Looking for a Kingfisher kit and have some questions

[urumomo]

Nuke propulsion plants are expensive , that's the main reason for their minimal use is smaller ships . That and they're heavy .
The US wasn't building any more battleships when nuke power became viable so that's why none were built .
Carriers are very likely to be engaged in combat -- we're the number one target !
We had more than a few nuke cruisers that served for a very long time : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_cruisers_of_the_United_States_Navy

Shock trials was definitely aimed at testing the integrity of reactor plant operation .
The control rods are held in place and moved in and out of the core by electric motors that have " claws " that engage the threaded shaft at the upper end of the control rod . The rods are continuously under spring pressure so when the claws are released the rods are slammed into the core via the force of the springs .( That's a " scram " . From , " Super Critical Reactor Axe Man ".
The first reactor utilized manually raised and lowered control rod that could be dropped by severing the rope used to lift it .)

They can't be shaken loose , and the test proved it .

I trained on a one of a kind plant up in upstate NY named MARF , S7G .
It didn't use hafnium control rods but gadolinium tubes that controlled reactivity by controlling the height of the water within the tube .
It was a freak . I could go further into the core physics but it would require a lot of explaining .

That prototype is long gone . She was close to being spent when I was training on her back in 86- 87 .
I was looking over the Kesselring site using Google maps not long ago and the containment building is gone . No surprise .
It was probably decommissioned back in the early 90's , if it even made it that far .

 

[Docbritofmf]

Nuke propulsion plants are expensive , that's the main reason for their minimal use is smaller ships . That and they're heavy .
The US wasn't building any more battleships when nuke power became viable so that's why none were built .
Carriers are very likely to be engaged in combat -- we're the number one target !
We had more than a few nuke cruisers that served for a very long time : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear-powered_cruisers_of_the_United_States_Navy

Shock trials was definitely aimed at testing the integrity of reactor plant operation .
The control rods are held in place and moved in and out of the core by electric motors that have " claws " that engage the threaded shaft at the upper end of the control rod . The rods are continuously under spring pressure so when the claws are released the rods are slammed into the core via the force of the springs .( That's a " scram " . From , " Super Critical Reactor Axe Man ".
The first reactor utilized manually raised and lowered control rod that could be dropped by severing the rope used to lift it .)

They can't be shaken loose , and the test proved it .

I trained on a one of a kind plant up in upstate NY named MARF , S7G .
It didn't use hafnium control rods but gadolinium tubes that controlled reactivity by controlling the height of the water within the tube .
It was a freak . I could go further into the core physics but it would require a lot of explaining .

That prototype is long gone . She was close to being spent when I was training on her back in 86- 87 .
I was looking over the Kesselring site using Google maps not long ago and the containment building is gone . No surprise .
It was probably decommissioned back in the early 90's , if it even made it that far .

this was what I was talking about I know it's not a nuke explaining the reasoning and its an opinion of this guy but what's your take on it

 

[Docbritofmf]

this was what I was talking about I know it's not a nuke explaining the reasoning and its an opinion of this guy but what's your take on it

About the 3 min in mark is when he talks about the issues with nuke power on combatant ships

 

[urumomo]

Well , I agree with his assessment that it would be impractical to retrofit a nuke plant into an Iowa .
For more reasons than he lists .
The Nimitz class are refueled , they refueled my ship about a decade or more ago ( ? ) and they are armored .
You need to go thru the armored hanger deck and then thru the armored lid of the RAR ( reactor auxiliary room ) then into the armored roof of the reactor compartment .
Granted , the armor and deck arrangement isn't similar to the Iowa so cutting thru the armor on that ship would be another barrier for a retrofit but not impossible . Beyond impractical and ungodly expensive but not impossible .

