Thanks so much for watching! If you want to hear more about nuclear weapons and see my reaction to what would happen if a nuclear war broke out, please check out: ua-cam.com/video/cPnH6iLmslw/v-deo.htmlsi=5U8fXMWXQUwYgmgl
Quick note...the Sturgeon class subs noted in this video did not have reactors that could run on natural circulation...they used quite standard S5W reactors. However, the very similar one off class the USS Narwhal used the S5G reactor, and it was the first reactor on a US sub that was rated for natural circulation...with the trade off that Narwhal was so experimental that it was not compatible with SUBSAFE regulations. The lessons learned from the S5G in Narwhal went into the design of the S8G reactor that powered the Ohio class submarines...and is capable of operation on natural circulation alone.
@@lifestokens7469 Your wish is...granted. SSN-671 USS Narwhal did have a Sea Unicorn on their emblem....you can see the patch here... www.navysite.de/ssn/images/ssn671coa.jpg
The YT channel ‘neo’ made a video about ‘Why Russia Built a Floating Nuclear Power Plant’. Perhaps worth doing a reaction vid on it. There are a couple other channels that have made videos on the same topic. I’d love to hear your view on them. Also, Scott Manley has made a ton of videos about how nuclear power plants/bombs work and even some about nuclear rocket propulsion.
I worked with a guy who had retired from the Navy as an officer aboard a nuclear sub. I asked him if the guys in the launch room could actually launch the nukes without command authorization. He said yes, technically they could remove the face board from the frame and fiddle with the wiring inside. But since the controls are hermetically sealed and filled with nitrogen someone up top can see by the alarm that something funny is going on when the nitrogen pressure drops. According to him the missiles are launched from their tubes with compressed air and once they break surface they fire up their own rocket engines. And yes they have sliding glass doors leading to a lovely undersea balcony where one can sit and have tea as the world explodes.
I mean once you launch the ballistic missiles, it’s mostly just drink tea and chill and hope your command structure survives to send you further orders
I was in the Navy and served on both a Sturgeon and a Los Angeles class (both are fast-attack, not ICBM). I can confirm that the reactors on these subs are incredibly safe. I mean keep-in-your-kitchen safe (assuming you have a big enough kitchen, I guess). I would get more radiation exposure standing outside in a park than standing above the reactor room (which was just under the passage between the front and rear of the sub on Sturgeon class).
This half answers the question I had xD, but for clarification, what would happen if a Nuclear powered submarine sank? would the reactor be considered safe enough to leave at the bottom of the ocean? (either due to the advanced shielding or due to the oceans vast dilution effect?) or would we put great effort into recovering it?
@andyb3522 I wasn't a nuke engineer, so I don't know everything about it, but my understanding is that these reactors are set up to fail in a safe state. As long as the reactor compartment isn't blown up or ripped apart, it should be safe enough to leave at the bottom of the ocean permanently. I'm sure that the DOD would make every possible effort to recover the sunken sub regardless to recover the reactor as well as other sensitive materials and technology though.
@@Caffin8tor that sounds about what I was expecting =) thanks for clarifying, I only really thought about it because of the mention of the option of putting them on boats, which I presumed to be a terrible idea due to the waves and harsh weather conditions which often sink boats, but if the reactor can be safely confined to the extent that we can get away with not really worrying, then that kinda debunks my thought process xD though the geo-political implications would obviously still get in the way, and also there would be more of a potential for the technology to be recovered by other parties due to the ships on the surface being less stealthy than submarines so the locations would be more widely known. And if the fuel in these reactors is closer to the refinement level of nuclear weapons, that would be deemed an unacceptable risk I imagine.
@andyb3522 Yeah. Harsh weather isn't really an issue for subs. They can easily go deep enough to escape any storm condition. In fact, I'm susceptible to sea-sickness, but I only ever felt sick when we were on the surface.
