China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, in the clearest sign yet Beijing is advancing toward producing its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite imagery and Chinese government documents.
China’s navy is already the world’s largest numerically, and it has been rapidly modernising. Adding nuclear-powered carriers to its fleet would be a major step in realising its ambitions for a true “blue-water” force capable of operating in seas far from China in a growing global challenge to the United States.
“Nuclear-powered carriers would place China in the exclusive ranks of first-class naval powers, a group currently limited to the United States and France,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, DC.
“For China’s leadership, such a development would symbolise national prestige, fueling domestic nationalism and elevating the country’s global image as a leading power.”
Researchers at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California said they made the finding while investigating a mountain site outside the city of Leshan in the southwest Chinese province of Sichuan, where they suspected China was building a reactor to produce plutonium or tritium for weapons.
Instead they concluded that China was building a prototype reactor for a large warship. The project at Leshan is dubbed the Longwei, or Dragon Might, Project and is also referred to as the Nuclear Power Development Project in documents provided to The Associated Press.
Neither China’s Defence Ministry nor Foreign Affairs Ministry responded to requests for comment.
There have long been rumours that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the research by the Middlebury team is the first to confirm that China is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship.
“The reactor prototype at Leshan is the first solid evidence that China is, in fact, developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury and one of the researchers on the project. “Operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an exclusive club, one that China looks set to join.” Drawing on satellite images and public documents including project tenders, personnel files, environmental impact studies — and even a citizen’s complaint about noisy construction and excessive dust — they concluded a prototype reactor for naval propulsion was being built in the mountains of Mucheng township, some 70 miles (112 kilometers) southwest of Sichuan’s provincial capital Chengdu.
