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Access anywhere, anytime: Nuclear power, Ice Camp, and Rickover’s enduring standard of excellence
Admiral William Houston
As U.S. Navy submarines surface through Arctic ice during Ice Camp 2026, they demonstrate more than operational proficiency in one of the harshest environments on Earth. They reaffirm a technological truth first proven in August 1958, when the USS Nautilus completed its submerged transit of the North Pole: nuclear power enables access anywhere, anytime.
The Arctic is unforgiving, with vast distances, extreme cold, shifting ice, and no logistical infrastructure. Conventional propulsion is constrained by fuel, air, and endurance. Nuclear propulsion removes those constraints. Only a nuclear-powered submarine can operate anywhere in the world’s oceans, including under the polar ice, undetected and at maximum capability for extended periods. Nuclear power provides sustained high speed and the endurance to reposition across the globe without refueling.
Kazuo Minato, Kazuhiro Sawa, Toshio Koya, Takeshi Tomita, Akiyoshi Ishikawa, Charles A. Baldwin, William Alexander Gabbard, Charlie M. Malone
Nuclear Technology | Volume 131 | Number 1 | July 2000 | Pages 36-47
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-A3103
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Postirradiation heating tests of TRISO-coated UO2 particles at 1700 and 1800°C were performed to understand fission product release behavior at accident temperatures. The inventory measurements of the individual particles were carried out before and after the heating tests with gamma-ray spectrometry to study the behavior of the individual particles. The time-dependent release behavior of 85Kr, 110mAg, 134Cs, 137Cs, and 154Eu were obtained with on-line measurements of fission gas release and intermittent measurements of metallic fission product release during the heating tests. The inventory measurements of the individual particles revealed that fission product release behavior of the individual particles was not uniform, and large particle-to-particle variations in the release behavior of 110mAg, 134Cs, 137Cs, and 154Eu were found. X-ray microradiography and ceramography showed that the variations could not be explained by only the presence or absence of cracks in the SiC coating layer. The SiC degradation may have been related to the variations.