The standard warheads used on the latest Trident II missiles are around 90-100 kilotons yield. There are a few of the larger 475kt warheads left and each Ohio goes out with missiles that are armed with different loadouts, and not just with one loadout for all its missiles...but as I understand it the huge majority of the warheads actually deployed are the smaller W-76-1 type with a yield of 90kt.
yeah, and under START the number of warheads per missile has been reduced to a maximum of 3, and the MIRV capability removed as well. This has as a desirable side effect also increased the range of the Trident missiles (because the throw weight in metric tons has been reduced), and allows for a larger number of decoys to be fitted (though AFAIK this isn't done because there are no known weapons that can target incoming SLBM warheads).
I was at a mixer once that included the CO of Yorktown Naval Weapon Station who himself was a submariner. We were talking about our fields of study and when I told him I was studying economics he said "That requires a lot of math. You're a lot smarter than me." And I was thinking from that point on "Jfc I hope that's not true" 😂 Hilarious dude though, submariners are fun af.
A major advantage of MIRVing a warhead, especially in the early days of the tech, was to increase the likelihood of hitting the desired target. Each warhead had a CEP or circular error probability, or the chance that it would land within a particular distance of its intended target. With earlier tech, the CEP may have been measured in miles or so. Buy putting 2-3 warheads per target, you increased the chance that one would land close enough to obtain the desired effect. Today, i strongly suspect that CEPs tend to be much, much smaller and that the primary benefit is being able to comply with treaties limiting he number of warheads, plus the need to maintain fewer rockets, silos and the like.
I’m pretty sure that at least later MIRVs were a counter to ABMs in that suddenly one missile becomes 8 warheads that each individually need to be shot down.
The Lusitania was carrying munitions. Thats why one torpedo was able to take out the massive ship. It hit a compartment full of explosives and went down fast.
Speaking of noise on submarines, the Australians used sound conditioning in an exercise with the USA off Hawaii, the whole way there the submarine made as much noise as possible to condition the US crews to the sound, but as soon as they got to the exercise area they went completely silent and the US never found them. The Australians won the exercise by taking a photo of their aircraft carrier through the periscope well within torpedo range then slipped away undetected, they were in the Collins class submarines which is diesel electric.
Diesel electric subs had historically been quieter than nuke powered subs because a turbine-driven screw (propeller) is not as quiet as an electric motor-driven screw. The trade-off is that they still need to get close enough to the surface to charge their batteries with the diesel engine (which is also noisy - ask me how I know)
@@Caffin8tor I’ve talked with someone who served on HMAS Ovens, an Oberon class diesel electric submarine, he said they usually ran the diesel engines around 5pm every day, but only for short periods and away from enemy activity. On electric only, they were the quietest submarines of the Cold War, perfect for covert surveillance or insertion and recovery for special ops teams.
Also one thing to consider is that even "loud" nuke boats can be a lot quieter then the ocean itself during bad weather. There are tons of incedents where subs collide with each other or with surface ships due to the environment noise preventing detection. I believe there was also a russian Viktor III class sub that infiltrated a US carrier group and took pictures of its operations for over a month without ever being detected. Being inside the group, surrounded by dozends of loud surface ships, US sonar never picked it out of all that noise.
The US also usually ties at least one hand behind its back during these exercises, both to limit how much an enemy could learn about our true capabilities, but also to give the opposing force wins cuz we're kinda the best at everything 😂
10 місяців тому+2
In the video they say that nuclear submarines use their reactor to get energy to make oxygen. This is not the whole truth, as explained in the video from Smarter Everyday ua-cam.com/video/g3Ud6mHdhlQ/v-deo.htmlsi=hOZYp0UCmStxzAfy He got to spend a substantial amount of time on bord a US nuclear submarine with surprisingly little restrictions about what to film or talk about in this amazing series ua-cam.com/play/PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW.html
Very interesting subject, I'd like to recommend watching the smartereveryday series by Destin, he was on board a nuclear sub and talked about a lot of interesting subjects with demonstrations. (from diving/surfacing to the torpedo tubes, how to create oxigen and how the toilets work)
3:18 your use of the phrase 'Willy Nilly' in this context makes me think of the recent Aesop Rock song 'Mindful Solutionism' where he has the line 'You can split an atom willy nilly, if it's energy that can be used for killing than it will be'.
