My comments are in [...] brackets.
[The latest recorded polls suggest most Australians support nuclear propelled submarines for Australia. Defence against the perceived threat from China appears to be the main reason.]
Anonymous provided the following learned comments on January 22, 2022:
"Pete
I appreciate you are playing devil’s advocate so I will try to respond further on the political status and risks for Aussie nuclear subs under AUKUS. Any successful RAN nuclear subs program will take 20+ years and so on average will see at least two changes in Federal government. So I agree it is a valid question for any of us who want to see RAN SSNs to consider the political risks.
First the good news. Opinion polls show a clear majority of Australians (57% in Roy Morgan) are in favour of SSNs, mainly due to growing fears of China. The left wing [September 28, 2021] Guardian poll had an even higher % in favour (62% in Essential poll). Note that is 15% higher than the Liberal government’s current voter share [latest primary and 2PP support for L/NP] , suggesting a lot of Labor supporters support SSNs. If you have a cynical view of politicians as only acting in their own self interest, that makes it very likely that a Labor or Liberal government will stick to the deal.
Of the minor parties, only Green voters [Very likely. See the Greens Party statement.] are clearly opposed to SSNs. One Nation, UAP and Rex Patrick/Centre Alliance all support SSNs too. This suggests that a majority Labor or Liberal government will pass funding for SSNs, with the worst case being a Labor government dependent on Green votes in the Senate to pass legislation. Even then, a Labor/Rex Patrick/Independents alliance could pass SSN funding bills and enabling legislation.
In my view the greatest political risk for the SSN project is if the LNP or RAN gets distracted by trying to achieve other objectives that Labor might abandon in government. These risks are obvious: trying to establish domestic nuclear power, nuclear weapons, or diverting the subs (and jobs) to an overseas build. The Labor left and Greens would go ballistic (pun intended) at any of these. That would risk killing the project via cancelled funding. The challenge for the RAN is to stay focused on the core objective (SSNs) and adopt a delivery method that minimises these risks, i.e. maximises local jobs.
For these reasons, I think the safest path to delivery of RAN SSNs is local construction of the UK Astute design, with modular construction of the reactor compartment in the UK for final assembly in Adelaide. Lockheed Martin installing the US combat system and Mk48s could be done locally, bumping up the local build %.
If the RAN went for Virginias there is a risk there would be more work in USA for its multiple complex systems like optronics and VLS. Less local content means more cancellation risk. Also, call me a cynic, but I note the BAE yard in Barrow is heavily unionised, which makes me suspect in practical terms Australian Labor politicians would prefer to see a joint AUS/UK build by BAE, knowing there will be unionists employed in both yards. If that is the case, it will be very difficult for the Labor party in government to abandon the deal.
So while I agree it is a risk, in my view unless the Greens hold the balance of power completely in a Labor minority government, the risks are manageable. And provided the RAN proposes a delivery approach with high local content (and jobs starting sooner rather than later), Labor in government will be very unlikely to abandon the SSN program.
Finally, in financial terms, SSNs are expensive but manageable. $90 billion over 30 years is $3 billion per year. We spend over $10 billion per year subsidising fuel for miners and farmers. There are lots of ways the cost could be raised.
Jan 22, 2022, 12:29:00 AM"
Pete Comment
Anonymous's comments seem very valid concerning the political considerations.
"There are lots of ways the cost could be raised." may indeed be accurate and necessary.
Later surveys of public support may change. This is after the public becomes aware of the full costs of: SSN construction; total nuclear propulsion program; and supporting infrastructure. Rather than AU "$90 Billion over 30 years" this might easily be more than AU$200 Billion over 30 years.
3 comments:
How to Fall Forward, Not Back (this is part one)
If Australia is to not stuff-up its program to acquire nuclear propelled submarines, the best path is that first spelled out last October on this site; i.e. begin early, by funding the RAN to wet lease Astute boats with RN crews, then spend the next ten years gradually replacing RN and other UK staff seconded to Australia with newly qualified Australian crew members and technicians as local capacities mature.
As such a (potentially pear shaped) project like the nascent Australian SSN program is wide open to foreign or domestic financial, political or organizational attack - and the Collins class won?t last forever - there has to be a plan 'B' and preferably a plan 'C' too.
To survive a perceived failure of plan 'A'; plans 'B' and 'C' should not resemble a warmed over, shrunken and re-scheduled version of whatever plan 'A' the government of the day first announces.
__________________________________________________________________________________
A Possible Plan 'B' ?
One 'fall-forward' alternative to the 7,000 tonne Astute LMA, mooted on Submarine Matters last year, would be a 4,000 tonne hybrid LIB/nuclear boat that eschews the perennial PWR as a power source, in favor of modular micro-reactors driving, say, free-piston sterling engines paired with linear alternators.
The so-called 'disruptive' technology, noted, above was pioneered not for the US Navy, but for NASA.
In the 1980s, NASA began investing in innovative means of powering space missions that travel beyond the distance where solar cells are a viable power source. The U.S. Idaho National Laboratory and its partner institutions, such as the Los Alamos National Laboratory, designed and tested engineering development devices under projects KRUSTY, Kilopower and, most recently, Fission Surface Power (FSP).
* the devices built and stress-tested under each of these nuclear projects (for which NASA was the customer) all eschew traditional nuclear fuel-assemblies (so no fuel pellets and no zirconium); instead using solid uranium cores and non traditional cooling and power take-off systems (so no system-critical pumps, no water and no steam raising equipment).