Even if you could somehow just replace the oil-fired boilers with a reactor ( you couldn't , there's not enough space for all the ancillary equipment to support the reactor itself and the steam generators ( boilers ) must be located in the shielded reactor compartment along with the reactor ) , it wouldn't work because those main engine turbines on the Iowa use superheated steam and nuke plants can only produce wet steam .
Oil fired plants send their wet steam thru another oil-fired reboiler to boost the temp/ pressure up . Nuke primary coolant operates around 500F or the fuel cladding degrades and the fuel elements begin to fail mechanically , contaminating the primary system and far worse begins to happen .
This 500F water is what is fed to the steam generators to produce steam , so that steam is in the mid to high 400F range , not the 850-900F it gets from the couple of thousand degree oil flame in the superheating reboiler .
So you'd need to replace the main turbines and the turbine generators that supply electric power to the rest of the ship .
You'd need to replace absolutely everything , including completely reorienting bulkheads and framing and then re-ballast the ship .
Probably be more expensive than a new Ford class .

And no , Navy nuke plants are not delicate . We proved it .
They're expensive to build and operate .

I agree that you probably wouldn't want a ship engaged in littoral operations and exposed to heavy shore batteries since it's high probability of destruction would create an environmental disaster , but not because it couldn't take the pounding .

Battleships are obsolete so it's a moot point .

BTW , I forgot to answer your question about the 4th shock .
It felt about the same as the 3rd one , at least down in the plant .
We were expecting it to feel more significant since the 2nd to 3rd event was a very noticeable difference .
I don't know what distances from the ship each was though .

Fun Fact : We carried a spare , 1 MW , reactor coolant pump motor in the hangar bay along with it's massive handling gantry .
We always thought that was pretty funny .
Replacing a primary coolant pump motor could only be done in a very capable shipyard , most likely Newport News .

It's like we were going to be sailing around after nuclear Armageddon and one of our coolant pumps goes down and there's no place to go to replace it so we're just going to do it ourselves .
Ignoring the radiological nightmare that would be cutting into the reactor compartment , we didn't possess the equipment to cut thru the hangar deck and lid of the reactor compartment .

Pretty sure we'd just run on 2 loops ( there's all kinds of restrictions due to core physics / fuel burn ) or just shut the plant down .

It would be like GM selling you a second transmission for your car when you bought it .
They put it in the trunk , give you a screwdriver and a wrench along with it .
You can swap it out on the side of the road all by yourself .

I always wondered if they deleted that BS from later Nimitz carriers or all of them still have them .
That gantry and motor aren't light and they take up valuable space in the hangar bay too .
It's Effing stupid , but I'm sure Newport News made a lot of extra coin on the deal .

I wish I could have been there for a refuel .
Maybe beneath the non-skid of the hangar floor there are fasteners that hold the armor decking in place so no cutting is required .
They were designed to be refueled so that would be logical , so maybe there is access areas above each coolant pump motor ,,, but what kinda equipment is necessary to lift and maneuver the armor deck IDK .
LOL , man , and then the reactor compartment ... not happening .
Between the hangar deck and the RAR is the main deck . There's a LOT of chit on that deck .
It's not something ship's company would even be able to attempt -- even if it didn't require cutting armor deck plate and there were .... OMG , the more I think about it .
Nope.
2 years in the shipyard with 100's of additional specialized shipyard personnel and massive amounts of additional tools equipment ...

you know how the Navy has written procedure for absolutely everything .There's probably some insane procedure using that gantry crane for the motor to lift the armor deck sections out of the way , starting at the hangar deck , then main deck , then the reactor compartment with all the shielding ( insane ) -- then hoist out the non-working motor , then lower and attach the new one .
LOL .
2 plant would be the easier since the aft mess deck is above the reactor auxiliary room and it's a wide open space , but 1 plant has all kinds of bulkheaded areas above it .

Anyways , I haven't given that insanity any thought since I left that ship 31 years ago , but yeah , it's ridiculous to carry that motor around . We knew it back then and now I remember all the reasons it was so stupid .

 

[Docbritofmf]

Well , I agree with his assessment that it would be impractical to retrofit a nuke plant into an Iowa .
For more reasons than he lists .
The Nimitz class are refueled , they refueled my ship about a decade or more ago ( ? ) and they are armored .
You need to go thru the armored hanger deck and then thru the armored lid of the RAR ( reactor auxiliary room ) then into the armored roof of the reactor compartment .
Granted , the armor and deck arrangement isn't similar to the Iowa so cutting thru the armor on that ship would be another barrier for a retrofit but not impossible . Beyond impractical and ungodly expensive but not impossible .