I sometimes think that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are as closely related as the oil and candy industry. Yes, very deep down at the nuclear/molecular level they deal with the same basic phenomenons, but how much overlap is there really between them in practice?
A LOT. The physics of critical mass, reactivity, etc; essentially for a reactor, you want the reaction to react, but not go supercritical, whilst you want a nuke to do so. You can use weapons grade fissionable materials in a reactor as well
@@Shinzon23in fact we do, or at least did. Those surplus Russian nukes that got banned by START were turned into fuel and we bought it for our reactors. This kept Russian nukes from finding their way to a black market and kept Russian nuclear techs out of trouble.
@@Shinzon23 I'm being kind of pedantic here but it's a YT channel about nuclear power, if the reactor never goes supercritical it can't power up. The way I would say it is that with a nuclear warhead you want to burn all of the fuel in as short a time as possible but with a reactor you want to burn just enough fuel to produce the power you need, sometimes over 20-30 years.
Johnny Harris has done too many dumb click-bait video for me to take him seriously. Not that he can't make a good video but I lost all respect for him with his UFO videos.
FYI : the bomb on a stick sank twice killing all or most its crew. Then finally hit a ship, and killed more of its occupant then on the ship they attacked.
Most importantly they died instantly when the bomb exploded because they had unintentionally designed a depth charge on a stick, not realizing that water was not compressive and the full force of that blast would be slamming through their sub.
Electrolysis of seawater isn't the method of oxygen generation on a submarine. If you do electrolysis on seawater you end up producing chlorine gas, releasing a chemical weapon onboard. Oxygen is through electrolysis of desalinated water (again showing the power of nuclear as it runs a desalination plant) or oxygen candles (they expel more O2 than they consume).
Also, Russia has nuclear icebreakers, and a floating nuclear reactor. I don't want to post links as this comment might be deleted, but they can be easily found online
interesting he glosses over all of the UK's contributions especially since they have the most silent and destructive Nuclear Armed submarines one earth, the New Dreadnaught nuclear armed submarines along with the US counterpart Columbia class are the most advanced piece of technology to have ever been designed and built in human history. they are also HUGE
Ah Ronald Pelton, the NSA employee who was jailed for selling secrets for Operation Ivy Bells. Three consecutive life sentences plus ten years. Released on bail in 2015. Died in 2022.
Speaking of countries that are not too keen on nuclear reactors on ships: Last year, when USS Gerald Ford came to Norway, the authorities were very keen on keeping an eye on it, due to the nuclear plant onboard.
The oldest and most important weapon we still use to fight wars is information. What you know, what you share, and what you dont know. Sure planes and underwater boats reshaped a lot in the 20th century but intelligence sector is more impactful.
When I first joined the Royal Navy my training class visited a Trafalgar class nuclear powered sub. To show us how safe it was the officer showing us around used a geiger counter and it blew my mind that it showed a lower count when we were stood 2 feet above the reactor than what we got from the background radiation in the dockyard outside surrounded by granite.
I've heard nuclear weapons described as the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, which is perhaps most true of nuclear submarines‒their actual function is to lie in wait and finish off humanity if the other four horsemen don't get round to everybody.
Thank the twelve for cavitation. Something about going through water so fast that the water can nary keep up leaving a layer of vacuum that keeps it dry the entire time, is: terrifying, awesome, confounding, and mesmerizing all at the same time.
15:22 Incorrect. The older nuclear boats absolutely needed refueling - the Nautilus got refueled 3 times. Newer boats need to be refueled less often, but the current bulk of the U.S. fleet (688 & Trident subs, as well as Nimitz carriers) require one refuel about 20 to 25 years into their lifespan. Not sure about the Virginia subs or the Ford carriers.
You gotta admire Johnny Harris's artistic license and childlike exuberance/imagination! Although Alexander the Great did live over 2000 years ago (approx 2300 years), pretty sure he never went underwater in a glass barrel. The depiction of him doing so (in this video) was painted 1600 years after his death so again, pretty sure this was not a contemporaneous depiction of this extraordinary man's exploits.
