Satellite images show China working on a nuclear engine for an aircraft carrier

China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a large surface warship, the clearest sign yet that Beijing is moving toward producing its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

That’s according to a new analysis of satellite images and Chinese government documents provided to the Associated Press.

China’s navy is already numerically the largest in the world and is rapidly modernizing. Adding nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to the fleet would be a key step in realizing its ambitions for a true “flood force” capable of operating in seas far from China in a growing global challenge for the United States.

“Nuclear-powered aircraft 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, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC

“For China’s leadership, such a development would symbolize national prestige, fuel domestic nationalism and strengthen the country’s global image as a leading power.”

Instead, they concluded that China was building a prototype reactor for a large warship.

The Leshan project is called the Longwei, or Dragon Might Project, and is also referred to in documents as the Nuclear Power Development Project.

Neither the Chinese defense ministry nor the foreign ministry responded to requests for comment.

There have long been rumors that China is planning to build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, but the Middlebury team’s research is the first to confirm that China is working on a nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship.

“The Leshan prototype reactor is the first solid evidence that China is actually developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a Middlebury professor and one of the researchers on the project.

“Operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an exclusive club that China is expected to join.”

Using 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 that a prototype ship-propulsion reactor was located in the mountains of the roughly 70-year-old township of Mucheng will be built miles southwest of Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu.

The reactor, which will soon be operational, according to procurement documents, is housed in a new facility built at the Base 909 site, which the analysis shows is home to six other reactors that are operating, decommissioned or under construction.

The site is under the control of the Nuclear Power Institute of China, a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation, which is charged with research and testing of reactor technology.

Documents show that China’s 701 Institute, formerly known as the China Ship Research and Design Center, which is responsible for aircraft carrier development, procured reactor equipment “intended for installation on a large warship” under the Nuclear Power Development Project “, as well as the “National Defense Designation” led to the conclusion that the large reactor is a prototype of a next-generation aircraft carrier.

Satellite images from 2020 to 2023 have shown the demolition of houses and the construction of water extraction infrastructure connected to the reactor site.

Contracts for steam generators and turbine pumps indicate the project is a pressurized water reactor with a secondary cycle – a profile consistent with ship propulsion reactors, the researchers say.

An environmental impact report describes the Longwei project as a “national defense-related construction project” that is classified as “secret.”

“Unless China is developing nuclear-powered cruisers, which were operated only by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, then the Nuclear Power Development Project certainly refers to the development of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers,” the researchers wrote in a detailed 19-page report about their results.

Sarah Laderman, senior analyst at Open Nuclear Network, a program of the US-based NGO PAX sapiens Foundation, said the findings were “carefully conducted and thoroughly researched”.

“Given the evidence presented here, I see a compelling argument that China appears to be working toward building a nuclear propulsion system for its naval surface ships (likely aircraft carriers) at this site,” said Ms. Laderman, who is based in Vienna and was not at Middleburys Research involved.

The U.S. is required by domestic law to provide Taiwan with enough weapons to deter an invasion and could provide aid to the island from its bases in the Pacific in the event of an invasion or blockade.

Tensions between China and neighboring states have also increased in the South China Sea over territorial disputes and maritime claims.

The country’s most recent white paper on national defense in 2019 said the Chinese navy is adapting to strategic needs by “accelerating the transition of its tasks from near-sea defense to distant-sea protection missions.”

The People’s Liberation Army Navy is already the largest navy in the world, with more than 370 ships and submarines. The country also has powerful shipbuilding capabilities: China’s shipyards build many hundreds of ships each year, while the United States builds five or fewer, according to a U.S. Congress report late last year.

However, the Chinese Navy lags behind the US Navy in many ways. Other advantages include that the US currently has 11 aircraft carriers, all nuclear-powered, allowing it to maintain multiple strike groups stationed around the world at any time, including in the Indo-Pacific.

But the Pentagon is increasingly concerned about China’s rapid modernization of its fleet, including the design and construction of new aircraft carriers.

This is consistent with China’s “growing emphasis on the maritime domain and increasing requirements” for its navy to “operate at greater distances from mainland China,” the Defense Department said in its latest report to the US Congress on China’s military.

China’s “growing number of aircraft carriers is expanding the air defense coverage of deployed task forces beyond the realm of land-based defense, enabling operations further from China’s coast,” the report said.