How Hyman Rickover Built the Nuclear Navy
And the World's First Nuclear-Powered Submarine
There is a common misconception that the United States stopped building nuclear reactors after the 1970s. But that is not the full story: the US Navy has consistently built at least one small nuclear reactor every year since the 1950s. The fact that the Navy has managed to safely design, build, and operate nuclear reactors for decades, despite the stagnation of the civilian nuclear sector, is due in large part to the institutional legacy of Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the “Father of the Nuclear Navy”.
Rickover was the longest serving naval officer in US history and created an organization within the US government, now known as Naval Reactors, that had the technical competence and authority to oversee the pioneering development of nuclear technology, including building the world’s first nuclear powered submarine. He brought intense program management to bear on the companies and shipyards he worked with and in many cases, developed their technical roadmaps. Rickover also leveraged his lifelong experience in the navy to navigate the bureaucracy and was able to build an institutional structure for developing and managing the world’s most powerful energy source that endures today.
In a time of renewed interest in megaprojects, dual use technologies, and large-scale energy infrastructure build out, understanding Rickover’s methods in realizing nuclear energy is more important than ever.
Rickover: a Naval career
Hyman G. Rickover was born in the Russian Empire, in what is modern-day Poland, but his family fled to America in 1906 when he was a young boy, following anti-semitic pogroms. Although Rickover graduated from the naval academy 107th in his class out of 540, he showed an aptitude for engineering and leadership when deployed. After his 5 years as a commissioned officer following graduation from naval academy, he was eligible for postgraduate studies, opting for a masters degree in electrical engineering at Columbia and at the Naval Postgraduate School, subsequently serving as engineering officer on the USS S-48 submarine.
This assignment impressed upon Rickover the shortcomings of conventional diesel-electric submarines, which used massive batteries to power the submarine when submerged but were potentially explosive if the hydrogen gas they discharged was not neutralized. Not long after Rickover joined, the batteries on his submarine caught fire, leading to a dangerously explosive situation. The skipper ordered all men on deck to prepare to jump overboard, but Rickover volunteered to go below deck and managed to smother the fire, preventing a catastrophic battery-gas explosion.
In 1939, Rickover was assigned assistant head of the Electrical Section of the Bureau of Ships (or BuShips for short). Rickover had already undertaken a variety of impressive engineering projects as an officer at sea, including installing a 500 unit battle telephone system for a battleship and later on, ruthlessly reducing inefficient fuel oil consumption, turning his battleship into the most fuel efficient in the squadron. While these experiences helped him build a sharp technical intuition that would serve him well throughout his career, it was at the Electrical Section that Rickover honed his standard operating procedure as a leader.
Rickover transformed this small, government office with ill-defined responsibilities, into a technical powerhouse. He recruited bright, young university graduates and began shelving old hats who had been there too long. Rickover also completely rehauled the electrical equipment catalogs and reduced redundant parts, which greatly simplified procurement. Among the technical achievements that came out of his group were a casualty backup power system with emergency cables, infrared ship-to-ship communication, and anti-mine detection and detonation, equipment which served the Navy well as it quickly entered a two-ocean war in 1941. He also had his engineers completely redesign the electrical equipment and bullied manufacturers into building products specifically for the Navy based on specs that his team drew up, which were ahead of the industry standard at the time. Rickover leveraged the Navy’s monopsony power to push them to work with navy-designed specs and even lend him their best engineers for free, on a long-term basis.
For instance, the Navy needed highly resilient, shock-proof electrical equipment. These were particularly important for submarines, whose primary enemies were depth charges designed to deliver severe physical shock to the submarine, crippling the electrical systems needed to stay buoyant. In pushing vendors to meet the Navy’s demanding technical criteria, Rickover was known for his hard driving nature and his flair for dramatically illustrating mission requirements. When a vendor brought Rickover a gleaming prototype of a supposedly shock-proof electrical box, Rickover threw it against a radiator where it shattered. Without a word, he strode back into his office. Rickover would later earn his first Legion of Merit for his service leading the Electrical Bureau during World War Two.
In 1946, he was ordered to report to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which hosted the Y-12 pilot plutonium production plant for the Manhattan Project, for a 1 year tour of duty.
