China has built a land-based prototype nuclear reactor for a warship, according to images provided to the Associated Press.
Research from the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in California confirmed the development, explaining that China is working on a “nuclear-powered propulsion system for a carrier-sized surface warship,” the AP reported.
Only the United States and France currently have nuclear-powered carriers.
Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C., told The New York Post that 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.”
“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,” Zhao added.
A recent report from the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) found that China is pursuing the “most rapid expansion” of its nuclear arsenal in history.
China is “currently exceeding 500 deliverable nuclear warheads in its stockpile,” the report said, noting that it will likely have more than 1,000 “operational nuclear warheads” by 2030.
The country is “undergoing the most rapid expansion and ambitious modernization of its nuclear forces in history,” the report added, “almost certainly driven by an aim for enduring strategic competition with the U.S. and a goal to actualize intensified strategic concepts that have existed for decades but are now being realized.”
