Could the Navy power Port-au-Prince from a nuclear submarine?

Foxnews ^ | 01-19-2010 | Foreign Policy

[JeffBoste]

Could the Navy power Port-au-Prince from a nuclear submarine

[2ndDivisionVet]

We’ve had portable nuclear generators since the late 1950’s, some of which have powered bases in the Arctic and other regions. However, I don’t see Mr. Obama authorizing their use.

[hc87]

USS Lexington (CV-2) powers Tacoma, 1929:

http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=pf_output.cfm&file_id=5113

[cherry]

hell no...we need to set up windmills, solar panels,and plant trees and recyle aluminum cans.....the green way or the highway!!!!!!

eveyone knows the earthquake was because the Haitians were'nt recyling enough...

[Elderberry]

<> Out the screen door then.

[Jeff Gordon]

If the US Navy were asked to get this job done then it would get done.

GO NAVY!

[tanknetter]

Lexington and Saratoga had turbo-electric drives, where the steam plant (in their case oil-fired as opposed to a nuke) is used to power electric motors that drive the propellers. In cases like that, the electric plant would be large enough to power civilian facilities.

The last turbo-electric US sub was the USS Glenard P. Lipscomb, SSN-685. She was a one-off commissioned in the early 70s and decommissioned and recycled in the 1990s.

[Gandalf_The_Gray]

Yes, but first we'd have to ship in about a million extension cords. Remember the city, such as it is, is laying in pieces on the ground. Generating power is not the main problem, having something to plug into it is something else again. They would do better making fresh water and making it available fast.

Rule of threes:
You can go three weeks with out food,
You can go three days without water,
You can go three minutes without air,
But you probably won't last three seconds without a plan.

Regards,
GtG

[dglang]

Combat troops under wartime conditions aren’t restricted to all the mundane environmental rules and regulations which prevent things from getting done. If something has to be done NOW in order to win the battle or survive, it usually can be done expediently if not prettily or effeciently.

Things get done just to get them done without regards to cost or longevity. A ship damaged in combat at sea may get patched up, but those patches won't be very pretty and the ship is sent out again ASAP.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Right now, three or four companies are completely swamped with prepaid orders for small nuclear reactors. These are anywhere from the size of a shipping container to two or three times that large, and can power about five square miles of a modern, first world city, including its industries. Major, power consumptive industries would need their own dedicated reactor.

It has been proposed that one of the smaller, shipping container sized ones could be put on the back of a heavy haul semi trailer, then would be driven into a disaster area, again in a modern country, to act as a “power grid node”, to restore still functional parts of a power grid that had been disconnected from the main grid. This would make regional recovery much faster, if “parts of the city” had power.

This would be much like using a generator to provide power to just your house, during a power outage.

In addition, it would likewise power a second vehicle, that would be a large volume reverse osmosis water purification trailer, that could take available water from whatever source, and produce enough for the personal needs of everyone in the area, to include public showers, field laundromats, and more than enough water to drink.

Unfortunately, Haiti has nothing like a modern power grid in good condition, and what power grid it has likely is now utterly useless and will need to be rebuilt. Not that it will be.

[american_ranger]

IIRC, didn’t the Navy provide power to some parts of Kauai after Hurricane Iwa by using some sort of ship-to-shore power rig?

16 posted on Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:22:33 PM by upstanding

Yes the Navy did do this for Kauai after a storm knocked out the power plant. However, the grid was still operational.

[castlegreyskull]

Yes they are. Attack submarines have two in the engine room and one up forward. This is how they connect to the shore connections. These are used to get power from the shore facilities, however it is possible to reverse the power, but there are safety devices installed. In addition to this, if you were to connect this to an entire city it would drain the reactor of a submarine very quickly.

[Robert A Cook PE]

NO.

The cooling systems of the reactor rely on the sub being under weigh.

..

No, but for a different reason. As pointed out, you can run a sub’s reactor without the sub itself moving - unlike some earlier surfae ships which did use scoop injection.

but .... (long but follows) the nuke subs only have two relatively small steam turbo-generators. They create 440 volt power - which isn’t isn’t easily compatible with the city’s 60 Hz 120 household and 12,000+ volt distribution systems. Sure, some piers have transformers so the city power gets lowered in voltage to a ship’s voltage requirements (so a ship can turn off its propulsion plant when in port) - but those transformers are limited in size and capacity.

Better to have a cruise ship stop in and use its generators (far larger than a sub!) or an aircraft carrier. Again - you have get the power back FROM the pier to the city.

Best is to let the SeaBee’s or Army build their existing shore-based portable power plants. In other words, use defense dollars (and military time and people!) to help Obama make Obama look good for the media to crow about.

Nuke subs are not the right answer. It would be like plugging an extension cord into the side of a C-5 and running the C-5’s engines to create 120 volts. instead of flying the C-5 to bring in 500 small gas generators. And the trucks and gas carriers to fill them and move the small generator around..

[reefdiver]

I saw Hertz Equip move in generators and power up a good size town

[microgood]

That is fine if the distribution lines are still up. Gee we could have parked ten Nuke subs offshore in Gulfport, Ms and not one watt would have reached me!

Well they definitely need to pull into shore to do it, and they need a place to plug into. When subs come in and shut down the plant they run from shore power. The idea would be to reverse the feed.

Anyway I was just pointing out that it has been done in a pretty narrow scenario.

[az_gila]

Perhaps not power directly, but IIRC didn't the US Navy use their ships as a giant desalination plant to provide 100's of thousands of gallons of fresh water after the tsunami?

Haiti definitely needs fresh water at this time...

[Red_Devil 232]

Reverse the feed into what? Downed power lines? Brilliant!

[javachip]

Any ship with generators and a shore power connection could, in theory, back feed power to the grid.

However:
There needs to be a functioning power distribution grid to take the power.
Ship’s electrical power plants are sized to provide power to the ship, that’s no where near what would be needed to power a shoreside grid. Only a small portion of a shoreside grid could be energized without overloading the ship.

That cruise ship that made the news for pulling in to Haiti would be a much better candidate. Much more hotel power capacity and the generators are probably sized to feed both electric propulsion and the hotel load.

[TigersEye]

Submarines are usually not equipped with external electrical outlets.

They tried that but every time the sub submerged the GFIC would kick and the whole thing would shut down.

[AFreeBird]

Oh sure, stick a billion dollar Navy, sensitive asset in a hellhole port and plug it into the grid and leave it there as a sitting duck for a while.

[microgood]

Reverse the feed into what? Downed power lines? Brilliant!

Duh, I never said it would work for Haiti or Mississippi. What I did point out is that power has been fed from a sub to shore before, which was important to put in this post for historical purposes, so that after a meteorite hits and wipes out most of Earth, and Freerepublic is still up and running, the aliens will know that we were able to do that (before the meteor hit us).