Rickover at Oak Ridge
Oak Ridge is where Rickover brought his 20 years of experience as an engineering officer in the Navy to bear on the still nascent technology and also where he formulated his early bureaucratic innovations.
Rickover laid the groundwork for his time at Oak Ridge, far in advance of arriving. In addition to brushing up on his chemistry and physics, he also scoured what little reports there were around nuclear propulsion or nuclear power to better understand this nascent technology. For most of the war effort, much of the nuclear research had focused on building a bomb, but little thought had been put into how to design a sustainable fission reaction for energy production.
At the end of the war, there was much excitement about the newfound power in nuclear physics, as viscerally demonstrated in the atomic bomb, and just as many questions about how this technology would be developed and by whom. Truman had authorized the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) in 1946 so that the government could identify how nuclear energy might be used, and also reassert some degree of civilian control, now that the war was over. But the AEC would not be fully formed until 1947 and there were still no concrete plans to build a nuclear reactor. Oak Ridge had the “Daniels Pile”, but there was no serious, concerted effort at Oak Ridge to actually build a reactor, in light of the lax post-war attitude. General Groves, head of the Manhattan Project, had hurriedly signed a contract with General Electric (GE) to explore a nuclear reactor for a destroyer, before the civilian AEC could awake and frustrate further military use of nuclear power. But GE was not prioritizing the project, as they were mainly focused on producing plutonium and designing a civilian reactor, and the Navy work was much more speculative in terms of future funding. Similarly, the rest of the Navy was worried about other plans: ship modernization to be nuclear weapon resistant, breeder reactors, and multi-stage (and consequently, multi-decade), progressive improvements to submarine propulsion.
Unlike the rest of the Navy, Rickover had gravitated early on during his time at Oak Ridge to the idea that the first nuclear ship should be a nuclear submarine, for two primary reasons. Firstly, submarines were the most difficult application - if they could fit a nuclear reactor in the tight, demanding, confines of a submarine, they would prove that any ship could be nuclear powered. And perhaps more importantly, submarines were the application for which nuclear reactors would make the most difference. Rickover had already experienced the dangers of diesel-battery powered submarines. They would need to resurface often (or use the newer German snorkel technology to stay at periscope depth) to supply oxygen for the diesel generators to recharge the batteries. Even when they could run submerged on batteries, they were restricted to abysmally slow speeds, as the power density of batteries at the time was quite low. As a result, submarines of that era were closer to small surface ships that could occasionally submerge for some period of time than true endurance undersea fighters.
Rickover did what he could to push the Navy in that direction, forcefully sending memos from Oak Ridge reiterating his position and delaying a hernia operation to respond to the AEC’s request in early 1947 for the Navy’s position on nuclear power. Rickover used this opening to draft a memo arguing a nuclear powered vessel could be realized in 5-8 years, which he managed to forward up the chain to the Secretary of Navy.
But Rickover was not to realize his plan at Oak Ridge. In a surprise to him, another captain had been formally appointed to lead nuclear matters for BuShips. In the last month of Rickover’s 1-year rotation at Oak Ridge, he organized a tour of all the major atomic facilities with 4 other junior naval officers he had taken under his wing, to search for other motivated and talented individuals who would be interested in building a real power reactor. They toured Ames Lab, Argonne National Lab, Berkeley Lab, and Los Alamos, all sites that are DOE national labs today. While nothing directly came out of the tours, Rickover made valuable relationships, including with Walter Zinn, director of AEC’s Argonne Lab site, Ernest Lawrence at Berkeley, and Edward Teller at Los Alamos. Teller in particular wrote a letter to Lawrence Hafstad, then head of R&D at DoD, sharing about “five Navy men, unusually intelligent, and interested in a detailed, concrete and down-to-earth plan” who were stymied by naval bureaucracy.
But ultimately, Rickover’s team reached the end of their rotation and they were all scattered across the naval bureaucracy; this was Rickover’s rock bottom.
