, but then that post is focused on providing links to real-world applications of off-shore Nuclear power to land power grids, because it doesn't seem like folks are aware that this has been done in the past, and were thinking that it is not cost effective form of power or some such.There's a big difference between an offshore power plant (which does not have to move and can be more or less arbitrarily big) and a nuclear-powered ship.
In many cases, right now today, that may be the case. Puerto Rico for instance, is a classic example of what you are talking about.Everyone is assuming that there will be a shore grid to plug into. The first thing that gets destroyed in a disaster is the power grid.
While that sounds good in theory, I feel compelled to question this assumption, in the case of a large scale disaster, would not each and every one of these 'smaller' plug-in's not each need to be cleared before they can be made use of? What good, if 20 locations need cleared, versus just one for a CVLN?Having multiple smaller generator/power supplies that can deployed close to the immediate need is a much more flexible solution.
Let us not forget that in the same time frame, the Panama canal was getting powered by a converted WWII Liberty ship housing a nuclear power plant.Back in the 70s the U.S> Navy had a DE that had been converted to be a portable power ship. The ship chosen was a WWII design that had been built with Turbo-electric propulsion. That meant that the powerplant that normally powered the ship could have its electrical power diverted to power cables that could be routed into the local grid. To connect to the grid she carried a HUGE spool of cable that took a large amount of deck space that had been taken up by a deck house an 5 tube torpedo mount. The Lexington could do what she did because she was designed with turbo electric propulsion. For modern ships to do the same they would have to design in much larger generators than they normally have.
Thank you! I had the same impression, but health issues have precluded me from doing much lately, and that included researching and posting a rebuttal. Before the last round of health problems, I had started looking for facts and hard data, but not knowing where to look for this info prevented a timely reply here in thread.From what I understand when you're talking about a supercarrier sized vessel the needed reactors ( and associated nuclear engineering spaces) are a lot more compact then the equivalent conventional power plants and petroleum based fuel for said powerplant. As in on a nuclear carrier it allows for something like 50 percent more space to be devoted to storage space for aircraft fuel and munitions.
I am interested in hearing your thoughts on this one. Why is a purpose designed, non-combat USCG CVLN going to be overspecialized when compared to a USN CVN? My vision includes the capacity to carry far more cargo than a fleet carrier can, even with both the flight & hanger decks crammed with DR cargo, in addition to many other missions, one of which is to provide massive 'ship-to-shore' power when needed, so, how overspecialized?The problem for the suggested vessel is that the nuclear power plants ( unlike on a regular supercarrier) just aren't worth the cost and the vessel is overspecialized.
I'm starting to get tired and feeling sick again, but I did want to post this link before taking a break again, and hopefully one that won't keep me from posting for three weeks this time...Makes more sense for the purpose to go for something like something like the expeditionary transfer dock. Basically either convert an existing large merchant vessel of the type or build a new one to civilian standards ( much much cheaper then the ones needed for naval vessels). Basically build in or modify the capability to carry multiple helicopters, multiple landing craft and small rescue boats, a large medical facility or spaces that can rapidly be modified for said purpose, large amounts of storage space for generators, trucks, heavy construction equipment, food, water purifiers, and space for a sizable complement of engineers, rescue workers and medical personel.
Have one of the first things they do upon arrival be repairing existing port facilities and building or repairing existing airfields. That allows normal merchant vessels to use the port facilities to unload supplies and commercial/ military cargo planes to unload larger amounts of aid cargo.
If their are no port facilities ( so instead of a city some isolated coastal area) use the ETD variants landing craft ( and built in cranes on the ETD to unload other normal civilian ships aid cargo.
Much much much cheaper and better suited to the task.
IDK about you, but I'm picturing something like the DHC Dash-7 or -8, or a Cessna 208. For the helos, I'd want civilian CH-54s or Mi-10s.fixed wing aircraft need be as big and heavy as current combat capable jet aircraft, so even there, the lighter aircraft (especially the unnamed ones), are probably not needing WOD to operate, so...
The problem isn't "plugging in", it's having a grid to plug into. In PR, much of the grid was (remains!) down as a result of the storm. IIRC, that was also true after Katrina. It frequently is. If the grid isn't working, being able to plug into it, or not, is irrelevant.if the local power grid can send GW forth, then surely a shore "plug" could be built to tie into said grid
This makes me think the need for a dedicated "HQ" ship is much less than you propose. If the supplies & equipment are pre-positioned, all that's needed is a means to move the barges, & that means a number of oceangoing tugs, not an LPD or LHA. Base the heavy-lift helos ashore.I like the idea of staging such barges in/nearby likely areas that are prone to disasters, and this would allow for shortened response times by pre-positioning materials, equipment, and supplies 'in theater', as opposed to even having them sitting around in storage depots onshore. There would be the need for moving these barges from their staging areas to the disaster areas, but that would not be anything like an insurmountable problem.