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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.
Ehud Greenspan, Pavel Hejzlar, Hiroshi Sekimoto, Georgy Toshinsky, David Wade
Nuclear Technology | Volume 151 | Number 2 | August 2005 | Pages 177-191
Technical Paper | Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management - Fuel Management of Reactors Other Than Light Water Reactors | doi.org/10.13182/NT05-A3642
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
Fast reactors cooled by lead or lead-bismuth alloy offer new interesting fuel cycle and fuel management options by virtue of the superb neutronics and safety features of these heavy liquid metal (HLM) coolants. One option is once-for-life cores having relatively low power density. These cores are fueled in the factory; there is no refueling or fuel shuffling on site. A second option is very long-life cores being made of a fissioning zone and a natural uranium blanket zone. The fissioning zone very slowly drifts toward the blanket. A third option is multirecycling of light water reactor (LWR) discharged fuel without partitioning of transuranics (TRUs) in fuel-self-sustaining reactors. LWR spent fuel could provide the initial fuel loading after extracting fission products and ~90% of its uranium. The makeup fuel is natural or depleted uranium. A fourth option is the high-burnup once-through fuel cycle using natural or depleted uranium feed. The initial fuel loading of this reactor is a mixture of enriched and natural uranium. The natural uranium utilization is 10 to 20 times higher than that of a once-through LWR. A fifth option is transmutation of TRUs from LWRs using critical HLM-cooled reactors; such reactors could be designed to have the same high actinide burning capability of accelerator-driven systems and have comparable safety, but at a substantially lower cost. These novel reactor designs and fuel management options are hereby reviewed.