Nimitz class aircraft carriers get a refuelling at 25 years, I think for Ohio and LA class subs it's 20 years, but might also be 25(I don't remember, it's been around 30 years since I looked into it lol) but yes, they generally get refuelled around the halfway point of the service life
In WW 1 German subs o r i g i n a l l y surfaced to allow enemy ships to disembark. 1st lord of the Admiralty - a man called Winston Churchill (yes, the Churchill who f****d up the Dardenelles attack - Gallipolli - and who in WW 2 tried to stop an Australian army returning from the middle east when Australian territory was actively being being invaded by Japan) ordered his ships to fire on the surfacing submarines. As a result the Lucetania (which was carrying munitions and other supplies) was sunk by a German submarine which didn't surface. The Lucitania was part of a civilian convoy being protected by British warships. As an aside an add was published in a New York paper by Germany warning of this
the only problems I have with the original video is the semi obsession with german submarine tech as if it was magical and the notion that unrestricted submarine warfare was unique to the germans. The US built 120 Baleo class submarines and 77 Gato class submarines between 1940 and 1944 and basically tried to sink anything that looked Japanese, any ship in ww2 with the name maru after it sunk was a civilian ship that was nationalized for the war, but operated by civilians. These were very successful submarine designs that were held back until late 1943 by faulty torpedoes. The US submarine crews started running out of ships to sink. The crew of USS Barb took it upon themselves to send a raiding party ashore and blow up a train in mainland japan, which they successfully did and made it back to the submarine safely. They didn't end up needing the scuttling charges used on the train for their intended purpose. Medium bombers from the US and ANZAC forces were modified with up to 12 machine guns in place of the bombadier to shoot at these too. Japan was facing a massive food crisis by mid 1944 because of US submarines. The british rationing and churchill's angry speeches about starving is what you hear about in school but the nationwide starvation of japan was markedly much worse. Grave of the Fireflies is a depressing but amazing movie about trying to survivve amist the starvation and firebombings of tokyo in 1944. The germans built so many U-Boats mostly because they couldn't do anything useful or cost effectively with their surface fleet, they had no carriers and the battleship that was enormously expensive was sunk, it's only sister ship was constantly being bombed in port by the british and under constant repair efforts. other than those two things it's pretty spot on, glad he mentioned the confederate underwater coffin.
The UK has only submarine launched nukes,we don't have silo launched ballistic missiles or air launched although i think the eurofighters and the f35s are capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles and GPS guided gravity bombs.
modern diesel submarines are returning, they are not so bad. The guy in the video skips the development of coal submarines, the story is very simplified
Yeah. They also developed a reactor small enough to probably fit into your car, as long as you didn't mind it always continually producing the same heat as a catalitic converter, even when sitting in yoir drive way. They then hit it with a train, to prove it wouldn't fail in an accident. Of course, having millions of cars producing 1,000 degree of heat 24/7 would be a bad idea and you wouldn't want the thing in your garage, so... still, imagine one a bit bigger powering a neighborhood... Shrug...
What would be the consequences of an active nuclear reactor (or at least the extremely refined fuel) sinking to the bottom of the ocean? I imagine its happened already with nuclear powered submarines, but I imagine there would be A LOT of them scattered in the depths if they were commonly used in boats. would the sheer scale of the ocean and its diluting effects make them negligible? Or do we go out of our way to recover them? Also would the waves and surface weather conditions make them less feasible? (in addition to the geo-political tension aspect, which I had not considered, so I'm glad that was mentioned)
I've toured the USS Nautilus many times, and on 2 trip went from the Nautilus museum over to the Navy base in Groton and got to tour a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine
11:19- To be fair, the allies were sneaking war supplies on civilian ships (even medical ships) which the Germans did warn the allies not to do or they would sink them; They gave many warnings and kinda had a point about civilian ship no longer being civilian if they had weapons and ammo on board, even if the civilians had nary a clue that those things were onboard. Did the Germans fire on unarmed ships as well?...Yes and in those cases it is definitely a war crime :P
I have less of a problem with nuclear armed submarines than I do with the other parts of the triad. ICBM is mostly just first strike capable at this point, and air dropped is easily stopped while posing the highest accident risk, but submarines lean hardest towards second strike deterrence. And when they have gone down in accidents, they were very manageable accidents unlike the airborne broken arrow incidents. It might be nice not to have nuclear weapons at all, but the genie is out of the bottle and arms reduction treaties have a natural limiting factor. Nobody is willing to go below second strike annihilation of the other treaty signatories. My hope for the distant future is that the nuclear powers gradually stop threatening wars and eventually feel safe disarming. But that will require fundamental changes in the governance of all of them first.