Rickover wrestles with bureaucracy
Given that another captain was already lead coordinator for nuclear activities in BuShips, and that Rickover had already developed a reputation for his controversial disagreeableness, some advisors suggested he return to Oak Ridge as a declassification officer.1 Thankfully, the BuShips chief, Admiral Earle Mills, knew Rickover from his work at Electrical Section and respected him enough to keep him as a special assistant on nuclear matters, but with no staff, authority, or responsibility.
While Rickover continued to try to arouse interest in a nuclear submarine across the Navy, most brass were more interested in jostling for power in the newly formed Department of Defense. As one officer put it, “The enemy right now is the Air Force…we’ll be lucky if we can hang on to our aircraft carriers.”
But Rickover correctly identified the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), who was a uniquely respected authority on the needs of the Navy fleet, as the right entry point to get an endorsed mandate from the Secretary of Navy on the importance of a nuclear submarine. Conveniently, the CNO at the time was Chester Nimitz, who had served on a submarine previously. Rickover worked with his disbanded Oak Ridge team to draft a letter for Nimitz to send to the Secretary of Navy and worked carefully to get the right sign-offs from each office, shuttling the letter and making small edits to satisfy different stakeholders, finding helpful allies in officers who had previously served on submarines and grasped how transformative nuclear power would be for submarine warfare. After two months, Nimitz signed off on the letter to Navy Secretary Sullivan. Rickover also drafted letters for Sullivan (who also signed) to send to the first Secretary of Defense James Forrestal and to Vannevar Bush.
Finally, the Navy was on the record on the military need for a nuclear-powered submarine and BuShips would be leading the effort.
Unfortunately, the newly stood up AEC was not quite as excited by the idea of nuclear-powered submarines. They were concerned with proving their mandate of ensuring civilian control over nuclear technology, which, in its relatively short history, had been the exclusive domain of the military thus far. They were also more concerned with uranium ore supply and generally did not believe a nuclear powered submarine was technically feasible.2
Not only was there disagreement on the importance of nuclear-powered submarines, there were also philosophical differences between the AEC and the Navy on how to approach building the first-ever nuclear reactor. The AEC wanted to let the new Argonne National Lab study the options and lay out a basic concept, and then the Navy would pick it up afterwards. But Rickover was convinced that this was not a scientific problem, but an engineering one. While he was anxious to have Argonne scientists train the Navy and private industry about the esoterics of nuclear energy, the Navy preferred to work closely with industry to build complex projects.
Unfortunately, AEC did not share Rickover’s position and Argonne Lab’s director made clear that Argonne would retain a leading position in developing nuclear reactors. Reluctantly, BuShips had to accept a less than equal partnership with Argonne.
Rickover turned to General Electric (GE), who had already received funding in 1947 to develop a liquid-metal heat-exchange system. Rickover convinced GE to fully develop this program into a liquid-metal reactor plant and convince GE leadership of the importance of this program to the Navy, despite other projects that GE was also funded to work on. In keeping with the Manhattan ethos, Rickover signed an agreement with Westinghouse to develop a pressurized water heat-transfer system, ensuring parallel technology development and de-risking.
The AEC’s response was to call in GE officials and bluntly tell them that the Navy was acting on its own accord and that AEC desired less emphasis on the Navy’s work. At this time, AEC also suggested that the Navy appoint a liaison to the AEC.
At the time, several reports across the Navy were ringing alarms over Russian submarine development, including their use of German snorkel engineering, with the Navy’s Operation Development Force simply stating: “The tactical characteristics of the medium-speed, deep-diving, snorkel-equipped submarine have virtually nullified the effectiveness of most of our World War II ASW [anti submarine warfare] procedures, tactics, and doctrines”. Mills, with this information, went to the AEC’s Military Liaison Committee, bringing along two well-respected submariners, and impressed upon this more sympathetic AEC committee of military staff the importance of a nuclear submarine.
Despite this, the AEC response to the Navy repudiated its position entirely and maintained that GE should redirect any efforts from the “Navy reactor” to intermediate-energy power-breeding reactors. It also rejected the Navy’s proposal that the AEC work with the Navy as an equal partner and emphasize engineering development over scientific research.
