Return of the nuclear escort ?

From DefenseNews

Posted 05/07/07 12:36

U.S. House Panel Pushes Nuclear Surface Ships

By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS

The prospect of the U.S. Navy once again using nuclear energy to propel its larger surface warships edged a bit closer to reality May 3 with a push from a powerful congressional subcommittee.

“We are requiring that new classes of major surface combatants are designed and constructed with integrated nuclear power systems,” Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., chairman of the House Armed Services seapower subcommittee, said during the panel’s markup of the 2008 defense authorization bill.

Taylor’s predecessor as chairman, Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., echoed the call.

“Nuclear propulsion is simply the right thing to do,” said Bartlett, now the panel’s ranking minority member.

Both lawmakers have strongly supported nuclear power as a means to reduce the military’s dependence on oil for fuel. At their request, the Navy produced a study on the viability of re-introducing nuclear power into surface ships — a capability the service stopped buying in the mid-1970s.

Most observers expected the Navy study to repeat the assertions made since those years — that the dramatically higher cost of buying nuclear-propelled surface ships outweighed tactical advantages.

But appearing before the committee March 1, Delores Etter, the Navy’s top acquisition official, surprised onlookers with her testimony that the high cost of oil is making the nuclear option more economically viable — at least for some ships.

Nuclear power remains far too expensive for small vessels like Littoral Combat Ships and amphibious ships, the Navy said May 3 when it briefed the media on the alternative propulsion report.

But for larger warships with greater electrical power requirements — those around 20,000 tons or greater — the premium for installing nuclear power rather than traditional fossil fuels starts to go away when the price of oil hits $70 a barrel or higher.

Oil is about $65 a barrel today, but was around $74 when the study began last August.

“Ships with constant high demands for energy may benefit from nuclear power,” the report said.

Taylor and Bartlett specifically are looking at the CG(X) cruiser to be built with nuclear power. The Navy has been conducting a wide-ranging design study of the ship, which is to carry a large and powerful radar system and missiles for ballistic missile defense. The Navy plans to build 19 of the cruisers starting in 2011. The nuclear power option is included in the study, the Navy said.

Enthusiasm for the notional CGN(X) is said to be gaining inside the Navy, but publicly, top Navy officials are less eager.

“I’m not comfortable with the requirement to be at this point,” Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, told reporters May 3 when asked about the committee’s nuclear-power requirement. “There’s still a lot of work we’ve got to go through.”

“I would prefer the opportunity to go through and properly consider and evaluate the alternatives that we’re going through right now,” Navy Secretary Donald Winter said after a Hill appearance with Mullen. “Only when we complete those evaluations will we be in a position to determine whether or not there’s value to the Navy for going nuclear or conventional.”