page_title: Nuclear submarine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Nuclear submarine / History
caption_attribution_description: English: DN-SC-86-06845 A port bow view of the nuclear-powered research submersible NR-1. Location: PORT CANAVERAL
context_page_description: A nuclear submarine is a submarine powered by a nuclear reactor. The performance advantages of nuclear submarines over "conventional" submarines are considerable. Nuclear propulsion, being completely independent of air, frees the submarine from the need to surface frequently, as is necessary for conventional submarines. The large amount of power generated by a nuclear reactor allows nuclear submarines to operate at high speed for long periods of time; and the long interval between refuelings grants a range virtually unlimited, making the only limits on voyage times being imposed by such factors as the need to restock food or other consumables.
  Current generations of nuclear submarines never need to be refueled throughout their 25-year lifespans. Conversely, the limited power stored in electric batteries means that even the most advanced conventional submarine can only remain submerged for a few days at slow speed, and only a few hours at top speed, though recent advances in air-independent propulsion have somewhat ameliorated this disadvantage. The high cost of nuclear technology means that relatively few of the world's military powers have fielded nuclear submarines.
context_section_description: The idea for a nuclear-powered submarine was first proposed in the United States Navy by the Naval Research Laboratory's Ross Gunn in 1939.
  Construction of the world's first nuclear powered submarine was made possible by the successful development of a nuclear propulsion plant by a group of scientists and engineers at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Bureau of Ships and the Atomic Energy Commission. In July 1951 the U.S. Congress authorized construction of the first nuclear-powered submarine, Nautilus, under the leadership of Captain Hyman G. Rickover, USN (sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine Nautilus in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, and another USS Nautilus (SS-168) that served with distinction in World War II).
  The Westinghouse Corporation was assigned to build its reactor. After the submarine was completed at the Electric Boat Company, First Lady Mamie Eisenhower broke the traditional bottle of champagne on Nautilus' bow, and she was commissioned USS Nautilus (SSN-571), on 30 September 1954. On 17 January 1955, she departed Groton, Connecticut to begin sea trials. The submarine was 320 feet (98 m) long, and cost about $55 million.
  The Soviet Union soon followed the United States in developing nuclear-powered submarines in the 1950s. Stimulated by the U.S. development of Nautilus, Soviet work on nuclear propulsion reactors began in the early 1950s at the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering, in Obninsk, under Anatoliy P. Alexandrov, later to become head of the Kurchatov Institute. In 1956, the first Soviet propulsion reactor designed by his team began operational testing. Meanwhile, a design team under Vladimir N. Peregudov worked on the vessel that would house the reactor.
  After overcoming many obstacles, including steam generation problems, radiation leaks, and other difficulties, the first nuclear submarine based on these combined efforts, K-3 Leninskiy Komsomol of the Project 627 Kit class, called a November-class submarine by NATO, entered service in the Soviet Navy in 1958.
  Nuclear power proved ideal for the propulsion of strategic ballistic missile submarines (SSB), greatly improving their ability to remain submerged and undetected. The world's first operational nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) was USS George Washington with 16 Polaris A-1 missiles, which conducted the first SSBN deterrent patrol November 1960 – January 1961. The Soviets already had several SSBs of the Project 629 (Golf class), and were only a year behind the US with their first SSBN, ill-fated K-19 of Project 658 (Hotel class), commissioned in November 1960. However, this class carried the same three-missile armament as the Golfs. The first Soviet SSBN with 16 missiles was the Project 667A (Yankee class), the first of which entered service in 1967, by which time the US had commissioned 41 SSBNs, nicknamed the "41 for Freedom".
  At the height of the Cold War, approximately five to ten nuclear submarines were being commissioned from each of the four Soviet submarine yards (Sevmash in Severodvinsk, Admiralteyskiye Verfi in St. Petersburg, Krasnoye Sormovo in Nizhny Novgorod, and Amurskiy Zavod in Komsomolsk-on-Amur).
  From the late 1950s through the end of 1997, the Soviet Union, and later Russia, built a total of 245 nuclear submarines, more than all other nations combined.
  Today, six countries deploy some form of nuclear-powered strategic submarines: the United States, Russia, France, the United Kingdom, China, and India. Several other countries, including Argentina and Brazil, have ongoing projects in different phases to build nuclear-powered submarines.
  In the United Kingdom, all former and current nuclear submarines of the British Royal Navy (with the exception of three: HMS Conqueror, HMS Renown and HMS Revenge) have been constructed in Barrow-in-Furness (at BAE Systems Submarine Solutions or its predecessor VSEL) where construction of nuclear submarines continues. Conqueror is the only nuclear-powered submarine ever to have engaged an enemy ship with torpedoes, sinking the cruis
caption: The smallest nuclear-powered submarine, the U.S. Navy's NR-1.
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