Not surprising considering the CdG reliability record but still…
Not exactly true. From 2001 to 2007 CdG was the BUSIEST carrier in the world, spending 145 days away from her homeport year in, year out, for 6 years straight. All worries about her reliability had pretty much disappeared.
The problem is that since her refit everything’s gone wrong. This is now raising questions about whether this is just “bad luck” or something more serious:
- It’s unlikely that she’s been worked too hard, at least if you compare to what carriers used to achieve back in the 1960s/70s. For example Enterprise and Ark Royal respectively spent 200 and 180 days a year away from their home ports, for 7 and 9 years straight! Mindboggling… 😮
[*] Maybe the propulsion is aging poorly, but that also sounds unlikely because the components that are breaking are fairly standard stuff (unlike the propeller problems during sea trials).
[*] That leaves maintenance & quality of work issues. It’s quite possible that budgets have been shaved a bit too much for comfort, or that privatization of contracting has led to loss of engineering knowledge within the navy. Either of those would be very worrisome.
Maybe they just feel there is a lower risk to the propulsion system by switching it off? The last thing they want to do is cause even more damage.
Here’s my guess: it’s a steam valve, so to repair it you have to flush the entire steam circuit. Which in turn means you probably have to shut down the reactor. Once the repair is done you have to slowly bring the reactor back on line. No wonder it takes a few weeks.
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