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Video: Rare scoop on INS Arihant's
^^ Thanks its a nice article. If things are going upto the plan our next aircraft carrier will be a nuclear powered one,fitted with a variant of two above mentioned reactors.
August 3rd, 2009
Kalpakkam Aug. 2: India can build its own nuclear powered aircraft carrier and warships, said the countrys top nuclear scientist.
Yes, we have the capability and technical expertise to build nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and war ships of global standards. When the government asks us to build such ships, we will do it, Dr Anil Kakodkar, chairman, Atomic Energy Commission, said on Sunday.
He was addressing reporters at the Propulsion Reactor Project (PRP) site at the Indira Gandhi Centre For Atomic Research (IGCAR), where INS Arihant, the countrys first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine took shape.
Disclosing that India has mastered the technology to build Light Water Reactors (LWR), Dr Kakodkar said, INS Arihant is powered by a Light Water Reactor built by the scientists of Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC). We have the capability to build big Light Water Reactors to meet the energy requirements of the country.
The AEC chairman said that the kind of reactor built for the nuclear submarine could be used to electrify villages and remote areas not covered by the national grid. We are not ruling out the possibilities of using such reactors for rural electrification. Though the cost of power production may be a bit expensive, we can always explore the possibilities for using this compact reactors for bringing light to the villages.
Dr Kakodkar said the commissioning of the first reactor at Koodankulam had been delayed. It will be ready for fuelling early next year. The 500 MW fast breeder reactor will be ready for commission by 2011. Dr S Banerjee, director, Barc, said the LWR was more flexible than other reactors. It can work 30 times faster than the conventional reactors. This will help the Navy personnel to manoeuvre the vessel to speeds of their requirement, he said.
http://www.deccanchronicle.com/national/india-has-tech-n-warship-367
Here you go! This should answer some of the members' queries. But, I don't think the first two carriers will be n-powered. Maybe the later versions, when we have a decent carrier based aircraft on our radar. But, yes the country is capable of producing the nuclear reactors for such carriers!
Raja Menon
06 Aug 2009
India lives in a troubled neighbourhood, which is why our first nuclear submarine is a ballistic missile firing one (SSBN), unlike that of all other countries, which first commissioned a nuclear hunter-killer submarine. Their method enabled the other countries to try out nuclear engineering technology thoroughly before mating the ballistic missile firing system with that of the nuclear submarine. Indias is a bold attempt to shortcut the procedure, although when the project began in the Seventies and Eighties, what was being designed was only a hunter-killer (SSN). The beginnings of the project were in the Seventies, and it began like that of all other countries to dry run a submarine propulsion reactor in one of the atomic energy departments sites, at BARC. Now forgotten is the extraordinary case of the naval officer, Captain Subha Rao, a genius deputed to BARC, who ended up in a fight with that establishment. Subha Rao was arrested while boarding a plane for the US, with a copy of his IIT Phd thesis in his baggage, or so he claimed, which was also on propulsion reactor design which had been stamped secret by the establishment to which he handed it in. The Internet has sites alleging that a US representative admitted that Subha Rao was carrying plans of the Chakra, which had been leased by the USSR to India. The facts are that Justice Saldanha of the Bombay High Court honourably acquitted the retired officer in 1987, and so claims the site, accused the government of having perpetrated a fraud.
The project had a better beginning in the Eighties under Ramanna who roped in Vice Admiral M K Roy, a Tamil speaking Bengali, and a classmate, to run the project for some years as the Advanced Technology Vehicle (ATV) project. By the mid-Eighties there were many naval officers at the HDW yard in Kiel, Germany, as well as a design team at the 1KL design bureau in Lubeck, Germany. The fact is that, although the Indian Navy had been with the Soviets for 20 years, it was the Germans who first handed over both technology and submarine design in an incredible open and frank manner of fulfilling more than the written contract. Unfortunately the planners in Naval Headquarters at that time failed to understand what India had been given and closed down the yard in Mazagon, which at that time had the most advanced submarine hull building system in the world. Many of the officers of the German project went on to become project managers of ATV.
The Arihant is a stupendous industrial feat, as complex and larger than a moon probe, where 20,000 components are put together to fine tolerance, that must stand up to 50 times the atmospheric pressure. More than engineering itself, its a question of the culture of submarine building and submarining, where everything is double-checked and people never begin sentences with I guess The Indian decision to build both submarine and missiles together has obviously taken the submarine ahead of the missile, with the K-15 missiles limited in range to 750 km. These will have to be upgraded later to enable them to operate much farther away from the target, and therefore preserve the secrecy of movement. A closer patrol or operating area would be an inducement for the targeted country to detect or at least to harass the SSBN. This would be a totally unwanted condition that Soviet submarines suffered from during the Cold War, as they were shadowed by American SSNs.
At the time of writing Indias Nuclear Doctrine, the nations intention of fielding a triad, as well as a Minimum Credible Deterrent (MCD) were stated. In actual fact the two are contradictory. MCD does not consist of a mathematical number only, but the concept of fielding the largest proportion of the countrys nuclear arsenal on undetectable and undestroyable platforms. In todays technology this means nuclear submarines. The other vectors, or carriers, are eventually vulnerable to a search by a determined enemy, who allocates this task to a permanent staff. So the non-submarine component of the arsenal becomes vulnerable at a certain rate (say two per cent) a year. These are the strategic reasons why the nuclear submarine gives the country MCD, and why for once, the government openly advertised this capability. What use is MCD if one doesnt show it to others? So, today we have an assured launch capability no matter what the size and nature of the enemys first strike. Some critical decisions still lie ahead of us. The Chinese have, for instance put their submarines into caves. We should encourage this, because this is how the idea of a nuclear submarine is neutralised by woolly thinking. Hopefully the Indians will not imitate the Chinese, thinking that everything Chinese is more advanced.
Eventually, the success of our submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) fleet will depend on our rocket scientists. The better the rocket, the more powerful the solid fuel, and the smaller the rocket, for the same range and payload. If our SLBMs need quiet, safe areas to patrol they need missiles of 3,000 mile range that will fit inside a 10-metre hull. Such a rocket will keep the SSBN size below 7,000 tonnes and make an elegant and cost-effective solution. We dont need the 8,000-mile range ICBM and a 14-metre hull, for that would mean a 15,000 tonne submarine at twice the cost.
The other aspect to monitor is the reactors life cycle. At present, it is reported that the core will need changing every 10 years. But the core exploitation rate has not been specified. The faster and longer a submarine travels, the greater the core usage. Modern submarines like the British Astute and the USS Los Angeles class have lifetime reactors, no matter at what rate they are used. That would be ideal. But when the first of the Ohio SSBNs were commissioned, their reactors had a limit of 4,00,000 miles. So we need to worry about this parameter or we would start worrying about the safety of the SSBNs in port, and begin to think of ridiculous ideas of putting them into caves like the Chinese.
An SSBN can, if assured a deep and distant patrol area, conduct its patrol at a slow and sedate speed, making as little noise as possible. The SSN is something else, particularly if it is to guard the flanks of Indias Carrier Battle Group as it operates in the South Indian Ocean. So as can be guessed, the SSBN is a national asset, as it protects the people by threatening a second strike. The SSN is much more a naval asset. But when navies are supreme at sea, the countrys image changes. So whether India ever faces a nuclear threat in this century, or not, the SSNs will certainly change Indias standing in the Indian Ocean and the world.
Guarding India from sea
If India has the capability to built its own Aircraft carrier then it does not make sense to purchase a old and outdated carrier from russia?