Rickover, who had been appointed the Navy’s liaison to AEC by now, again swung into action. First, he drafted a letter from Mills threatening that if the AEC refused to cooperate, the Navy would contract with industry unilaterally. Having laid the groundwork in the Naval chain of command, Rickover was able to get letters from the Secretary of the Navy and the Secretary of Defense within 48 hours to support BuShips position on industry involvement. Rickover also obtained statements from GE and Westinghouse, who stated their eagerness and willingness to take on the naval reactor project.
Armed with this intimidating set of statements and with the moderating agreeableness of the Military Liaison Committee, who had looked favorably upon the proposed Navy projects, the AEC finally agreed to move forward with the project. When Rickover left Oak Ridge nine months ago, the Navy had no intention of ever seriously building a nuclear powered submarine and the AEC had not yet been formed. But Rickover had successfully wrangled both the Navy bureaucracy and an intransigent AEC and won.
Finally, Rickover told Mills: “Obviously the bureau can’t have two people in charge of nuclear. You’ll have to get rid of either Mumma [BuShips official coordinator for nuclear activities] or me”. Mills agreed and Rickover was made head of a new Nuclear Power Branch within BuShips Research Division.
Rickover was also able to realize his bureaucratic innovation to occupy a spot on the org chart both at AEC and in the Navy BuShips, something he first formulated while at Oak Ridge. This way, if the AEC refused something, he could respond that “this is a priority for the Navy” and vice versa. Similar to how the Manhattan project reduced project risk by pursuing parallel technological approaches, Rickover would reduce his bureaucratic risk by pursuing parallel chains of command. This unique structure lives on to this day, with Naval Reactors shared between the semi-autonomous National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Navy.
Rickover Builds the Naval Reactors Group
Rickover quickly set about staffing up his new team. Many of the other officers and engineers Rickover brought over were the bright ones that Rickover had encountered during his time leading the Electrical Section at BuShips.
While Rickover worked to staff up quickly in the short term, he also set out to build a deep bench and a long-term pipeline of talent. He required each officer and engineer he hired to submit a self-study plan demonstrating mastery of advanced texts in metallurgy, physics, chemistry, along with field trips to AEC facilities, totalling 854 hours of study or 16 hours of week. He worked with MIT to develop a survey course on nuclear physics and a masters degree in nuclear engineering, with a curriculum drawn up and agreed to by Rickover, starting in June of 1949. Rickover also worked with Oak Ridge National Lab to develop a 1-year curriculum in nuclear science and technology, a program christened “Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology (ORSORT) with the first cohort starting in March 1950. Westinghouse, GE, utilities, naval and private shipyards, and Naval Reactors all sent students to ORSORT and the program started turning out ~100 graduates a year, providing another training center to develop a nuclear industry.3 Finally, Rickover had his engineers provide training lectures to a variety of audiences, ranging from senior officials in BuShips to junior technicians, as well as to explain shipboard problems and applications to scientists at Argonne, Oak Ridge, and Westinghouse/GE.4
Rickover emphasized not just the importance of staff training, but also the importance of talent. Even after the nuclear training schools were established for training the officers and enlistees needed on nuclear submarines, destroyers, and aircraft carriers, Rickover still personally interviewed every officer who was accepted to a nuclear training school until his retirement.
Much has already been written about the unusualness of Rickover’s interview style, but one point that is perhaps undermentioned is Rickover’s search for those who showed true agency. For one interviewee who said he liked hiking, Rickover asked him if he had ever hiked the nearby “Goat Mountain”. When he said he had not, Rickover told him to bring him proof he had climbed it by tomorrow morning and he would be hired. It turns out that Goat Mountain was the peak of a structure in a zoo for mountain goats. He goes to the zoo, asked a tourist to take his picture, and jumps into the enclosure and climbs to the top. He’s hired the next day!5
His focus on inspiring a sense of agency and mission in his office did not stop with the engineering staff. He also sponsored evening lectures and seminars on nuclear energy and submarine operations for the office secretaries, clerks, and stenographers. For those who completed the course, he took the attendees on weekend trips to the Bettis site and the Mark I reactor in Idaho. Attendance was voluntary but participation was high and served to imbue the office, even administrative staff, with a sense of higher purpose.