10:20 Yeah, imagine a country constructing an actual science based submarine, but they would launch weather satellites instead of nukes... would literally never happen, this kind of tech needs wars 👍 what an advanced species we are 🤣
The USS Growler was a diesel/electric sub that was modified to carry a nuclear tipped cruise missile. The missile was stored in, basically, a shed welded to the deck of the boat, which had to surface to open the shed and prepare the missile for launch.
cavitation is bad for propellers but...great for keeoing a rocket completely dry even when loosed from many fathoms bellow the waves. yes you heard right...that rocket stays 100% dry the whole time
Part of that unrestricted submarine warfare was because 'neautral' countries were shipping war supplies via civilian boats. Not justifying it. I'm just saying. That's why it happened.
Yup, natural circulation (I forget the actual term for the type of reactor) is why the easiest way to find an Ohio class boomer is to look for the equivalent of a black hole in the ocean
Technically I think nuclear weapons were on submarines before the nuclear powered submarine. The soviets had missiles on diesel electric strapped to the outside. And the US and USSR both had nuclear tipped torpedoes
It would be really interesting to see you react to a video of another person I am subscribed to called sub brief. His video called "belgorod enters service" from about a year ago. It would be interesting to see your take on russia's new torpedo that is neuclear powered with a nuclear warhead so they can launch it from the submarine and it just roams around the ocean by itself waiting for a command for a target.
Plc? Better? I think the iranians trying to enrich uranium have something to say about that. If u have plc in powerplants then i hope its 100% airgapped and u cant in any way connect outside datacarriers.
all nuclear weapons may not eliminate all life but i bet it can eliminate all humans I don't think nuclear subs detain enything, quite sure that it is as any other lethal weapon, made to kill, you can't have peace out of war however, the tech itself is really incredible, just like magic
The subculture you speak of is simple to understand. The rules are easy. If you are in the military, you can take the piss out of the other military units etc, if youre on the outside and never been in, you dont get too and the entire military family will remind you of that.
and not just were the first nuclear submarines not armed with nuclear weapons, but the first submarines armed with nuclear weapons weren't nuclear powered. They were conventional powered guided missile and ballistic missile submarines. The nuclear powers with nuclear armed submarines are the USA, USSR/Russia, PRC/China, France, and the UK. Suspected nuclear powers that MAY have the capability are North Korea, Iran, and Israel (the latter 2 extremely unlikely given the size of their nuclear weapons and the submarine types they are operating). There are some other countries that have the technology and knowhow to produce both nuclear weapons and submarines but choose not to do so, countries like Japan and South Korea (both have submarines but no nuclear weapons). The old spar torpedo wasn't intended to detonate while attached to the spar. Rather it was intended to act as a sticky mine, getting attached to the target vessel and then detached, triggering a timed detonation system. Of course sometimes that didn't work properly (as has been the problem with complex systems basically forever). Nuclear weapons have preserved peace since 1945. Their existence has stopped the pattern of large scale conflagrations between major powers that had a cadence of happening every 3-4 decades for centuries dead in its tracks. They're a potential first strike weapon, given the much reduced reaction time given to the target nation by launching SLBMs and SLCMs from much closer to their shores without prior detection than is possible with surface ships, aircraft, or land based systems. But their main function as a deterrence mechanism, providing a powerful second strike capability more than offsets that (at least for now, the suspected Soviet/Russian capability of delivering nuclear warheads by long range torpedo into foreign harbours and have them sit there, ready to detonate or be retrieved for potentially months at a time from hundreds of miles off shore is useful as a first strike weapon only, and NATO has no counter to it).
