United States Naval Reactors

United States Naval Reactors

United States Naval reactor refers to nuclear reactors used by the United States Navy aboard certain ships to produce power for propulsion, electric power, catapulting airplanes in aircraft carriers, and a few more minor uses. Such Naval nuclear reactors have a complete power plant associated with them. All US Navy submarines and supercarriers built for the past couple of decades are nuclear-powered by such reactors. There are no commissioned conventional (non-nuclear) submarines or aircraft carriers left in the US Navy, since the last conventional carrier, USS Kitty Hawk, was decommissioned in May 2009. The US Navy had nine nuclear-powered cruisers with such reactors also, but they have since been decommissioned. Reactors are designed by a variety of contractors, then developed and tested at one of several government (Department of Energy)-owned and prime contractor-operated facilities. These facilities include Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, PA and its associated Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho, and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, NY and its associated Kesselring site in West Milton, NY, all under the management of the office of Naval Reactors. Sometimes there were full-scale nuclear-powered prototype plants built at the Naval Reactors Facility, Kesselring, and Windsor Locks (in CT) to test the nuclear plants, which were operated for years to train nuclear-qualified sailors.

Read more about United States Naval Reactors:  Reactor Designations, History, Power Plants

Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or naval:

    An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.
    Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)

    And hereby hangs a moral highly applicable to our own trustee-ridden universities, if to nothing else. If we really wanted liberty of speech and thought, we could probably get it—Spain fifty years ago certainly had a longer tradition of despotism than has the United States—but do we want it? In these years we will see.
    John Dos Passos (1896–1970)

    I would like to be the first ambassador to the United States from the United States.
    Barbara Mikulski (b. 1936)

    It is now time to stop and to ask ourselves the question which my last commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover, asked me and every other young naval officer who serves or has served in an atomic submarine. For our Nation M for all of us M that question is, “Why not the best?”
    Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)