Could be fission powered, if it's an old aircraft carrier.

You'd think a billionaire would have gotten one of those by now. Like China with the Liaoning... though, even the Liaoning isn't nuclear.

Actually, that's pretty amazing. The Americans have several nuclear carriers. The Soviets/Russians had/have several. And the French have one: the Charles de Gaulle. That's it. Nobody else has any. Not even China. Not even Britain (which does have nuclear submarines).

That's pretty amazing.

It really puts into perspective how powerful the United States is.

Granted, there's an argument that these are becoming floating targets, what with ASBMs, and as hypersonics come online. But still. They're pretty impressive things.

And even the Russians seem less capable than expected.

Which leaves basically just the US. Still.

Complacency would be a huge mistake -- and China is projected to start working on nuclear carriers pretty soon -- but, nevertheless, maybe reports of America's dethronement are premature.

Many countries have rules which forbid privately operated ships powered by fission-reactors docking/anchoring. The German-built Otto Hahn wasn't allowed passage through Suez and Panama Channel, the US-built NS-Savannah was excluded from ports in Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Though that was long ago, I'm unaware of changes regarding that.

So no cruising to your bunker in NZ on your supernukular toy when the SHTF :-)

Interesting. Your post led me to [1]. Even including all the (mostly Russian) icebreakers, the number of nuclear-powered vessels is quite small.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion#Ci...

Aircraft carriers are large targets because they're so valuable. WWII Pacific Theater was centered around taking out enemy aircraft carriers while preserving your own. If you can have one that can operate on its own for months and out-speed any chemically-fuelled vessel: that's a huge advantage. Now imagine having a fleet of them. Nothing short of ready for war.

For Russians you'd want a nuclear ice breaker as the ultimate flex.

Wouldn't that be ironic: oil billionaire buys a nuclear icebreaker just in time to never be able to use again because there's no ice to break.