Even if you could somehow just replace the oil-fired boilers with a reactor ( you couldn't , there's not enough space for all the ancillary equipment to support the reactor itself and the steam generators ( boilers ) must be located in the shielded reactor compartment along with the reactor ) , it wouldn't work because those main engine turbines on the Iowa use superheated steam and nuke plants can only produce wet steam .
Oil fired plants send their wet steam thru another oil-fired reboiler to boost the temp/ pressure up . Nuke primary coolant operates around 500F or the fuel cladding degrades and the fuel elements begin to fail mechanically , contaminating the primary system and far worse begins to happen .
This 500F water is what is fed to the steam generators to produce steam , so that steam is in the mid to high 400F range , not the 850-900F it gets from the couple of thousand degree oil flame in the superheating reboiler .
So you'd need to replace the main turbines and the turbine generators that supply electric power to the rest of the ship .
You'd need to replace absolutely everything , including completely reorienting bulkheads and framing and then re-ballast the ship .
Probably be more expensive than a new Ford class .

And no , Navy nuke plants are not delicate . We proved it .
They're expensive to build and operate .

I agree that you probably wouldn't want a ship engaged in littoral operations and exposed to heavy shore batteries since it's high probability of destruction would create an environmental disaster , but not because it couldn't take the pounding .

Battleships are obsolete so it's a moot point .

BTW , I forgot to answer your question about the 4th shock .
It felt about the same as the 3rd one , at least down in the plant .
We were expecting it to feel more significant since the 2nd to 3rd event was a very noticeable difference .
I don't know what distances from the ship each was though .

Fun Fact : We carried a spare , 1 MW , reactor coolant pump motor in the hangar bay along with it's massive handling gantry .
We always thought that was pretty funny .
Replacing a primary coolant pump motor could only be done in a very capable shipyard , most likely Newport News .

It's like we were going to be sailing around after nuclear Armageddon and one of our coolant pumps goes down and there's no place to go to replace it so we're just going to do it ourselves .
Ignoring the radiological nightmare that would be cutting into the reactor compartment , we didn't possess the equipment to cut thru the hangar deck and lid of the reactor compartment .

Pretty sure we'd just run on 2 loops ( there's all kinds of restrictions due to core physics / fuel burn ) or just shut the plant down .

It would be like GM selling you a second transmission for your car when you bought it .
They put it in the trunk , give you a screwdriver and a wrench along with it .
You can swap it out on the side of the road all by yourself .

I always wondered if they deleted that BS from later Nimitz carriers or all of them still have them .
That gantry and motor aren't light and they take up valuable space in the hangar bay too .
It's Effing stupid , but I'm sure Newport News made a lot of extra coin on the deal .

I wish I could have been there for a refuel .
Maybe beneath the non-skid of the hangar floor there are fasteners that hold the armor decking in place so no cutting is required .
They were designed to be refueled so that would be logical , so maybe there is access areas above each coolant pump motor ,,, but what kinda equipment is necessary to lift and maneuver the armor deck IDK .
LOL , man , and then the reactor compartment ... not happening .
Between the hangar deck and the RAR is the main deck . There's a LOT of chit on that deck .
It's not something ship's company would even be able to attempt -- even if it didn't require cutting armor deck plate and there were .... OMG , the more I think about it .
Nope.
2 years in the shipyard with 100's of additional specialized shipyard personnel and massive amounts of additional tools equipment ...

you know how the Navy has written procedure for absolutely everything .There's probably some insane procedure using that gantry crane for the motor to lift the armor deck sections out of the way , starting at the hangar deck , then main deck , then the reactor compartment with all the shielding ( insane ) -- then hoist out the non-working motor , then lower and attach the new one .
LOL .
2 plant would be the easier since the aft mess deck is above the reactor auxiliary room and it's a wide open space , but 1 plant has all kinds of bulkheaded areas above it .

Anyways , I haven't given that insanity any thought since I left that ship 31 years ago , but yeah , it's ridiculous to carry that motor around . We knew it back then and now I remember all the reasons it was so stupid .

