USS Connecticut has undersea collision

a reply to: tanstaafl

Well I worked on the B-2 in the 80's. That's about 30 years ago. We didn't have any "whizz-bang" tech then and I haven't seen any now and I still occasionally work classified projects.

I was using the same tech to build my R/C airplanes that we were using to build B-2 components.

hmm till sofar it had to be an U.S.O !

a reply to: JIMC5499

There is still a cooling loop on subs that has to be vented some how

I would think most subs are using liquid sodium or NAK for a coolant, the heat HAS to go somewhere. even molten salt reactors have the same issue.


No matter the reactor you use and even if it is a closed loop(most of ALL reactors are closed loop) the heat put off that cant be used cant just sit in the coolant, even NAK has a thermal saturation point.

Granted I don't know the inner working of the new reactors but reactors are pretty much all the same, they heat a coolant up to boil water to spin turbines to create electricity, there is ALWAYS waste heat that has to be dumped into the air or water.

A closed loop system just means your not dumping radioactive water or air into the environment, the SLAM missile is an example of an open loop reactor and the fact that it was an open loop was part of the missiles lethality and area denial.

On land in power stations we dump the heat using cooling towers and a butt load of water.

Unless your saying that the reactor/turbine/cooling system is 100% thermally efficient(that violates the laws of thermal dynamics).

Maybe they can cool it off with some sort of cryo cooling system but than you would need BIG and LOUD compressors to get the gas back to a liquid.

OR just cycle the water you are surrounded by to help cool the reactor. I don't doubt there is a way to go 'dark' but i bet you it has a time limit unless the SCRAM the reactor.

If you were hunting an enemy sub you would use aircraft and surface ships that ARE equipped with that kind of stuff.

TO be honest it is hard for me to believe that they wouldn't add a magnetometer to the towed sonar array at the very least. Along with deployable underwater hydrophones and USV's and other sub hunting assets I think can give subs a run for their money.

I have no doubt that subs are hard to find, but certainty are not impossible as I'm sure you know.

I mean they can hide under different layers of the water currents effectively so who know really.

but I think its safe to say that there are other ways to hunt subs than a show down between two subs.


I of course could be 100% wrong as the cooling systems for subs are TOP SECRET so I'm just using my real world knowledge of civilian reactors and how they work, even new generation small naval reactors need a way to dump heat.

If a US got word of a lets say a N. Korean sub was approaching the US main land and we had reason to believe they were going to launch a nuclear attack(or high altitude EMP), every satellite and surface ship in the area would be on its trail.(granted they are all still desal engines)

I wonder how long Chinese subs last.

originally posted by: pteridine
Maybe USN and PLA Navy were playing a dangerous game of underwater tag and had a submarine collision. Likely, we will never hear details about it from either.

General Milley & his pillow talk with his counterpart... The woke General is in love with his Chinese pals..

a reply to: penroc3

Not arguing any of your points really, but just adding a couple comments. If I'm not mistaken, a good portion of the waste heat is used for heating the interior spaces of the sub at depth and for desalination water-makers. Up near the surface they probably have to dump a lot of waste heat, but the delta-T up near the surface is probably a lot less.

Also, regarding magnetometers, with all the advanced hull materials they've reduced the magnetic signatures of most modern subs to practically nothing. There's a big facility in FL or the Bahamas somewhere that they use to demagnetize subs and further reduce their magnetic signature.

Not debating your points, just adding some minor factoids I've read.

a reply to: Flyingclaydisk

what i have always wondered is on boomers how they mask the radiation from the 100's of warheads.


the pits of the warheads on subs are ULTRA pure plutonium isotope to reduce radiation to the crew so sleep by the tubes.

pure plutonium, electro-refined




but still that many warheads HAVE to put out detectable amounts of radiation on the surface, it can probably mask it deep under water or under the ice.


we have radar and multispectral imaging on satellites that can see to the sea floor, and even under a good amount of ice.

we also have systems that can pick up the emissions of nuclear weapons.

If the US pulled out all the known stops to hunt a sub we could find it.

I know weight isn't AS big of an issue for a boat but lining the tubes with lead or some other reflector would be dangerous and would be very heavy.

I'm sure its top secret how we mask that signature

but once on the surface or close to it, it would be even harder to hide the sub other than just optical.

that's not even getting in to the multi 100 megawatt reactor running in the back of the boat.

if I were going to make a system to hunt subs that is where I would start, we have all sorts of sensitive detection devices to pick up radiation.

In the reactor there particles that you cant shield from.

Alpha and Beta particles can't travel for squat.

Crazy Yī wàn?

a reply to: FlyingFox

right but that isn't the only emitters in the warheads.

there are TONS of neutrons and a good amount of gamma ray emitted by the warheads and reactors.


warheads still give off radioactive hydrogen and other stuff as the warheads age that are even stronger emitters.


a small drone with a neutron scintillation counter over a suspected sub patrol area SHOULD be able to pick it up.

here is a cool read on how are detectors are so sensitive

link

The sub can "hear" things that arent making noise with the way their passive arrays work. If theres an object out there reflecting noise. Due to the noise other objects are making theyll detect it. Whatever this was was either in the perfect environment and conditions to not be detected. Was at a specific depth where certain blind spots due to thermocline may exist or was designed to due with sound what we do with radar reflections and avoided detection. Or the crew just wasnt being diligent or running its systems as they were supposed to. Possible its ours.

a reply to: BASSPLYR

water is a great 'conductor' of sound.

intresting nuclear detection device



I have always wondered if we have come up with something like sharks have on their snouts to pick up the electricity from fish(or human) mussels twitching, Ampullae of Lorenzini they are called.

seems like picking up TINY electrical currents would be very useful

originally posted by: JIMC5499
a reply to: tanstaafl

Well I worked on the B-2 in the 80's. That's about 30 years ago. We didn't have any "whizz-bang" tech then and I haven't seen any now and I still occasionally work classified projects.