* for illuminating pics of NASA's engineering work, just Google any of the three NASA project names referred to above.
One early engineering development was a solid nuclear core the size of a toilet roll (their description, not mine!) that provided the heat source for a Stirling-cycle generator delivering (low watts) for use on NASA interplanetary missions.
The next technological maturity step for NASA was to fund a reactor project (Kilopower), which saw the same U.S. government agencies create and test a 1 kWE generator designed to withstand space flight, including the shock of being literally blasted off a launch pad.
NASA's current FSP project (see above) is intended to deliver a power source for use on the moon or on Mars with a space launch date 'in the late 2020s'.
On pages 3 and 5 of the relevant public RFP (see Request for Proposal - Fission Surface Power) prospective respondents are informed that the power source NASA needs (to keep on boldly going. . . ) must deliver 'not less than 10 kWE', run autonomously for not less than ten years and weigh less than 3.6 tonnes.
On page 10 of the RFP, respondents are invited to detail any devices they believe they can produce for NASA that generate up to 40 kWE, so long as such devices meet all the other essential design criteria.
There are powerful, very persuasive commercial and professional interests that stand to lose heavily if anything other than a PWR ever goes to sea on a submarine.
Therefore, if NASA had not invested the time, money, technical effort and reputation in its (Lunar and Martian) nuclear power generation systems, I'd be among the committed skeptics to any PWR alternative.
But NASA did so, so I am not (yet) skeptical.
How to Fall Forward, Not Back ( this is part two )
__________________________________________________________________________________
From Nuclear Science to System Delivery
Meanwhile, back on earth, one of the pioneering manufacturers of nuclear propulsion systems for U.S. submarines, Westinghouse, is currently 'aggressively' (again, this is not my word) developing modular micro-reactors 'for civil and military uses' rated at up to 5 mWE; i.e. an order of magnitude more powerful than the nuclear power generation systems of interest to NASA.
NB: The advertised power rating of the planned Westinghouse micro reactor seems to be about 20 per cent higher than the MTU4000 series diesel alternators that were likely to have equipped the 4,000 tonne Shortfin Barracuda 1A design.
Therefore, two 5 mWE Westinghouse micro reactors appear sized to handle the entire battery recharging needs of a 4K LIB/nuclear boat, thereby reducing its indiscretion ratio to (?) zero and extending its submerged endurance to conventional SSN levels, rather than conventional AIP levels.
The Westinghouse modular micro-reactor design appears to have little in common with the large number of PWRs Westinghouse previously supplied to the US Navy (eg. unlike the Westinghouse S6W submarine reactor, it uses no water and produces no steam) but seems, (to this non-nuclear non-engineer) eerily similar to the innovative nuclear powered alternator designs NASA has sponsored. Westinghouse is reportedly seeking NRC authority to sell its micro-reactors to customers in 2025.
The art work accompanying journal articles about Westinghouse's modular micro-reactors seems to show that the modules comfortably fit into a U.S. standard (8x8x20 foot) shipping container. If their compactness is an actual fact, then the complete reactor module is a cylindrical unit about 2 meters in diameter and 6 metres in length (eg. see page 27 of Nuclear Plant Journal, March-April 2019).
Under the hypothetical plan 'B'; the work initiated by NASA and, it does seem to appear, built on by Westinghouse just might open two alternative technical pathways for submarine nuclear propulsion.
The first pathway would be to use, say, four FSP-model 40 kWE nuclear powered alternators per Australian LIB/nuclear boat to cover the submarine's full hotel load and use traditional diesel alternators to charge the submarine's batteries for everything else.
Such a boat could be tasked, say, with sitting on the bottom of the Gulf of Tonkin for two months or so listening, looking, recharging, 'interrogating' and 're-briefing' XLUUVs, before returning to base for crew changes, re-storing etc. The mooted submarine's batteries could be kept at, or near, their full charge indefinitely by relying on a small trickle flow to the battery from the 160 kWE nuclear generation plant.
While this technical pathway transforms the submarine's endurance and time on station, it does little or nothing to increase either its rate of advance (i.e. deployment speed) or its top underwater speed, since the nuclear plant cannot generate energy at a rate near that at which battery power is consumed by the submarine when it is underway. An un-modified Collins class boat would presumably outperform this style of hybrid LIB/nuclear boat, both for rate of advance and sustained underwater speed.
The second pathway would be to use, say, three Westinghouse 5 mWE modular reactors per boat to generate a combined 15 mWE to simultaneously cover (a) the submarine's full hotel load; (b) the power needed for propulsion at sustained speeds up to 10 knots; and (c) continuous battery re-charging.
This technical pathway both transforms the submarine's endurance and time on station, matches or betters the rate of advance of a Collins class boat and gives the submarine commander the option of using a fully charged LIB in ways outside of normal parameters (i.e. to meet or exceed SSN top speeds over short distances, but not an SSNs sustained rate of advance).
Why would you not 'just go for a pure SSN'? - because repairing or replacing an SSN reactor can only be done in a tiny number of secure dry-docks and it reportedly takes hundreds of highly skilled workers between weeks (K15 reactors) and years (PWR2 reactors) to do so. If designed for easy removal (like the gas turbines on a destroyer) a sealed modular reactor of the size and shape Westinghouse (or NASA) describe could be done by a crane in a day - an important advantage over PWR propulsion.
BUREAUCRATUS LEX JANUARY 26, 2022
Post a Comment