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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.
Kwang J. Jeong, Joon Lim, Il S. Hwang, Hee D. Kim, Martin M. Pilch, Tze Y. Chu
Nuclear Technology | Volume 143 | Number 3 | September 2003 | Pages 347-357
Technical Paper | Materials for Nuclear Systems | doi.org/10.13182/NT03-A3422
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
High-temperature creep tests were performed with an SA533B1 low-alloy steel under both constant load and constant stress conditions. Using the measured minimum creep strain rates as a function of stress and temperature, least-square fittings were made into a Bailey-Norton-type power law equation. Based on the constant stress test results, a constitutive equation was developed for steady-state creep. The constitutive equation was then implemented in elastic-viscoplastic analysis of the lower head of a pressurized water reactor's reactor pressure vessel using a commercial FEM code named ABAQUS 5.8. The FEM model was validated using measured data from the lower head failure experiment conducted at the Sandia National Laboratories. The FEM model using the creep constitutive equation was shown to be capable of accurately predicting the lower head deformation behavior. Additional work, however, is needed to rationalize apparent inconsistency between the constant load data and constant stress data.