So, you didn't qualify for working on the black ops projects... bummer...

a reply to: penroc3

This is an accurate description of how it works. More info at the link.

The nuclear propulsion plant uses a pressurized water reactor design which has two basic systems - a primary system and a secondary system. The primary system circulates ordinary water and consists of the reactor, piping loops, pumps and steam generators. The heat produced in the reactor is transferred to the water under high pressure so it does not boil. This water is pumped through the steam generators and back into the reactor for re-heating. In the steam generators, the heat from the water in the primary system is transferred to the secondary system to create steam. The secondary system is isolated from the primary system so that the water in the two systems does not intermix.

In the secondary system, the steam flows from the steam generators to drive the turbine generators, which supply the ship with electricity, and to the main propulsion turbines, which drive the propeller. After passing through the turbines, the steam is condensed into water which is fed back to the steam generators by the feed pumps. Thus, both the primary and secondary systems are closed systems where water is recirculated and renewed. Since there is no step in the generation of this power which requires the presence of air or oxygen, this allows the ship to operate completely independent from the earth’s atmosphere for extended periods of time.

Source

a reply to: BASSPLYR

Hmm...

Gauss would have been lost without Fourier and modal analysis would not be a science without either of them.
German and French, both lived in the 17-1800's, "Digital" anything was years away, yet DSP would not be a technology without them as well. Synergy

Fascinating thread. I read an article about this incident and figured there must be a discussion about it on ATS. Sure enough! And learned a fair bit as well.

Since we probably won’t ever get an “official” answer, I’m putting my money on them being struck by a “fast mover”

In all seriousness though… wouldn’t whatever they hit need to be very large and very solid (like made out of a metal) to cause this kind of damage? I get whales are large but when I think sub vs. whale I imagine the whale losing and the sub being relatively unscathed…

a reply to: penroc3

Sigh.

One. Like sound having background noise and a sound having to be greater than background noise of a passive sonar to distinguish, there has to be radiation above background radiation for a radiation monitor to distinguish.

If the reactor compartment didn’t reduce radiation to background radiation levels, you would have a sick, cancerous, dying crew. If the reactor core couldn’t contain neutrons, the reactor wouldn’t be very controllable. So the shielding on a sub reduces radiation in the people space to background levels, or near background levels.

Two. Sea water has its own background radiation.

Sea water is slightly radioactive: it contains a small but significant amount of radioactive elements that undergo spontaneous radioactive decay and produce energy, subatomic particles, and a remainder, or daughter nucleus, smaller than the original. The particles include alpha particles (two neutrons plus two protons), beta particles (electrons), and gamma energy. The radioactive elements are called radioactive isotopes, or radionuclides, or nuclides. Nearly all of the radioactive material in the ocean is natural, and represents material that has been on Earth since its formation.

www.waterencyclopedia.com...

Three. Water is actually great shielding.

Although water is neither high density nor high Z material, it is commonly used as gamma shields. Water provides a radiation shielding of fuel assemblies in a spent fuel pool during storage or during transports from and into the reactor core. Although water is a low-density material and low Z material, it is commonly used in nuclear power plants, because these disadvantages can be compensated with increased thickness.

www.nuclear-power.com...

So. What is there to detect above background radiation for a nuclear sub at a depth of 100 feet?

a reply to: VulcanWerks

Since we probably won’t ever get an “official” answer, I’m putting my money on them being struck by a “fast mover”

Or the sub itself was moving at speeds that made passive sonar useless for detecting silent stationary objects.

a reply to: VulcanWerks

A whale can do a fair amount of damage to the more fragile bits of sub if they hit hard enough. The primary hull itself wouldn't even notice.

a reply to: neutronflux

subs don't stay under water all the time

you know what makes a better shielding? ROCK. And somehow we can still pick up missiles in silos and other underground facilities.

A sub just doesnt hang a mic out the hatch and listen to the fish, they have advanced sound processors to pick out and remove back ground noise and other KNOWN noises.



Middleoftheroad: I get how it works but there is always waste heat from reactors, there is no way that ANYTHING runs at 100% thermal efficiency. If you know how to do that PM me and we can win a Nobel.

Small reactors that would fit on a sub would have a HIGH power density and would run hotter than a normal reactor, there just isn't enough mass to dissipate the heat so it has to go SOMEWHERE.

I get it can go to hot water tanks and heating systems and what not but you cant keep cycling the same water with out cooling it all the way off so that way it turns back to water. Over time it will creep higher and higher until they can dump the heat into SOMETHING.


I GUESS they could try and balance the power for the needs of the boat but still that is a risky game as well. There is a reason that stuff is top secret and i think we are bumping up against that wall.

that cooling loop, what happens to the water in that loop cooling the heat exchangers starts to boil? how do you cool the cooling loop?