Man I could sit here and chat ship systems and navy logic all day with you but I'm not sure the rest of the people on here would find it as entertaining as I just did reading that. A while back me and you had a discussion about those new litoral combat ships the freedom and the independence classes, I believe someone was building a model of one and I called them a huge government piece of trash, you asked me why and at the time I could only list a few reasons but if your interested I can now provide tons of resources on how they were tragically horrible ships along with Dumwalt sorry Zumwalt destroyers (not to degrade the honor of the ships namesake).

The only modernized ships that have been somewhat successful has been the Same Antonio class LPDs and the most recent versions of the LHA which isn't finished yet since they put the well deck back into the design

 

[urumomo]

This is your thread so we can talk Navy here all you want .

I really haven't kept up with those littoral combat ships .
I heard they refunded them ? just to keep them in the fleet ? Because initially I heard they were going to decommission them even though they were practically brand new .

The San Antonio class is a good design .
The problem the Navy has is the congressional mandate to always have 11 fleet carriers . It ties up a big chunk of the budget .
They've been trying to get away from that requirement for a long time now .
That's another thing about nuke boats - they're super expensive to decommission . The money being spent to decommission the Enterprise could buy several more ships .
That's one reason they extended the service life of the Nimitz .
The Ford is finally operational . Took long enough !!

So what all went wrong with the littoral combat ships . I heard they had structural failures with the hulls . Really embarrassing if that is true .

 

[Docbritofmf]

This is your thread so we can talk Navy here all you want .

I really haven't kept up with those littoral combat ships .
I heard they refunded them ? just to keep them in the fleet ? Because initially I heard they were going to decommission them even though they were practically brand new .

The San Antonio class is a good design .
The problem the Navy has is the congressional mandate to always have 11 fleet carriers . It ties up a big chunk of the budget .
They've been trying to get away from that requirement for a long time now .
That's another thing about nuke boats - they're super expensive to decommission . The money being spent to decommission the Enterprise could buy several more ships .
That's one reason they extended the service life of the Nimitz .
The Ford is finally operational . Took long enough !!

So what all went wrong with the littoral combat ships . I heard they had structural failures with the hulls . Really embarrassing if that is true .

So to start, they designed those ships to replace the role of a frigate.. well sort of the main focus was to get a ship that was fast enough to engage smaller surface warfare ships in litoral waters as well as preform a few other mission roles, the designers created a modular system that was supposed to be plug and play pull into port and swap the modules out in a couple of weeks and be ready for a whole new mission set.

The swap out wouldn't require going into dry dock or to the ship yard and could be done by the crew. This was all in theory unfortunately in reality the swap out took months and cost tons of money and couldn't be done by the crew so eventually they gave up and made the ships set into what ever mission modules they had on board and scrapped the rest, all future ships would no longer have the swap out options requiring more ships to be built to cover all the mission types.

That was strike one failure to meet multiple mission demands. Strike two was the propulsion plant, they had this half jet drive half turbine system and the ships had some sorta special transmission that would allow them to combined the two systems and gain a few extra knots of speed, unfortunately the transmission failed to work properly and created a situation in which the ship couldn't do more then 14 knots, and the fix required a whole redesign of the systems and lengthy dry dock times. This also cost tons of money. So another main selling point of the ship as well as mission requirement speed was lost.

The final straw was the aluminum hull, it was cracking left and right and the Navy had to put special temp regulations on how fast the ship can operate and in what sea states basically the ships couldn't go out in anything greater then a simple storm and if they were out and the weather got bad they had to nearly go dead stop and wait it out while getting beat up by the sea state.. imagine a call over the 1MC from the captain hey guys it's getting a little choppy we got shut down and wait here in the middle of the Pacific for a little while.

These temp regs got renewed multiple times and these ships became so limited in what they could do the navy just said nope we're done..

Now they are designing a frigate which is what they should have did from the start in the mean time they are actually considering pulling what ever frigates they have left in mothball and refurbing them.

As for the Zumwalt.. that ships keeps exceeding the budget limits and they still don't even know if it's a good boat..

