Shipbucket

The area you have marked as unusable place is bloody big. in those area there would be cabins, stores, mooring handling, anchor handling, more machine shops, and many more things.

Will alter these to more accommodation later plus there is anchor gear etc.

Ok' some major redesign work gone off here, i decided if im gonna do this alternate 80's carrier thing lets design a ship from scratch, ive moved the lifts to the island side and ditched my original 30-40,000 tonn limit i estimate approx 58,000 tonns

now, that's more like it! I would move one of the deck edge elevators to the other side (less vulnerable and not so close to each other)
just the points I like to add:
- if you still use 2 reactors, place them as far as possible from each other. you don't want anything that happends to one also happening to the other, as in any powerplant. I think you have them next to each other now.....
- you have some accomodation and other stuff in front of your fore peak bulkhead. thrust me, you don't want that, even if it is allowed
- you might want some more hull depth, or some less beam. I would think less beam: you have 5 meters more beam then a nimitz, while you have 70 meters less length. I would go for 35 meters beam, 65 on the flight deck, and an hull depth of 30 meters+ with this length.
(btw, an ship this size would be closer to 70000 then 60000 tons)
- take the lowest level you have in your drawing out. that will be filled with the double bottom. you cannot put equipment or stores there, only ballast, fuel and other liquids.

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
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It's improving each time and that island looks very attractive. I'd say if your going nuclear you will want to make this ship big enough to be worth it, so Ace's 70,000 tons ballpark figure is hitting the spot. It's an expensive beast but in AU world who cares?

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Having your reactors next to each other isn't a major problem, if one pops then you're screwed anyway so the other one sustaining damage is the least of your problems.
The main issue would be the steam plants, you don't want escaping steam from one plant entering the other although sealed port and starboard steam turbine compartments would solve that issue.

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Working on: - Dekabrist-class submarine
- MV Isle of Arran

my Minde is saying that this is wrong, but I am not going to bother to explain it, since I am writing this text from my mobile!

The Nimitz class seem to have them in line according to my source although I'll admit to not knowing exactly why, probably to do with weight distribution.
I can't think of any safety reason why side by side reactors wouldn't work although I'm not a professional, I think at least one Russian submarine class had that arrangement.

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Working on: - Dekabrist-class submarine
- MV Isle of Arran

bullfrog, the split reactor arrangement has something to do with the following:
- survivability
- construction strength
- stability

the survivability is what is described above. note that an reactor does not always have to pop to have it be out of order, an fire, flood, leak or just an malfunction are examples of why an engine might be stopped and sometimes the machinery space be evacuated. it is an very bad idea if that happens to be powerless at the same time. all these problems might or might not be caused by for example an missile hit.

stability and construction strength are related. if you have 10% or more of the ships weight (yes, the reactors alone are 10% or more of the ships weight, take the D2G of 1400 tons on board a ship of about 12000 tons displacement, it's even more then 20% there) in one spot, that spot must be directly above the center of bouyancy or you ship will permanently trim. there are, in a nuclear vessel, almost no weights that ballance this uit, basically only the aircraft fuel, which is used over time and thus should be corrected by ballast if you don't want trim.
also, if you put all that weight on one spot, think about what the stress on the keel is. the keel (and the construction around it, but I just point at the keel here) has to bring over 10% of the ships weight to at least 50% of the bottom surface. this means an extremely strengthened and thick double bottom, which brings even more weight to that spot.

so yeah, that is why all ships with 2 reactors have, if possible, the reactors as an split plant. submarines might have it different because submarines are different. additional length in a sub is a bad thing (plate friction is the main factor there, which goes up with more wet surface) while on a surface ship a longer waterline helps against wave resistance (which is the major factor in surface ship resistance)

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin