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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.
James Bottcher, Shigeharu Ukai, Masaki Inoue
Nuclear Technology | Volume 138 | Number 3 | June 2002 | Pages 238-245
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT02-A3291
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Oxide dispersion strengthened (ODS) steel cladding on mixed-oxide fuel pins offers high-temperature strength and creep rupture resistance properties for a long-life fast reactor. The fabrication and irradiation of the large diameter ODS steel cladding with high-density mixed-oxide pellets were performed at the Argonne National Laboratory Experimental Breeder Reactor II. Two developmental ODS alloys and two fuel-pin designs were used in this study. The tests were continually monitored during irradiation followed by nondestructive and destructive examinations. Both designs were successful and demonstrated the potential of ODS steel as a cladding material.