Beijing is moving ahead with building its first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, according to a new analysis of satellite images and Chinese government documents obtained by The Associated Press.

China’s navy is already the largest in the world numerically and is modernizing rapidly. Adding nuclear-powered aircraft carriers to its fleet would be a major step in realizing its ambitions of “a true blue water power” capable of operating in seas far from China, signaling a challenge to the United States.

“Nuclear-powered aircraft carriers would place China in the exclusive ranks of world-class navies, a group that currently includes only the United States and France,” said Tong Xiao, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. . For China’s leadership, such a development would symbolize 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 find while exploring a mountain outside the city of Leshan in southwest China’s Sichuan province, where they suspected China was building a reactor to produce weapons-grade plutonium or tritium.

Instead, they concluded that China was building a prototype reactor for a large warship. The project at Leshan is called the Longwei, or Dragon Might Project, and is also referred to in the documents as the Nuclear Power Development Project.

Satellite imagery and public documents

China has long been rumored to be 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 propulsion system for an aircraft carrier-sized surface warship.

China

“The Leshan reactor is the first solid evidence that China is developing a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier,” said Jeffrey Lewis, a professor at Middlebury and one of the researchers. “Operating a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is an exclusive club that China seems poised to join.”

Based on satellite images and public documents, including project tenders, personnel files, environmental impact studies — even a citizen complaint about noisy construction and excessive dust — they concluded that a prototype reactor for naval propulsion was being built in the mountains of Mucheng Municipality, about 112 kilometers southwest of Sichuan’s provincial capital, Chengdu.

The reactor, which according to procurement documents will soon be operational, is housed in a new facility built at the site known as Base 909, which houses six other reactors that are operational, decommissioned or under construction, according to the analysis . The site is under the control of the China Nuclear Energy Institute, a subsidiary of the China National Nuclear Corporation, which is in charge of reactor engineering research and testing.

Documents show that China’s 701 Institute, officially known as the China Ship Research and Design Center, which is responsible for developing the aircraft carrier, bought reactor equipment “intended for installation on a large surface warship” under the Project of Nuclear Energy Development helped to conclude that the large reactor is a prototype for a next-generation aircraft carrier.