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 Reactor: Reactor Designations, History, Power Plants
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or naval:
“You may consider me presumptuous, gentlemen, but I claim to be a citizen of the United States, with all the qualifications of a voter. I can read the Constitution, I am possessed of two hundred and fifty dollars, and the last time I looked in the old family Bible I found I was over twenty-one years of age.”
—Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1816–1902)
“... while one-half of the people of the United States are robbed of their inherent right of personal representation in this freest country on the face of the globe, it is idle for us to expect that the men who thus rob women will not rob each other as individuals, corporations and Government.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“Today’s difference between Russia and the United States is that in Russia everybody takes everybody else for a spy, and in the United States everybody takes everybody else for a criminal.”
—Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921–1990)
“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.)