*Sigh*
First off, I am not a Naval Architect. I also don't think too many people here are either.
Sailors eating and sleeping in comfort? Have you ever spent the night on a warship? I tell you the only thing the Navy has to do is give you 3 squares and a rack to sleep in. Granted you SWO daddies may have a bit more space to work with, but I doubt they are too much more comfortable than a submarine rack. Hell, I know guys on carriers that have to sleep RIGHT UNDER THE FLIGHT DECK. That is all I am going to say about that.
I am basing crew accomidations on warship cutaways and what I have seen first hand on museum ships. On my Montana, much of the bow can be used for crew berthing as well as spaces above the armored deck in the rest of this ship. BB's that I have been on have had the officers living in the superstructure and the enlisted types berthed in various places above the amored deck with the galley and crew's mess being somewhere amidshps.
As for the powerplant, I have put a lot of thought into this. I have never been able to tour the power plant of a CVN, but I have been in a few SSN enginerooms. Without divulging any secrets I estimate I can fit a power plant that uses two reactors and generates around half the Megawatts of power of a CV plant in a space that is 80 feet wide and 40 feet tall. And looking at my drawing so far, I think that would fit perfectly in that big empty space forward of the X turret. It would make for long shafts, but there you go.
Tanks... tanks are everywhere, stuck in nooks and crannies in engine rooms and everywhere else on ships. Reserve Feed Tanks for the steam generators would be in the engine rooms of course, and the size of the tanks would depend on space available and the water making capability of your plant, and etc. "Contaminated water holding tanks" as you call them would be inside the reactor compartments where they should be. I like to call them Discharge Storage Tanks. But I can tell you that submarines at least do not discharge all that much contaminated water out of a running plant. And yes, at sea, you can discharge your contaminated water overboard alllllll you want so long as you are outside of 12 miles.
In the end, these are very valid questions of yours. Just please don't think that I haven't put thought into it. I am proBB, that is known, but I am also a former sailor who had to lay in my rack and try to sleep, and I also a nuclear trained electrician who spent 2/3 of my awake time in the engine room and the rest of it in the forward end of the boat fixing other stuff.
Many thanks for your thoughts...I do hope to hear more. Thank you
