US Navy Railgun Gets Powered Up

[Marlin]

   It may seem strange to put a weapons system on Nuke worker but the article talks about power management. The rail gun needs 25 megawatts to fire, enough energy to power a small city at a rate of 10 per minute. Military technology has been a source for many commercial applications and power management has been an issue for solar and wind to feed the grid. If it is feasible it will not happen for decades and the cost of solar and wind are not low enough yet to stand on their own without big subsidies but this seems to be one solution for intermittent power production.
   Just a little food for thought on the future of electrical power. Makes me wonder why the Navy has not gone back to nuclear powered cruisers or other smaller than carrier ships for the newer power hungry Navy and a future that is headed for more railguns and radiative weapon systems.


US Navy Railgun Gets Powered Up

http://www.engineering.com/DesignerEdge/DesignerEdgeArticles/ArticleID/12443/US-Navy-Railgun-Gets-Powered-Up.aspx

[GLW]

...Makes me wonder why the Navy has not gone back to nuclear powered cruisers or other smaller than carrier ships for the newer power hungry Navy and a future that is headed for more railguns and radiative weapon systems.

i) cost / logistics
   a) which are balanced against the threats, IF Russia, China, et al (sic), ramp up the threat whereby the capability of a nuclear powered fleet of capital ships outweighs the costs and logistics of building and maintaining it the nukes will return, currently gas turbines are sufficient for the power projection and sea lane maintenance missions for ships smaller than carriers,...

ii) politics
   a) the current politicos are anti-nuclear anything, hell, they're anti-American, well, they're anti-pre2008 American
     1) so plans for any need to expand the nuclear Navy need to wait on either a sympathetic administration for preemptive preparation or,
     2) an offshore crisis which elevates the need to "whatever it takes to catch up must be done for survival sake, hopefully in time", ala WW2
     3) keeping in mind that in a constitutional, democratic, republic these eras of strength versus vulnerability are self-realized mood swings reflecting the
         plurality or majority of the electorate which elected the executive,...

[Marlin]

i) cost / logistics
   a) which are balanced against the threats, IF Russia, China, et al (sic), ramp up the threat whereby the capability of a nuclear powered fleet of capital ships outweighs the costs and logistics of building and maintaining it the nukes will return, currently gas turbines are sufficient for the power projection and sea lane maintenance missions for ships smaller than carriers,...

ii) politics
   a) the current politicos are anti-nuclear anything, hell, they're anti-American, well, they're anti-pre2008 American
     1) so plans for any need to expand the nuclear Navy need to wait on either a sympathetic administration for preemptive preparation or,
     2) an offshore crisis which elevates the need to "whatever it takes to catch up must be done for survival sake, hopefully in time", ala WW2
     3) keeping in mind that in a constitutional, democratic, republic these eras of strength versus vulnerability are self-realized mood swings reflecting the
         plurality or majority of the electorate which elected the executive,...

   Good arguments but if is hard to beat the power density and operational availability of nuclear. Current 33 year or longer refuelings are fairly attractive when looking at power projection, availability, and a rapidly changing ship construction schedule. Every few vessels built in a class of ship are a new block with new features frequently with greater power requirements. New modifications introduced into a class of ship are normally back fitted into previously built vessels. The Navy has recently gained major funding for the nuclear submarine fleet in fact it is a major portion of the Pentagon budget over other programs so there is some appetite for military spending when a need is shown. Larger surface ships with an increasing need for denser power production would seem to be a good fit for nuclear.
   

Just say'n   

[Rerun]

BS the navy abandoned them because they arent survivable.

[Marlin]

BS the navy abandoned them because they arent survivable.

How is that responsive? No one is talking about bring back old designs, in fact I was talking about the advantages of nuclear in newer designs. If you want a conversation about the survivabiliy of a ship that lacked weapon systems to defend itself I would agree but that is not the topic or salient to anything that has been discussed.

 

[Rerun]

There are no advantages

[Atomic Samson]

Perhaps the pulse power system is meant to serve as a retrofit for the ships currently in active service, allowing them to use this latest shiny.  Then as railguns become standard issue future ships will be designed with those power requirements in mind (Nukes). 

[Mounder]

Interesting: seems to apply the technologies for pulsed laser shots using stored pulse energy and that of linear accelerators for the rail system.  Since this is pulse energy, the 25 MW is really not a big deal. 

[Marlin]

Interesting: seems to apply the technologies for pulsed laser shots using stored pulse energy and that of linear accelerators for the rail system.  Since this is pulse energy, the 25 MW is really not a big deal. 

   It is a lot of stored energy the rate of release would seem to be a sideline. Scale of the application could easily be increased as it is a bank of capacitors and the rate of discharge scaled to meet the intermediate nature of wind and solar. A technology that would flatten out wind and solar would make it more viable for the grid. Capacitive storage with graphene technology and other emerging technologies may have an impact on the energy grid in the future and conversely the future of nuclear power.
   I don't mean to promote the bird cuisinarts and torches (as they currently exist) just speculation and mental exercise of what the potential is.

[GLW]

BS the navy abandoned them because they arent survivable.

don't agree there,...

nuclear plant has a smaller above surface IR signature,...

nuclear plant has infinite range at flank speed,...

after booking across the Pacific at flank speed a gas turbine really needs to UNREP before battle stations, and that would be an UNREP within range of the bad guys,...

due to these considerations, numerous gas turbine ships are forward deployed, forward deployment incurs a significant set of logistics and diplomatic costs,...

nuclear plant heat rock has more missile shielding,...

gas turbine heat rock has far less missile shielding, plus missile hits might be the worst thing you can introduce to 15000 c.f. of CNG,...

I'm not seeing where the heat rock makes that much difference for survivability,...

I suspect the USN has figured out the best ways to fight a gas turbine ship,...

then again, they also had the Mark 14 figured out in 1939,.....oops,...