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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.
Lionel Desgranges, Marie-Hèlene Faure, Alain Thouroude
Nuclear Technology | Volume 149 | Number 1 | January 2005 | Pages 14-21
Technical Paper | Fuel Cycle and Management | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3576
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
A new method is proposed to measure the free volume and the gas content of a pressurized water reactor fuel rod using two expansions of the gas, one at high pressure and the other at low pressure. The gas flow corresponding to these expansions is characterized and modeled. The modeling is then used to prove that this new method is faster and more accurate than the ones usually adopted in hot cells, especially for high-burnup fuel rods.
