![]() ![]() About three months later, on 25 June, Mark I commenced a 96-hour sustained full-power run, simulating a submerged crossing of the Atlantic. ![]() The model went critical at 11:17 PM, MST on - an occasion which marked the first production of significant quantities of useful nuclear power in the world. Breadboard techniques and engineering shortcuts were riot allowed. Mark I (Nautilus was known as STR Mark II) was built from the start inside a submarine hull, complete with a surrounding tank of water, on the assumption that it was a true seagoing power plant. That same month saw the start of construction of the Nautilus land-based prototype (submarine thermal reactor, Mark I) at the AEC's National Reactor Testing Station in Idaho. ![]() 1950, and the following August, the President signed Public Law 674 which authorized construction of Nautilus. Sherman, then CNO, recommended the construction of a nuclear submarine to Congress on 25 Apr. In August 1949 the Chief of Naval Operations established an operational requirement to develop a submarine nuclear propulsion plant with a ready-for-sea date of January 1955. In January 1948 the Department of Defense requested the Atomic Energy Commission to design, develop and build a nuclear reactor which would propel a submarine. Rickover, USN, the first study of the application of a high-pressure, water-cooled reactor for a submarine was undertaken at Oak Ridge, Tenn., in September 1947. When a pipe that did not meet the proper specifications failed during the final dockside trials of the Nautilus cooling system before the reactor went critical, EB learned the most fundamental lesson of all: Failure to measure up to the demands of the technology could have devastating results.Īt the request of then-Captain H. Nautilus forced the Navy, industry, and science to learn more about quieting, highly toxic liquid metals, vibration at sustained high speed, and the necessity of carefully managing construction materials. The admiral also knew that the technology would, in its turn, instruct both the Navy and civilian shipbuilders. Since the technology was completely new, Rickover had to provide the staff at Electric Boat Division (EB) with a broad education in physics, nuclear engineering, and steam systems suited for submarine propulsion. The advent of nuclear power for ship propulsion had a profound effect on everyone involved in undersea warfare. For most of her 25 years in the depths, Nautilus served in the fleet as a good will ship and, in her military role, as a target submarine in anti-submarine warfare exercises and as an attack submarine. On August 3, 1958, to much acclaim and world-wide publicity, she became the first ship to reach the geographic north pole. In 1957, Nautilus became the first submarine to travel under the polar ice pack. She remained an experimental testbed for her entire career and was deactivated in March 1980, designated a national landmark and towed to Groton in July 1985 to begin her new career as a museum.ĭriven by the world's first nuclear propulsion system, Nautilus was preordained to set records and accomplish "firsts." On her maiden voyage to Puerto Rico in May 1955, Nautilus remained submerged for 1,381 miles and 89.9 hours, the longest submerged cruise to that date, by a submarine and at the highest sustained submerged speed heretofore recorded for a period of more than one hour's duration. On 17 January 1955 she pulled away from the dock at Groton CT and signalled at 1100, "underway on nuclear power", then proceeded to make the longest submerged passage in history, to Puerto Rico breaking the highest sustained submerge record en route. Authorized in August 1951, she joined the fleet on 30 September 1954, though remained dockside for several months while fitting out. Nautilus was the world's first nuclear powered warship, and the first submarine to be equipped with a nuclear reactor. After USS Nautilus (SSN-571) American submarines had virtually unlimited submerged endurance and the ability to conduct extended patrols in a hostile environment - a practice that became highly secret and routine over nearly fifty years of Cold War. Rather than a surface ship capable of submerging when the need arose, this submarine's natural environment lay below the surface. USS Nautilus set a new standard for submarines. ![]()
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