Sailors in the US Navy are still trained on sail techniques, right? If that's the case, could they in theory put modern ships under sail? Are there places on an aircraft carrier or destroyer where a crew could rig up sails and move under wind power, if the ship ran out of fuel or food?
>>30023575
>Sailors in the US Navy are still trained on sail techniques, right?
Nope, you are taught basic ropework but you would be lucky to find a single man aboard that knows enough about rigging to use a canvas sail.
Yes. There's an entire naval manual for each ship on how to stitch together all their bedsheets into sails in case they run out of gas.
>>30023596
But then how do they sleep??
>Sailing a 100,000 ton carrier
LOL K
Well it's stupid but at least it's not /pol/bait
>>30023594
IIRC midshipmen are still taught sailing in the Naval and Coast Guard academies. Granted, cruising a yacht around isn't nearly enough knowledge to make a DDG sail powered, but most officers will have a rudimentary understanding of how to sail.
>>30023615
It's the Navy. They already cuddle, then it'll just be for warmth.
>>30023575
>aircraft carrier
>ran out of fuel
Yeah, no. And if it somehow does, enjoy your reactor meltdown.
>>30023575
you realise the enormous sail that would be required to pull a 100 000 ton aircraft carrier
![2207194333_764a0b904c[1].jpg](https://i.imgur.com/8RhUyMT.jpg "2207194333_764a0b904c[1].jpg")
modern warships don't have the masts for conventional sailing.
They could however use a SkySail. They could be using them during peace time cruising to save fuel. So they have reserves ready for GOTTOGOFAST during emergency.
>>30023636
>but most officers will have a rudimentary understanding of how to sail.
That would not be enough.
>>30023685
See
>>30023636
>cruising a yacht around isn't nearly enough knowledge
Yes, I said that specifically.
>>30023685
Fun fact: back in the day, just rigging up those models was a special profession in itself.
>>30023673
yes, that's the scenario envisioned
after a reactor melts down, a carrier should be able to sail back into port for repair
>>30023970
no, after meltdown a carrier becomes part submersible carrier and part flying carrier, both fueled by venegance against enemies of freedom.
>>30023705
Professional riggers still exist senpai. My dad just had the standing and running rigging replaced on his boat last fall.
>>30023680
Does anyone even make a skysail?
I'm looking for the most portable, compact, lightweight, and efficient way to power a sailboat.
>>30023970
>after a reactor melts down, a carrier should be able to sail back into port for repair
Someone missed the word melt, and then someone didn't bother to read what happened in Chernobyl. They call it "melt down" for a reason.
>>30026041
Asymmetrical spinnaker.
>>30023673
The fuel gets colder as it's depleted, not hotter. Even when depleted the reactors on a carrier can still produce power for about a century.
After about 50 years they'd be producing around 20% of the designed power and the containment vessel would be dangerously radioactive, but they wouldn't melt down as the fuel was used up.
Melting down a naval reactor is hard. They are designed to automatically moderate and shut down in the event of a coolant loss, so if you ran one too hot you'd end up with a really expensive paperweight, not a mushroom clouad.*
*A melt down, by the way, doesn't cause an explosion. It literally just means the carefully designed fuel rods melt and pool in the bottom of the reactor. This makes the reactor useless and can, if there's enough heat, melt the containment vessel and result in radioactive material and vaporized coolant and material reaching the environment (bad) but explosions mostly come from coolant, hydrogen gas or badly designed systems.
>>30026106
I read that spinnakers and storm sails are almost never used though.. They just sit in the locker apparently
>>30026067
An A4W or A1B would contain most melt down situations without loss of containment and the ship could limp home on the remaining reactor, but given how badly you'd have to fuck up to melt one of those down they'd likely tow it.
>>30026200
Storm sails were vital with wood mast and natural fiber sails.
These days yeah. Just take a reef in. You aren't going to capsize, shred a sail or break the mast because you've got a little too much canvas up.
>>30026200
Storm sails are really only necessary in extremely heavy winds (as in "it's blowing so hard that the sea looks like it's covered in snow" winds) thanks to modern mast and sail construction but people use spinnakers all the damn time. If you get a boat rigged for an asymmetrical spinnaker then deploying and retracting one is as easy as using a roller-furling jib and even if you don't it's still pretty easy.
>>30026401
Yeah, I hear you man but come on. If you are in a situation where you need a storm sail as safety equipment you can either put on your oilskins and work it out or you can stop pretending it's 1880, put on gortex and turn on the engine.