Ww2 diesel subs were using 1940s battery tech with no or very inefficient co2 scrubbers so 48 hrs was the limit on paper. And it would be extremely unpleasant with stale air stinking bodies, no bathing etc... so those we2 subs spent most of their time on the surface
Baron Munchausen : What's this? Vulcan : Oh, this is our prototype. RX, uh, Intercontinental, radar-seeking, multi-warheaded nuclear missile. Baron Munchausen : Ah! What does it do? Vulcan : Do? Kills the enemy. Baron Munchausen : All the enemy? Vulcan : Aye, all of them. All their wives, and all their children, and all their sheep, and all their cattle, and all their cats and dogs. All of them. All of them gone for good. Sally : That's horrible. Vulcan : Ahh. Well, you see, the advantage is you don't have to see one single one of them die. You just sit comfortably thousands of miles away from the battlefield and simply press the button. Berthold : Well, where's the fun in that?
There's been some controversy down here in Australia regarding nuclear submarines recently. Essentially, Australia is very anti-nuclear with very little public knowledge of the risks and safety of nuclear fuels, despite uranium being one of our major exports. Australia only has one nuclear reactor, at ANSTO, and it's a tiny (~50MW, I think) research/medical reactor. Its enriched fuel assemblies are imported from France. I visited it once in high school, and learned a little about how nuclear waste is stored safely. We are also not a nuclear armed nation, and the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons prevents us from becoming one. However, in spite of the low level of Australia's nuclear industry, we have agreed to field a fleet of nuclear submarines in accordance with the AUKUS security agreement (Australia, UK, US). Both of our major political parties are in support of this agreement, but it comes under criticism primarily from the greens, who are anti-nuclear power. There are some legitimate concerns that subs require higher enriched fuel than our research reactor, and the distribution or creation of that enriched fuel may set a precedent that undermines the non-proliferation treaty, but the vast majority of the criticism I have seen stems from either misinformation (as in the case of the anit-aukus coalition, conjuring images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, implying that the submarines would be nuclear armed and that we would have to store "large quantities" of nuclear waste), or just the price (people who want to further cut military spending).
While I've never served on a sub since i was never served in the Navy. I did serve in the Air Force assigned to Space Command which was spun off into the Space Force. I did work as an electrician on Virginia class attack submarines in Newport News shipyard in Newport News Virginia i would be interested in doing a week or two on a shakedown cruise where they test the new equipment . But I'm very familiar with how little space their is on a submarine for the people at anytime. Having crawled all in the engineering spaces that normally can't be accessable while underway. They didn't always give away their position since they could extend a snorkel which would allow fresh air for the engines charging the batteries and allowing it to power the boat at the same time. It pumped the exhaust out underwater to help defuse the smoke so there isn't a plum of smoke that would draw attention. And of course passive sonor could detect ships and subs at a distance. But its nothing compared to today where they can distinguish between different boats and ships by the sound that they produce accurately enough to assign them an actual ships name and place it sounds into a library that is outdated on each sub and surface ship so they can identify which navy vessels from other navys they are encountering both friendly and enemy plus cargo ships so they don't have to sink every vessel just those of the enemy.
I was on a Spruance-class destroyer in the late 80s-early 1990s, this class was designed to track down and destroy submarines. What bothered me the most was the guy calling that Missile a "Rocket", rockets are not guided and nobody really uses them very much except for land weapons designed for close proximity..
With the "ending life as we know it" that reminds me of an anime with a pretty interesting nuclear scene. The anime is called Zankyou no Terror, or the English title of Terror in Resonance SPOILERS BELOW The main characters are teens that were turned into human test subjects as kids in a project kept secret by a lot of powerful people. The become terrorists, although without killing, and with lots of riddles and specific targets so that they could find a detective to uncover what had happened and bring the story to the light. During the story they stole a small nuke, and threatened to blow it up in the city. In the end they did set it off, but at high altitude in order to create an EMP.