I kinda cliff notes it for ya but that's the rough and dirty of it, the ships failed to do pretty much everything they were supposed to do and in the end couldn't cover the hole in the Navys future mission plans left by the down sizing of the fleet and removal of the frigates.

I got to be on the USS San Antonio during it's sea trials I was attached to a Marine amphib unit that was brought on board to see how the ship handled at full capacity

 

[urumomo]

14 knots ?? LOL . WTF
What do you mean half jet drive & half turbine system ?

I always thought the Zumwalt was just a test bed for new stealth designs and new weapon systems .
But they have 2 and a third in sea trials .
That new frigate is what they want ,

I posted this video in my Ford Class carrier thread in chit chat back when he uploaded it :

 

[urumomo]

https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2021/11...uld-cost-1-5-billion-take-more-than-a-decade/

 

[Docbritofmf]

14 knots ?? LOL . WTF
What do you mean half jet drive & half turbine system ?

I always thought the Zumwalt was just a test bed for new stealth designs and new weapon systems .
But they have 2 and a third in sea trials .
That new frigate is what they want ,

I posted this video in my Ford Class carrier thread in chit chat back when he uploaded it :

I could be botching the terminology but the ship has two different types of propulsion systems, one similar to a jetski and a second one that I guess is more like a bow thruster but big enough to propel a ship run off diesel/gas turbine engines. The ship has a sorta of transmission system that and run the two propulsion systems together for extra speed but similar to a Ford lol the transmission system is doomed off the lot to imploded the old saying can't find them grind them and build your own.

Anyways these ships would be under way and they would engage the transmission and boom both propulsion systems down to limp mode and the ships would need to be towed in to port and taken out of the water or would limp back and spend months trying to solve the problem.

They put rules in place that the ships that werent broke couldn't engage the systems under certain circumstances. But ya these ships would become slower then the whole fleet when they were meant to be faster then most of the fleet.

As for the modular design it was like the IKEA of ships the idea was a two month turn around to swap modules the first swap took nearly a year the second 10 months.. there were countless problems they scrapped the idea all together.

As for the Zumwalt I know they have a third going into sea trials, and because the ungodly amounts of money they spent the navy is hesitant to really discuss the amount of short falls it's having they are desperately waiting for that rail gun system to be fully worked out and ready for use.

My opinion is the navy will eventually work it's way back towards surface combat ships because every country has something equally as powerful enough to take out a ship what we don't have any more is the brute force of naval gunnery to get up close in personal should we have to.

 

[Docbritofmf]

https://www.oldsaltblog.com/2021/11...uld-cost-1-5-billion-take-more-than-a-decade/

Ya that's crazy.. they just decommissioned a nuclear power plant by me an old tritium plant oyster creek I forgot how long it took them but they had a whole decommissioning schedule to turn it off take the fuel out and off site and decontaminate and break down the reactor build ect.. I don't think it was as long or as costly as the Enterprise they shoulda sold it to another country or something saved us some money I here Russia needs a carrier since they destroyed the one they stole from the Ukraine

 

[urumomo]

Tritium ?
Pretty sure that was a conventional boiling water reactor running on low enrichment uranium . They do create small amounts of the stuff but that one wasn't configured to be a breeder reactor .
We should have waaaaay more nuke power plants .
ya know , Chernobyl happened when I was in nuke school down in Florida in '86 .
Our curriculum detoured into more detail about graphite moderators because of it . Bonus !


Now the Navy's priority is fielding strike aircraft with longer legs since China's missile defense envelope is so expansive the carriers can't get close enough for the F-18's and F-35's to make it in .
Shouldn't have retired the F-14 ! Should have gone forward with the Super Tomcat .

 

[Docbritofmf]

Tritium ?
Pretty sure that was a conventional boiling water reactor running on low enrichment uranium . They do create small amounts of the stuff but that one wasn't configured to be a breeder reactor .
We should have waaaaay more nuke power plants .
ya know , Chernobyl happened when I was in nuke school down in Florida in '86 .
Our curriculum detoured into more detail about graphite moderators because of it . Bonus !