In inspiring the sense of excellence and purpose in his team, Rickover would also send out readings to the entire team, which drew from a variety of eclectic sources. Readings ranged from the clerical and mundane e.g. a government memorandum on how to prepare memos to superiors, to the cultured and esoteric e.g. a chapter on life during the Thirty Years War.
Rickover was also an intensely demanding and scrutinizing manager. As most writing then was done on carbon copy paper, every night Rickover would collect the “pinks” of every piece of writing from his various teams i.e. the carbon copied half, and read over them at home, including drafts. When his officers protested as to how they should be expected to keep track of everything in their purview, including drafts reports from staff below them, Rickovers responded “It’s up to you to see that I don’t know more about what’s going on in your shop than you do”. By enforcing tight lines of supervision over his officers, Rickover ensured that he maintained full visibility into each team, including the project facilities at Knolls, Bettis, and the shipyards, allowing him to catch problems early on. It also enforced a culture of direct accountability and oversight across the organization.
Finally, Rickover ran Naval Reactors with an incredibly flat org chart. Project officers at each facility reported directly to him. Ranks and job codes were used to satisfy billet requirements, but did not map to any hierarchy or reporting structure. Rickover, partially through his brash and aggressive personality, created a culture where anyone could challenge someone else, including him, on any technical matter. Finally, this flat org chart and direct accountability were engineered so that each technical area would have multiple staff accountable. As an example, when an issue arose with corrosion fouling in reactor valves, Rickover held not only the officer overseeing valves and pipes responsible, but also the safety engineer, the submarine project officer, and the project officer overseeing the facility where the work was ongoing. He expected people to raise technical issues directly to him, even seemingly small ones, so that they could be addressed early on.
Industrial Coordination
Rickover brought a practice of intensely close coordination between the Navy and the “primes” who were developing these first ever nuclear reactors. He pioneered the practice of project officers who live on site to regularly monitor and coordinate contractor progress, a practice that lives on to this day. The close oversight along with the practice of parallel tracking different technological approaches to minimize overall project risk, is part of Rickover’s success in building the first nuclear reactor on schedule.
In 1949, Rickover was coordinating between three primary groups to design and manufacture a nuclear reactor: Argonne national lab, Westinghouse, and General Electric. General Electric had already set up their Knolls facility in New York and had done work exploring the liquid metal cooled reactor design, known as the Mark A. Rickover and Argonne Lab had both identified water-cooled reactors as the other primary technical pathway to derisk and Rickover assigned that design, known as the Mark I, to Westinghouse, which set up its own nuclear design facility in Bettis, Pennsylvania. The two teams, GE and Westinghouse, were derisking reactor designs on the basis of the coolant choice as it was arguably the most important and critical feature that shaped the rest of the design decisions for a reactor.
The challenge Rickover faced with all parties involved is that there were a variety of competing projects, as well as, in Rickover's view, a lack of seriousness from the contractors on the engineering effort that would be required to design and manufacture the first ever nuclear reactor in a reasonable timeframe. General Electric still prioritized a civilian nuclear power reactor, as well as their plutonium breeder reactor. The Westinghouse effort, which started a year later than GE, also had difficulty in staffing up with the appropriate expertise and concentrating effort towards a viable reactor to Rickover’s satisfaction.
Government contracting was, and still is today, a largely passive and administrative activity. While Rickover acknowledged that the government was the “customer” and the contractor was the one responsible for delivering, Rickover’s unique approach to program management was exercising tight oversight over the contractors. Rickover hired technical experts into his office and then sent them out as project officers to oversee the various contractor sites. There, the project officer was expected to be the active representative of the Naval Reactors Office, reporting directly to Rickover any issues with contractors and ensuring the contractor was on track to deliver the product as expected. In every sense, Rickover’s project officer was to be his eyes and ears on the ground. Rickover took great pains to ensure there was no customer capture, telling one of his project officers, “Don’t go to dinner with them. Your wives must not get friendly with their wives. You’re not even to let your dogs get friendly with their dogs…when you do that, you become one of them…you don’t represent me anymore”.
Rather than the government sending funding and receiving a product, Rickover also expected his office to actively advise on technical roadmapping and give guidance on decision making. At the same time, Rickover was always clear that the contractor was ultimately responsible and accountable for technical decision-making. He was able to exert this unprecedented level of technical oversight because of the market power the Department of Defense exercised over large parts of the defense industrial base, and because he built up a technical team that was capable and empowered to directly oversee contractors and that were held accountable for their technical work.
