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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.
Chaung Lin, Chih-Ming Shen
Nuclear Technology | Volume 132 | Number 3 | December 2000 | Pages 389-402
Technical Paper | Nuclear Plant Operations and Control | doi.org/10.13182/NT00-4
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The neurocontrol technique was applied to control a pressurized water reactor (PWR) in load-follow operations. Generalized learning or direct inverse control architecture was adopted in which the neural network was trained off-line to learn the inverse model of the PWR. Two neural network controllers were designed: One provided control rod position, which controlled the axial power distribution, and the other provided the change in boron concentration, which adjusted core total power. An additional feedback controller was designed so that power tracking capability was improved. The time duration between control actions was 15 min; thus, the xenon effect is limited and can be neglected. Therefore, the xenon concentration was not considered as a controller input variable, which simplified controller design. Center target strategy and minimum boron strategy were used to operate the reactor, and the simulation results demonstrated the effectiveness and performance of the proposed controller.