The CSS Hunley was originally designed to tow what we would today call a mine behind it on a line but they were concerned about the line fouling on the prop, or simply drifting into the sub thus they deemed the spar torpedo to be a safer option. Also all the major powers had pretty equally advanced submarines by the end of WWII. The Japanese had the best torpedo (long lance) and the US Gato and Balao class were as effective as any U-Boat, with some notable late war exceptions of designs by Japan and Germany that came too late for any impact, but they were also very specialized to certain purposes and certainly not representing any tech that the Allies could not have conceived or built for themselves had they seen a need for it (such as huge cargo carriers, or literal aircraft carrier submarines). The only real advancement was the German submarines being designed at the end of the war that were optimized for underwater performance at the expense of being good submersible surface ships (a true submarine teardrop hull form). It would not be until they made miniature nuclear power plants that a true submarine optimized hull form was practical since an air breathing engine required a submarine to spend a lot of time on the surface where that hull form would be very poor performing, have poor seakeeping, and be very inefficient during surface operations, but would be light years ahead in its subsurface performance and greatly reduce flow noise at speed.
Besides generating breathable air in submarines, even in the event of a life support system failure, submariners can still produce air by lighting special 'chlorate candles' ( a mixture of sodium chlorate and iron powder... Enough nerding...). It's quite fascinating, isn't it?
Could/are there any designs to just get hydrogen directly from a reactor skipping all costs/losses associated with steam, turbines, generators and electrolysis? Nuclear sourced hydrogen/hydrocarbon fuels would be really useful for existing vehicles removing the need to replace everything with electric alternatives by indirectly using nuclear power.
Actually this is where the strangeness and brilliance of engineering comes in. Nuclear submarines do not use electric propulsion, it is just too complicated and heavy duty, so instead they are direct drive off the turbine itself. And THAT is made silent, through bearings and all, which is why the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal with the Soviet Union happened. I only know of one electric nuclear boat, and it is british, however that was only for low speed. Once you needed to go places, it was direct drive like the rest of them.
@CMDRSweeper Intresting, but I was asking if there exists any nuclear reactor designed to produce hydrogen instead of electricity. The hydrogen would be used as a replacement fuel (or as an ingredient for fuel) for cars, so we don't need to replace all existing hydrocarbon infrastructure.
You talked a little about differences between manual operation and automated/PLC driven operations. I operate (currently) the only hydraulically operated draw/swing bridge in my city (currently the world) and we still use PLC's, sometimes to the detriment of the operation of the bridge. Due to the size and safety needs of the bridge manual operation is still backed up by the PLC's, but that technology was old when the bridge was built.
We do refuel nuclear submarines. but only after about 20 years of service. The ship i served on has already been refueled. i was one of the very first crew members when it was built back in the mid 90's.
I hate when they say the range is "unlimited, except for food"... No it isn't. There is only so far a nuclear boat can go before it needs maintenance and would otherwise break down. Even not counting that, the reactor cores have a lifespan/limit to producing useful energy, in the early days of submarine nuclear power, the reactors needed refuelling at least every decade (Sea Wolf was commissioned in '57 and went in for refuelling in '65, just 8 years into her career, the sub can only travel a finite distance in that time.
we can make it way longer on a fuel load now. My boat never got refueled and was commissioned in 88 and just went to the yard for decom. Fair point about maintenance though, only so long you can put off rebuilding pumps or machinery before you need to go into the yard for an availability
@@nakkajin oh yeah, a modern highly enriched core will last 25+ years, practically the lifetime of the boat. But in the early days it was very much not the case. Even when France came to build their first (and to this date, only) nuclear powered aircraft carrier, came into service in 2001, even then, it still only lasted something like 8 years before it needed an 18-month long refuelling and overhaul.
Thanks so much for watching! If you want to hear more about nuclear weapons and see my reaction to what would happen if a nuclear war broke out, please check out: ua-cam.com/video/cPnH6iLmslw/v-deo.htmlsi=5U8fXMWXQUwYgmgl
Pleas react to Kreosan english
@tfolsenuclear
The wiretap was code name ivy bells.
@tfolsenuclear
The wiretap was code name ivy bells.
Quick note...the Sturgeon class subs noted in this video did not have reactors that could run on natural circulation...they used quite standard S5W reactors. However, the very similar one off class the USS Narwhal used the S5G reactor, and it was the first reactor on a US sub that was rated for natural circulation...with the trade off that Narwhal was so experimental that it was not compatible with SUBSAFE regulations. The lessons learned from the S5G in Narwhal went into the design of the S8G reactor that powered the Ohio class submarines...and is capable of operation on natural circulation alone.
