The US is offering nuclear submarine technology to Australia.
In addition to enraging France and potentially screwing up NATO relations in a way that Donald Trump could only dream of, France has withdrawn its ambassadors from both the US and Australia.
Given that France had a deal with Australia to sell them its submarines, and this was announced with no notice to Paris, the reaction is not a surprise.
That being said, I my concerns are technical rather than foreign relations.
You see, to save weight and to extend the intervals between refueling, the US navy fuels its reactors with bomb-grade uranium.
The exact percentage of enrichment is classified, but the consensus is that the fuel is well above 90% enriched.
Giving this technology to Australia is a proliferation nightmare.
What's more, this technology is not necessary, as the Australian Navy does not have the need to deploy thousands of miles away from their base with an underwater transit.
With a basic diesel electric submarine, and a supplementary 1MW nuclear reactor, which would not require HEU, you could get unlimited endurance, and continuous underwater speed of more than 5 knots.*
For short bursts of speed, you would still have the batteries, and for long deployments, you would use the diesel engine, as Australia's current submarines do.
This has, "Failure," written all over it, and not just because of the proliferation issues, but because it creates another avenue for various opponents to acquire details of the technology.
Fail.
*The Virginia class boats are capable of "More than 25 kts submerged" with a 30MW powerplant. If you assume that half of the 1MW power output goes to operating the submarine, you have 500 WK available for propulsion. Given that power required proportional to the cube of the speed, 500KW gives you about 6 kts.
3 comments :
Actually, there has been notice.
Australia has been threatening to quit since the price doubled. The French have also flat out lied, the Australians gave them warning a couple of weeks ago.
As to the need to travel thousands of miles, well China is 2000 miles from Australia's bases.
We are in fact offering them a current working design, unlike the French.
Also, it pissed of the French, always a good thing to do.
First, I noted the diplomatic blow-back, but I stated that the proliferation issues were the mistake.
Australia should not be operate reactors with bomb grade enriched uranium fuel.
Post a Comment