Navy nuclear program history

Presidential Executive Order , 42 U. Sec , Public Law and 50 U. The Program's responsibility includes all related facilities, radiological controls, environmental safety, and health matters, as well as selection, training, and assignment of personnel. All of this work is accomplished by a lean network of dedicated research laboratories, nuclear-capable shipyards, equipment contractors and suppliers, and training facilities which are centrally controlled by a small headquarters staff.

The Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program comprises the military and civilian personnel who design, build, operate, maintain, and manage the nuclear-powered ships and the many facilities that support the U.

The Program has cradle-to-grave responsibility for all naval nuclear propulsion matters. Program elements include the following:. Since the late s, the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program has had dedicated prime contractor support to provide engineering, procurement, and technical oversight of naval nuclear components.

Naval Nuclear Laboratory is involved in the design, purchase, quality control, and delivery of major propulsion plant components for installation in nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, submarines, and prototype plants. A number of privately owned companies throughout the United States perform the actual design and fabrication of the major propulsion plant components. Manufacturing the heavy components used in naval reactors requires years of precision machining, welding, grinding, heat treatment, and nondestructive testing of large specialty metal forgings, under carefully controlled conditions.

Standards for naval applications are more rigorous and stringent than those required for civilian nuclear reactors because components on warships must be designed and built to accommodate battle shock; radiated noise limits; crew proximity to the reactor; and frequent, rapid changes in reactor power.

Many of these equipment manufacturers have been supplying the Program for several decades. Two private shipyards build all U. These complicated tasks require an experienced and skilled workforce specifically trained to do naval nuclear propulsion work.

With approximately 50, employees, these six shipyards are unique industrial assets with capabilities found nowhere else in the United States. Fleet Intermediate Maintenance Activities deployed tenders and support facilities at major bases perform maintenance and repair on nuclear-powered ships outside of major shipyard availability periods.

Staffed by specially trained personnel, these facilities provide upkeep and resupply support for the fleet. The tenders are themselves seagoing naval vessels that routinely perform their missions while deployed all over the world. It was a great feat to develop and manufacture a submarine and nuclear reactor of this magnitude as only conventional submarines had been built up unto this point in time.

After the development of the USS Nautilus, research into nuclear powered surface vessel began. Building on the success of the USS Nautilus, the United States Congress authorized research, design, and construction of a nuclear powered aircraft carrier in Ship construction was accomplished by the Newport News Shipbuilding Company. The propulsion power for the ship is generated by eight, second-generation Westinghouse A2W nuclear reactors.

With the USS Enterprising being the only ship of its class and the litmus test for the possibility of a nuclear powered surface vessel and carrier, the building process of a larger carrier vessel Nimitz Class; named after Admiral Chester W. The size and position of the Nuclear Navy Submarine Force as of Nuclear-powered non-combat and commercial ships have been built but most were considered too expensive to operate.

Lately, Russia and China have developed floating nuclear reactors for remote or emergency use, and for use in super-large icebreakers. In terms of work hazards apart from combat, it is safer to work on a U. Annual radiation doses to Navy personnel have averaged only 0.

The Nuclear Navy has logged over 5, reactor years of accident-free operations and travelled over million miles on nuclear energy, enough to circle the earth 3, times. From the time of the USS Nautilus in , to the present, no civilian or military personnel on these ships has ever exceeded any Federal radiation limit.

And none of those more than a hundred thousand people has ever been harmed by radiation from reactors or facilities with which they were so intimately in contact.

Numerous reports from the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program Office provide detailed information of personnel exposures from living and working in nuclear submarines and on nuclear ships, as well as working in the on-shore facilities that produced fuel and materials for the Nuclear Navy such as nuclear propulsion plants and nuclear component engineering plants.

Their findings supported past studies that indicated no civilian or military personnel on these ships, which number over 22, thousand people at any one time today, has ever exceeded any Federal radiation limit.

And none of those hundreds of thousands of people has ever been harmed by the radiation from reactors or facilities with which they were so intimately in contact for so long. The report also reviewed the history of radiation health effects in the general public which indicated no observable health effects from low levels of radiation:.

The Program has cradle-to-grave responsibility for all naval nuclear propulsion matters, and elements include:. For a complete description of the Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program, click here. The Program has cradle-to-grave responsibility for all naval nuclear propulsion matters, and elements include: Research, development, and support laboratories.