A Beijing research team says it has completed the conceptual design for a small, low-cost nuclear reactor that would be able to drive a swarm of torpedoes across the Pacific Ocean in about a week.

The Chinese researchers are proposing a mini version of the Russian Poseidon unmanned submarine – the world’s first known underwater drone powered by nuclear energy.

Unlike the Poseidon, which cannot be mass-produced because it is too big, expensive and destructive, the mini version could be fitted into a standard torpedo tube and launched in large numbers from almost any submarine or warship, the scientists said.

Each torpedo would use a disposable nuclear reactor to reach and maintain a cruising speed of over 30 knots (56km/h or 35mph) for 200 hours before dumping the reactor to the seabed and drawing power from a battery to launch an attack with conventional weapons.

As reported by South China Morning Post, the lead scientist Guo Jian from the China Institute of Atomic Energy said there is a fundamental difference between the design and Poseidon, in a paper published this month by the peer-reviewed Journal of Unmanned Undersea Systems, a publication run by the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, the country’s biggest naval contractor.

“Thanks to its high flexibility and low cost, this unmanned underwater vehicle equipped with the nuclear power system can be used as a conventional force like an attack nuclear submarine, rather than as a nuclear missile,” he said.

According to Russian media reports, the Poseidon’s two-megaton nuclear warhead (100 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb) could destroy a coastal city or wider area.

Ma Liang, a researcher studying submarine launch technology with the Navy Submarine Academy in Qingdao, Shandong province, said “smart torpedoes” acting in packs would play an important role in future sea battles.

AI technology, such as machine learning, would enable the torpedoes to select and attack targets with little or no human intervention, she said in a separate paper published in the same journal on July 13.

Smart torpedoes would be able to set up an ambush on the other side of the ocean and “strike submarines as they leave a port in home waters that is difficult to reach by manned platforms”, Ma said.

The torpedo swarm could take orders from humans or an unmanned underwater command vehicle to carry out a wide range of missions such as reconnaissance and following a high-value target, she said.

Image courtesy: ANI/Representative image