Now the Navy's priority is fielding strike aircraft with longer legs since China's missile defense envelope is so expansive the carriers can't get close enough for the F-18's and F-35's to make it in .
Shouldn't have retired the F-14 ! Should have gone forward with the Super Tomcat .

Maybe tritium was a bi product? I just remember I went to a job interview there for Nuclear Security Forces position and they mention the reactor was different from the public's standard view of nuclear plants no big ass cooling tower and the main nuclear elements being produced in there reaction was tritium the stuff they use in weapon scopes and other things.

I never got the job I got hired and then they down sized the plants personel and went on a hiring freeze one of the big things was them getting all the nuclear material off site to New Mexico or at least that was what the local civilian population wanted the company wanted to build casks on site cause the property was never going to be public land

 

[Docbritofmf]

Tritium ?
Pretty sure that was a conventional boiling water reactor running on low enrichment uranium . They do create small amounts of the stuff but that one wasn't configured to be a breeder reactor .
We should have waaaaay more nuke power plants .
ya know , Chernobyl happened when I was in nuke school down in Florida in '86 .
Our curriculum detoured into more detail about graphite moderators because of it . Bonus !


Now the Navy's priority is fielding strike aircraft with longer legs since China's missile defense envelope is so expansive the carriers can't get close enough for the F-18's and F-35's to make it in .
Shouldn't have retired the F-14 ! Should have gone forward with the Super Tomcat .

You know what happened to the F14s right?

 

[urumomo]

Oh , I guess I could have googled Oyster Creek

Yes , I know all about the F-14 and her retirement ,

Behold , my ship's flight deck populated with Real fighter jets :

You ever watch Ward Carroll ?
he was an F-14 RIO .
Good vid from him :

 

[Docbritofmf]

Oh , I guess I could have googled Oyster Creek

Yes , I know all about the F-14 and her retirement ,

Behold , my ship's flight deck populated with Real fighter jets :

View attachment 93930


You ever watch Ward Carroll ?
he was an F-14 RIO .
Good vid from him :

Ill check out that video in my spare time when I can afford it Im alittle bit of an AV geek I just finished my private pilot license but flying is expensive. So I have the VA footing alot of the bill.

here is a good video suming up alot of the main issues with thos LCS ships there's a few more detailed explanations and articles about them out there.

The F14 was awesome until we sold some to Iran and trashed all the spare parts so there are very few still working and flying examples left. I heard though that they were in the end also very expensive to keep operational but still the most bad ass fighter jet ever designed in my opinion

 

[urumomo]

lol , the Iranians are still flying the F-14
Those were purchased by them way back in 1974 .
The US flew it until 2006 .

Definitely watch that Ward Carroll video , he covers the entire history of the plane and what would have been the Super Tomcat that we really need now .

 

[Docbritofmf]

lol , the Iranians are still flying the F-14
Those were purchased by them way back in 1974 .
The US flew it until 2006 .

Definitely watch that Ward Carroll video , he covers the entire history of the plane and what would have been the Super Tomcat that we really need now .

Ya after we stopped using the F-14 there was concern about Iran and in order to prevent them from being able to maintain their aircraft our government put in place policies that prevented the sale of parts of the F-14 and destroyed and scrapped alot of the aircraft in mothball as well as part reserves, there's a podcast called The F14 tomcast and fighter pilot podcast were they go over the whole situation in more depth I'm sure there's a lot more to it but as for why you don't see them still flying around today as like museum planes or airshow aircraft has a lot Todo with the lack of replacement parts. I probably should have specified I wasn't meaning why the US Navy or military no longer uses them.

Aircraft require the replacement of parts based on flight hours so each part of the plane including the actual structural components have a clock ticking down from the time of installation that moves more quickly based on flight hours. At the end the parts are either replaced rebuilt or inspected and repaired but when you don't have replacements and there isn't any manufacturers still building the parts your over all aircraft life expectancy could be the next flight.

Iran I imagine has to have reverse engineered the aircraft to find ways to make parts and keep them flying. Maybe china I hear they love to do that kinda stuff lol.

As for the rest I'm gonna have to watch the video you suggested cause now I'm curious