The success of Rickover’s uniquely stringent methods in project management, in contrast to the AEC, were demonstrated early on. While there was parallel derisking of reactor designs based on coolant, any reactor would need a fuel cladding material that could withstand the high temperatures and pressures inside a reactor while being transparent to the neutrons that were key to maintaining the fission reaction. Rickover identified Zirconium as a promising material candidate early on. Zirconium had always been thought to be a neutron absorber but studies in 1947 at Oak Ridge showed that previous Zirconium samples had been contaminated with Hafnium impurities.6 Pure zirconium was remarkably transparent to neutrons but had only been produced at the 10’s of kg scale up to that point. But by 1949, when Rickover was looking to scale up promising fuel cladding material production, the AEC had already decided to run contracts through another AEC division. Unable to exert centralized control and management over the contractors, the AEC funded manufacturers were slow to scale up a high-quality production process. In 1950, after a year of delay, Rickover finally received permission to have the Westinghouse Bettis site directly manufacture Zirconium metal and worked with the Bureau of Mines (BuMines) to purify the Zirconium. Under Rickover’s scrutiny, Bettis scaled a novel purification process to thousands of tons of production capacity. Rickover opened up contract bids for Zirconium only after having derisked this novel technology. When the Secretary of the Navy later asked Westinghouse how they managed to scale up this process, the response he got was “Rickover made us do it”.
Another Rickoverian approach was his famous “Quaker meetings”. When disputes arose between the Naval Reactors and the contractor, or when trust had become frayed over too many disagreements and miscommunications, Rickover would send his staff and the contractor staff to a retreat location for a weekend, a week, or however long as needed. They would meet with no parliamentary procedures or formal meeting agenda and simply talk out their issues until they could “deal with each others as individuals, not as spokesman for either organization” and come to a consensus on a path forward and build mutual trust.
Rickover also insisted early on in having the strictest possible radiation controls. He had even brought in Hermann Muller, the Nobel Laureate geneticist, to better understand the potential radiation. In the end, while Rickover knew he could have accepted a regime where submariners were exposed to levels beyond the civilian standard, he opted to design the reactors so that submariners would experience a level of radiation equal to that of background radiation. During the 1950’s, atmospheric nuclear testing triggered false alarms of radiation leaks at several nuclear submarine facilities. Later on, measurements showed the radiation inside the nuclear submarines was actually lower than that outside, a testament to how effective the reactor shielding was.
Building Mark I at Idaho
By late 1950, it had also become clear that the Mark 1 water-cooled reactor by Westinghouse would be the approach that would be ready first. But in order to validate the design of the nuclear reactor, they needed to build a land-based prototype first.
Rickover used the National Reactor Testing Station that the AEC established in Idaho to pilot the Mark I reactor.78 He famously insisted that the land-based prototype be as close to identical to the actual ship-board prototype (dubbed Mark II). Rather than a spacious, messy control room that would be much easier for testing the reactor prototype, Rickover insisted all the prototype reactor design and controls be identical to the tight, submarine shipboard conditions.
Rickover was also fascinated by full-scale mock-ups. He insisted the contractors build a full-scale wooden submarine in Idaho to ensure every contingency was accounted for by the time the Mark II reactor was actually installed. Rickover’s practice of close project management, combined with a close match between the prototypes and actual deployed reactors, are part of how Rickover and Naval Reactors delivered the first nuclear powered submarine on-time and at-cost, something that would not necessarily be true for nuclear projects led by other parts of the Navy.
