Since drag is proportional to the density of the surrounding fluid, the drag on a super-cavitating projectile is dramatically reduced, allowing supercavitating projectiles to attain higher speeds than conventional projectiles. In water , a rough approximation predicts that a supercavitating projectile has 200,000 times less skin friction than a normal projectile. The potential applications are impressive.

Here we will describe the advances that the chinese researchers have made towards practical supercavitating submarines and the need for molten salt nuclear reactors to power them. Molten salt nuclear reactors are under commercial development in Canada, China and other countries. Molten salt reactors could achieve 50 times the power density of current nuclear reactors used in nuclear submarines.

A 650 MW thermal integrated molten salt reactor with a supercritical CO2 turbine would have about 400 MWe of power with about 200 tons of weight. This would be about 2 kW per kg.