>>30026218
there's got to be ways to rig up some sails or open up port holes to get people rowing
>>30023970
If a reactor went into meltdown, the ship would be unsalvagable. Not to mention an environmental hazard
>>30026167
Radioactive decay generates heat.
Fresh nuclear fuel isn't very radioactive. You can hold it with your bare hands, just wash them afterwards so you don't accidentally ingests any of it. This also means that it generates relatively little heat when just sitting there.
Now when we start a nuclear reaction it starts pushing out a lot more heat. As it's used up, it will start to loose its potency, so here it's true that almost spent fuel gives us less heat.
With the control rods in however and the reaction stopped, we still have the normal radioactivity generating heat. And sue nuclear fuel is very radioactive.
I don't know how these naval reactors are set up, but a commercial reactor that's all set up ready to go will have so much fuel in it that with used or spent fuel alike, passive cooling isn't enough to deal with the heat generated by the base radioactivity. You must keep the coolant pumps going, or the core temperature will raise, the coolant will start boiling off, and then things get gradually hotter until shit starts melting.
>They are designed to automatically moderate and shut down
Moderation in a nuclear reactor doesn't shut it down, it gets shit going. You "moderate" neutrons, ie take the fast ones that'd just zip past without doing what you want, and slow them down so they take part in the reaction.
I'm assuming the naval reactor works like most commercial reactors and lets the coolant act as the moderator, ensuring that a loss of coolant automatically shuts down the reaction. That's a great safety feature, and one missing in the RMBK style which blew up in Chernobyl, but sadly that isn't enough to ensure that a meltdown can't happen, as detailed above.
>but explosions mostly come from coolant, hydrogen gas
Yes, the main explosion hazard is that at the temperatures a core melt are likely to reach, metals will react with water (what remains of the coolant) to form hydrogen gas and metallic oxides. A nuclear bomb one is impossible.
>>30029235
>I don't know how these naval reactors are set up, but a commercial reactor that's all set up ready to go will have so much fuel in it that with used or spent fuel alike, passive cooling isn't enough to deal with the heat generated by the base radioactivity. You must keep the coolant pumps going, or the core temperature will raise, the coolant will start boiling off, and then things get gradually hotter until shit starts melting.
Kinda. When the water vaporizes it's density drops, meaning it moderates less. This passively reduces the reaction rate. In the event of total water loss (YOU FUCKED UP) the reactor dose something funny, because the air/nothing that replaces the water isn't a moderator..
The reactor shuts down. That said, part of the problem is, as you noted, the fuel rods change as they are used. Some of the stuff they change into keeps on giving off a lot of heat as it decays into other stuff. That heat is enough to melt the fuel rods. That's bad, and is a melt down..
But in naval reactors, the containment vessel (the thing all this stuff happens in) is tough enough to hold the melted core. So when you melt down you've got a billion dollar radioactive paperweight that is going to be too hot to touch for the next thirty six months, but you don't have an explosion.
>>30029235
>>30029297
the longer the half life of an isotope, the less it undergoes radioactive decay on it's own. Uranium is super fucking slow to go. As the fuel goes throug fissions, shorter lived isotopes are created, some with half lives of seconds, minutes, hours, days and so on. THEY are the dangerous shit. They go out fast, and there's a bunch of them,.
>>30023680
>>30028542
>open up port holes to get people rowing
kek
In WW2 this was a thing. Nowadays I doubt it.
>>30029375
That's exactly right. A light water reactor works by taking enriched uranium that would otherwise sit around for four billion years without decaying and putting it in an environment where the decay is accelerated by a chain reaction, as whenever one atom of it decays it gives off a bit of mass that, when slowed down by the water, makes another few atoms of uranium to decay that do the same thing.
The stuff it decays into when it gives up that bit of itself isn't all stable. Some of it decays, giving off heat, really fast, in seconds, hours or days rather then billions of years. When you shut down a reactor after it's been running it keeps making heat and needs to be kept cool for about 30 months.
>>30025560
His model boat?
>>30028542
the stupid got another one
>>30023685
Damn. Just looking at the rigging on Age of Sail ships is awe-inspiring. The amount of work and expertise it would take to run one of those ships is hard to grasp.
>>30029934
They had some fine riggers in those days. Nothing like the third rate riggers we have now that just sit around all day.
>>30026167
what a meltdown might look like
>>30026443
Don't discount it. Depending on how you position yourself, a stormsail can go a long way towards keeping you upright in really nasty conditions.