After months of careful testing to bring the Mark I reactor to criticality, plagued by the many false positives that come from trying to create a controlled nuclear reaction, the team was finally ready to bring the reactor to its full rated power on May 30, 1953. It was initially intended to only be a 48 hour test run to collect data and then shut down. But Rickover insisted at the last minute that the reactor run for 96 hours at full power, equivalent to a full transatlantic submerged voyage, over the strenuous objections of his team. Rickover, who understood the importance of messaging, wanted the test run to viscerally demonstrate the potential of nuclear propulsion for submarines. Rickover responded to the objections of his crew, “Don’t you see the effect this long run will have? No submarine in the history of the world has ever run continuously more than twenty miles at full power. This run will show people that this thing is real. It’s not a toy. If I let you shut down the plant, it will be weeks before we’re back on the line again” and asserted he would take full responsibility for the consequences. He even set up a map of the Atlantic and had each crew that was “manning” the reactor update the location of the “submarine” at the end of the shift.
The 96 hour run was completed without issue and was an importance milestone for nuclear propulsion. The Mark I reactor would continue to be a fully operational test reactor at Idaho until October 1989.
Building and Crewing the Submarine
Finally, Rickover also needed shipbuilders for the submarine. Traditionally, Electric Boat worked with General Electric for submarines, while Westinghouse worked with Portsmouth Naval shipyard. Having both shipyards would also continue the practice of having parallel pathing for technology development. When Rickover first raised the idea of building the first ever nuclear submarine in 1950 with Electric Boat, they were excited by the opportunity to smooth out the cyclical Navy shipbuilding demand with steady revenue from a new line of nuclear powered ships. But the Portsmouth shipyard, which was owned and operated by the Navy, was more insulated and found less reason to prioritize the nuclear submarine project over their existing Navy projects. When the Portsmouth shipyard commander turned down Rickover’s proposal for them to build the first ever nuclear submarine with Westinghouse, Rickover picked up the shipyard commander’s phone, called Electric Boat, and asked them to build two nuclear submarines instead of just one, which they promptly agreed to.
While the Electric Boat team was installing the Mark 1 pressure vessel, steam generators, and coolant piping in Idaho, the shipyard in Groton Massachusetts was fabricating hull sections and preparing for keel laying of the submarine, which was to be christened the Nautilus. Rickover, who ever understood the importance of publicity, called Senator McMahon. Not only was he the senator from Massachusetts, he was also chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy and had met Rickover over numerous committee meetings. President Truman gladly accepted Senator McMahon’s invitation to come to the keel laying. On June 14, 1952, the Nautilus keel was laid and Truman chalked his initials on the surface, which a welder burned into place. A few weeks later, the Navy Secretary awarded Rickover his second Legion of Merit, calling the naval reactors program the “the most important piece of development work in the history of the Navy”.
Not only did Rickover sequentially manage the development of the Mark 1 Reactor and the shipbuilding for the Nautilus, he also had to find submariners who could crew the first ever nuclear powered submarine. Rickover personally interviewed every submariner that the Bureau of Navy Personnel sent and screened for both agency and intelligence. Both officers and enlisted were put through a rigorous education program at Bettis and arrived in Idaho to be part of the Mark 1 reactor bring-up in 1953. The crew also worked alongside Electric Boat at Groton in the construction of the ship systems and components in 1954. Never before had a crew been so involved in the construction of a ship.
In the middle of the break-neck pace in 1954 to complete the Nautilus and commission the Mark II ship reactor (a close copy of the Mark I reactor), disaster struck. A steam line burst during hot testing of the Nautilus steam plant in mid-September of 1954. Later inspection revealed that instead of a seamless pipe, the pipe in question was rolled and welded, a process usually used for handrails, not for carrying high-pressure steam. Rickover made the difficult decision to rip out the thousands of feet of piping already installed and replace it and only through a herculean burst of effort (and lots of overtime) was the team of Electric Boat, Westinghouse, and ship officers and crew able to bring the Mark II reactor to criticality on December 30.
After completing reactor testing in the first weeks of the new year, the Nautilus cleared the pier and slipped into the harbor on January 17, 1955. As the Nautilus sailed past the Thames, a signalman blinked to the escort tug: “Under way on nuclear power”.
Rickover’s persistence and prescience in developing a nuclear powered submarine demonstrated that nuclear power could be used safely in the most stringent of operating environments and laid the groundwork for the wide-scale deployment of civilian nuclear energy. Importantly, this allowed the US to be a technological leader in a key dual-use technology area during the Cold War.
