CH340 chip getting fried after connecting Arduino to a powerful 12V souce
It's impossible to say for sure what is going on without proper equipment (mostly you need oscilloscope), but I'm pretty sure that due to very high current consumption of the motors, there are voltage spikes at the input of the voltage regulator. If voltage exceeds safe value (15V for most of them), then regulator fails and all the input voltage is now on the output (that's how they fail 99% if the time, not as an open unfortunately, but as a short). Then for some reasons the weakest IC is CH340G which is fried. Try to use destroyed Arduino without ESC, and see what's on the 5V pin.
You say that you have currents up to 30A, but PSU is rated for 120W which means it can deliver only 10A at 12V. So at some point PSU falls into protection mode, switches off the output, and after some time tries to switch it on again. Situation with voltage spikes can be very nasty during this period.
Also please post your schematic and photo of the actual wiring, this can also give us some clues.