As a heavy weapon of a great power, an aircraft carrier is a symbol of a military power. From scratch, from zero to 3, as the "Fujian" enters the sea survey stage, the Chinese Navy is about to enter the era of three aircraft carriers, which is something that countless military fans should be proud of. However, the three aircraft carriers we have built so far have been conventionally powered, which is a world away from the US Navy's "all-nuclear lineup." So why didn't China build a nuclear aircraft carrier? There have been remarks on the Internet that nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are "gold-swallowing beasts" and that R&D and later maintenance costs are high, but obviously, the military budget is not the fundamental reason for hindering China's development of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. After all, there are hundreds of millions of smokers in our country. There is also such a joke circulating on the Internet: There is no money to build aircraft carrier fighters? Chinese smokers: We have paid for the military! In fact, the American media gave an answer to this, and the reason why our country did not build a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier - is because it is not needed at the moment, and the time is not ripe. 
Taking the US Navy as a reference, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier was the USS Enterprise, which was commissioned in the 60s of the last century, and finally served for more than half a century and was officially decommissioned in 2012. It can be said that the advent and service of the "Enterprise" has accumulated a lot of technology and experience for the US Navy to develop nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. It is also on this basis that the US Navy has gradually mastered the mature R&D, application and maintenance program of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which has continued to this day. The reason why the US Navy attaches so much importance to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers is determined by the national conditions of the United States and the global positioning of the US Navy. In order to maintain its hegemony and participate in military operations around the world, the United States needs to build a far-sea combat force that can deter the world at any time. Especially in the case of military forces in some key areas, the US Navy's aircraft carriers need to have the ability to conduct long-distance operations across the Pacific, which needs to take into account the problems of endurance and replenishment, and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers undoubtedly solve this problem. 
Unlike the U.S. Navy, we have no ambition to dominate the world, and although it has become a reality for the Chinese Navy to go to the ocean in recent years, China's military strategic policy of "active defense" has not changed. The fundamental purpose of building our aircraft carriers is still to safeguard the legitimate rights and interests and sovereignty of our territory, not to invade other countries. In terms of specific implementation of relevant military tasks, conventionally powered aircraft carriers are sufficient to meet the needs of military tasks such as coastal defense, breaking through island chain blockade, and anti-access operations. Therefore, we are in no hurry to build nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. 
At the same time, the technical application of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, as well as the maintenance, maintenance, dismantling and scrapping of nuclear facilities in the later stage, have a high threshold, and even the European and American naval powers have not yet fully understood it. In the case of the French Navy, although the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle also uses nuclear power technology, it is the second best thing, using the K 15 nuclear power reactor system of the nuclear submarine, similar to the "small horse-drawn cart", which leads to the low attendance rate of the aircraft carrier, the serious lack of power performance, and the need for major repairs. 
In addition, the decommissioning of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, the core link is the dismantling of nuclear reactors, which is a technically difficult and high-risk work, the current conventional practice of the US Navy is to bury deep storage, which must be processed in a professional treatment plant, the process is very complicated, and according to the planning of the US Navy, more than a dozen aircraft carriers belonging to the "Nimitz" class have entered the countdown to decommissioning, and the huge amount of operations has also allowed the operation capacity of the relevant processing plants in the United States to reach the limit. A number of aircraft carriers, which were about to be decommissioned, had to wait in line. In addition to the cumbersome and risky process, the transfer of decommissioned aircraft carrier nuclear reactors is also costly. In the case of the U.S. Navy, the cost of disposing of decommissioned nuclear installations is often as high as $1 billion, and when combined with the maintenance costs of waiting for the storage period, the cost of disposal can eventually exceed $1.5 billion. Even so, the capacity and efficiency of the U.S. treatment plant is still not sufficient to meet the current demand. 
Generally speaking, the original construction and development idea of the Chinese Navy was "R&D generation, manufacturing generation, and service generation". This is a step-by-step process, in terms of the development of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, as early as February 27, 2018, China Shipbuilding Industry Co., Ltd. released the "Outline of China Shipbuilding Industry High-quality Development Strategy in the New Era" on the official website and official WeChat, the first of which mentions to "accelerate the realization of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers" breakthroughs. In December last year, the design plan of the world's first 240,000-ton nuclear-powered container ship was announced by Jiangnan Shipyard, which also means that China's navigation industry has achieved a major breakthrough in nuclear reactor miniaturization technology. It can be seen that in the core technology field, we are tackling key problems one by one. In the future, as long as major breakthroughs continue to be made in the fields of nuclear power technology, nuclear waste disposal and nuclear power safety and security, on the basis of a strong budget, the era of China's nuclear-powered aircraft carrier will eventually come.