There are several lessons Rickover’s methods can offer, not just for building the next generation of nuclear reactors, but also of relevance in a time of renewed interest in governing dual use technologies and great power competition in developing strategic technologies. First, Rickover built an empowered government office with the technical capacity to oversee complex projects. Rickover prioritized bringing the best technical talent into his office, personally approving every final hire even as the Naval Reactors complex grew significantly. Early on, he helped stand up new educational institutions to ensure the government and the private sector would have the talent needed to realize their ambitious scope in the long term as well.
Because Rickover developed a capable office, he was able to push industry beyond what they believed was possible at the time. With his novel use of on-site project officers who provided direct, daily engagement with contractors, Rickover was able to coordinate with industrial partners and ensure the first nuclear powered submarine was built on schedule, a feat all the more incredible given that it included a breakthrough propulsion technology. As many US critical industries lag between foreign competitors today, this kind of inspired public private partnership is sorely needed.
Finally, Rickover himself was a lifelong naval officer, who brought a unique degree of bureaucratic knowhow, engineering acumen, and conviction to bear on an exciting, novel technology at the time with an uncertain roadmap. A new generation of public leaders with deep commitment and conviction can draw inspiration from Rickover’s legacy to build the next generation of emerging technologies.
In a time of renewed interest in dual-use technologies and great power competition, the story of how the US Navy birthed the advent of nuclear power offers important lessons for success.
You can find my piece on Chinatalk summarizing the lessons modern day policymakers can learn from Rickover on how to build state capacity for rebuilding U.S. industrial power.
References:
This animosity within the naval bureaucracy towards Rickover never ended, despite the success of his career. The Navy tried to force him to retire by passing him over for promotion to Admiral. It ultimately required an unprecedented Congressional intervention to promote him.
Among the early doubters of nuclear-powered submarines included Robert Oppenheimer and James Conant, who were both commissioners on the AEC.
From the beginning, Rickover recognized the importance of building a skilled and talented workforce: “We can play the game everyone else will be playing - we can steal trained people from the laboratories and then have them stolen from us, or we can arrange to create more nuclear engieners, to train our own, and to create a national asset that will benefit everybody. I choose the latter course.” circa 1949-1950
Rickover never lost this core belief in the importance of training a competent workforce. When Rickover testified to Congress following the Three Mile Island Reactor accident, he spent the vast majority of his testimony, talking not about regulatory reform but about the lack of training and responsibility.
Rickover told another candidate, whom he assessed as 20 pounds overweight, to lose the weight in 6 weeks, send a weekly report on his progress, and come back in 6 weeks once he had lost the weight.
Conveniently, the resulting stockpile of Hafnium impurities separated from the Zirconium was later used as the control rod, which needed to be a neutron absorber to moderate the nuclear reaction.
Today the site of Idaho National Lab and still the nations reactor testbed site, with companies like Oklo using it as a demonstration facility for prototypes.
Rickover’s 63-year tenure in non-nominally active service should be underlined.
Not just the longest military service tenure in U.S. history, nor merely unmatched globally among non-hereditary officers—it is, by virtually every relevant measure, among the most superlative and singular martial-professional achievements in recorded human history.
Hindenburg (53y) and Wilson (57y) had conventional European military careers. Chiang, Ramesses, Elizabeth II, technically have him beat — but, discounting those —63 years — intensely involved until the last day at the most senior possible level helming the premier strategic asset on the planet.
Through to 1984 is decades of “peacetime” service, yes, but that fact pivots on Rickover personally probably — I’d venture definitively — more than any other person.
Strong argument to be made a single naval reactor failure—in port, under arms, during a crisis—imperils the entire nuclear navy through perhaps the mid-late 70s. Standard congressional procurement economy of scale death spiral hangs in the air until at least long.
He engineered and personally maintained the most precise, dangerous, and strategically critical system in modern history.
As easily clickable documentary evidence of his passing: a single 60 Minutes episode, a couple books, this Substack post.
Possibly (here, much less definitively, you could have an argument, a shortlist with many names) the most significant — as in intentive, willful impact on events, in the Bill James, Above Replacement sense — human to ever live.
Groton is the home of Naval Submarine Base New London and is located in Connecticut and Senator Brien McMahon represented Connecticut from 1945 - 1952.