Comment by rogerrogerr

3 hours ago

I’ve never been in the Navy or on a submarine, but my impression is that SUBSAFE is about never ever having a reactor accident, at least partially for PR reasons. It wouldn’t surprise me if there simply are not procedures to deliberately put the reactor in a dangerous state.

The Navy may have done the math and determined the loss of a boat to the enemy is a less bad thing than the loss of a boat to a “nuclear accident”.

I desperately hope for and welcome anyone with experience in the space to correct me.

3 comments

rogerrogerr

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pmontra  1 hour ago

Wouldn't a nuclear powered ship sunk by enemy fire be a nuclear accident on its own? There would be a nuclear reactor on the seafloor, possibly a turned on one, surrounded by failed systems. I don't think it ever happened at war, but while I was looking for [1] I found a number of other incidents. I list them below

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kursk_submarine_disaster

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00295...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_submarine_K-19

[4] https://www.ebsco.com/research-starters/history/soviet-nucle...

[5] https://gizmodo.com/sunken-soviet-submarine-is-quietly-leaki...

[6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_incident_off_Kildin_...

[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_incident_off_Kola_Pe...

  • rurban  27 minutes ago

    The nuclear incident in a sub would be less problematic than stealing the nuclear missiles out of the sub. Like a Titan out of the Kursk sub.