OT Nuclear U-Boats; how do they condense the steam?

There have been more than a few close calls. During the Cuban Missile Clusterfuck the US Navy depth charged a Russian sub carrying a nuke torpedo and Vasili Arkhipov the political officer aboard prevented WWIII by not letting the captain shoot it.

The Brits sunk their battleship and pretty much wiped up the floor with their army so a nuke wasn't necessary.

We had the NS Savanna and it was quietly retired.

Rather unlikely any spy or spy ship bothers to monitor each one leaving port in the hope that there might be a mistake.

Nope, and we have just stupidly decided to have a fleet of new nuclear submarines and have told the frogs to take theirs and shove them where the sun don?t shine.

Not really if there is no chance that anyone will be silly enough to nuke your country.

GB wrote

It wasn?t intended to deter that sort of action, it was intended to deter a nuclear attack.

But might nuke the frogs if they had nuked the UK.

Pancho wrote

Nope, they are the best deterrent because no one knows where they are so can't eliminate your nukes in their first strike so you cant strike back. And there is no need for an early detection capability with short range attacks either.

In fact it isn't feasible to hide just offshore with many enemys.

Nope, because everyone knows where they are and can nuke them in their first strike, particularly if they do the first strike quite close to them, so you cant retaliate.

But still much easier to find than a nuke missiled sub.

A nuke missiled sub does that in spades.

They aren't being given, they are being sold to us.

Problem with those is do you trust a philippino crew to never f*ck up and ram another ship with undesirable consequences. With non nuke powered container vessels the worst you risk is a bad oil spill or a blocked canal or seaway for a while.

Why have crash barriers when the whole idea is not to crash?

one that has nuclear weapons. There was no need to escalate a lttle s american adventure beyond retaking te falklands and shooting d0own a few plabes directly involved

No, our credibility was enhanced, among sane people

So, we might as well

Usual emotionally loaded false logic.

That tooo.

The whole point of first strike was to take out fixed icbm sites to prevent retaliation

I believe so. They are most useful to destroy incoming naval craft - the chinese dont want to bomb Taiwan, or Australia - they want to annex it.

Indeed.

With nuclear power, given that they are practically fuelled for life, there is no especial demand for efficiency. There is a demand for compactness however. They may not have a low pressure rotor!

Maybe the same designers that made the old Blakes 7 series and Crossroads built the models and sets? Brian

It has *very* high ceilings for a submarine. Presumably needed for the cameras to get the right angle but means it doesn't look realistically claustrophobic like the reality would actually be.

It looks like it might be a half decent thriller but not realistic.

I would have thought that using sea water would be very difficult, due to the corrosion it might create in the heat exchanger, or whatever they use to cool the water. Besides, if heat from water changed as the sub moved, surely it would be detectable quit easily by the other side. There have been some terrible depictions of nuclear reactors in films and TV shows over the years. The one in The world is not Enough is pretty stupid in my view. I cannot see it of course but the audio describer explained the end scene and he sounded almost embarrassed at the situation.

I would have thought that many reactors these days that needed to be small may well use some other material to get the heat away to do the work. Sodium perhaps, though let that come in contact with water and you have a very bad day. Brian

...

You don't need Filipinos to have a nuclear accident. There have been 32 known accidents involving nuclear weapons or nuclear powered vessels. Six US nuclear weapons have been lost and never found again.

...

I would be most surprised if a nuclear sub put to sea relying on the memory of the crew, rather than on comprehensive check lists, to ensure that everything is done right.

I think you'll find the UK nuclear capability was intended to deter a Soviet conventional invasion of Europe. That is why we retained a first strike option.

Militarily nukes are now virtually useless to the UK. As GB illustrates we can't use them in normal conflicts. Nuclear weapons are mainly useful for small, militarily weak, nations deterring conventional attacks/intimidation by much more powerful nations. North Korea and Iran being obvious examples where they have/would have utility. Obviously giving nutters nukes is not a good idea. I'm just pointing out the way things are, like it or not.

There is some benefit to a US deterrent against intimidation by other nuclear powers and maybe we should contribute to that. However the current US arsenal is ludicrously oversized.

nightjar wrote

But those weren't nuke powered container ships tho they might have used a few puerto ricans at times.