Please tell me the USS Narwhal has a Narwhal as it's patch or a symbol in some form or another. I would love that if so. 😂
@@lifestokens7469 It does. Look up the SSN- 671 patch. it's a pretty amazing patch.
@@lifestokens7469 Your wish is...granted. SSN-671 USS Narwhal did have a Sea Unicorn on their emblem....you can see the patch here... www.navysite.de/ssn/images/ssn671coa.jpg
The YT channel ‘neo’ made a video about ‘Why Russia Built a Floating Nuclear Power Plant’.
Perhaps worth doing a reaction vid on it.
There are a couple other channels that have made videos on the same topic. I’d love to hear your view on them.
Also, Scott Manley has made a ton of videos about how nuclear power plants/bombs work and even some about nuclear rocket propulsion.
I worked with a guy who had retired from the Navy as an officer aboard a nuclear sub. I asked him if the guys in the launch room could actually launch the nukes without command authorization. He said yes, technically they could remove the face board from the frame and fiddle with the wiring inside. But since the controls are hermetically sealed and filled with nitrogen someone up top can see by the alarm that something funny is going on when the nitrogen pressure drops. According to him the missiles are launched from their tubes with compressed air and once they break surface they fire up their own rocket engines. And yes they have sliding glass doors leading to a lovely undersea balcony where one can sit and have tea as the world explodes.
I mean once you launch the ballistic missiles, it’s mostly just drink tea and chill and hope your command structure survives to send you further orders
@@natespurgat6245 Exactly. Enjoy the peace and tranquility and watch the citizens of the deep before it all goes to hell.
I was in the Navy and served on both a Sturgeon and a Los Angeles class (both are fast-attack, not ICBM). I can confirm that the reactors on these subs are incredibly safe. I mean keep-in-your-kitchen safe (assuming you have a big enough kitchen, I guess). I would get more radiation exposure standing outside in a park than standing above the reactor room (which was just under the passage between the front and rear of the sub on Sturgeon class).
This half answers the question I had xD, but for clarification, what would happen if a Nuclear powered submarine sank? would the reactor be considered safe enough to leave at the bottom of the ocean? (either due to the advanced shielding or due to the oceans vast dilution effect?) or would we put great effort into recovering it?
@andyb3522 I wasn't a nuke engineer, so I don't know everything about it, but my understanding is that these reactors are set up to fail in a safe state. As long as the reactor compartment isn't blown up or ripped apart, it should be safe enough to leave at the bottom of the ocean permanently. I'm sure that the DOD would make every possible effort to recover the sunken sub regardless to recover the reactor as well as other sensitive materials and technology though.
@@Caffin8tor that sounds about what I was expecting =) thanks for clarifying, I only really thought about it because of the mention of the option of putting them on boats, which I presumed to be a terrible idea due to the waves and harsh weather conditions which often sink boats, but if the reactor can be safely confined to the extent that we can get away with not really worrying, then that kinda debunks my thought process xD though the geo-political implications would obviously still get in the way, and also there would be more of a potential for the technology to be recovered by other parties due to the ships on the surface being less stealthy than submarines so the locations would be more widely known. And if the fuel in these reactors is closer to the refinement level of nuclear weapons, that would be deemed an unacceptable risk I imagine.
@andyb3522 Yeah. Harsh weather isn't really an issue for subs. They can easily go deep enough to escape any storm condition. In fact, I'm susceptible to sea-sickness, but I only ever felt sick when we were on the surface.
The standard warheads used on the latest Trident II missiles are around 90-100 kilotons yield. There are a few of the larger 475kt warheads left and each Ohio goes out with missiles that are armed with different loadouts, and not just with one loadout for all its missiles...but as I understand it the huge majority of the warheads actually deployed are the smaller W-76-1 type with a yield of 90kt.
yeah, and under START the number of warheads per missile has been reduced to a maximum of 3, and the MIRV capability removed as well.
This has as a desirable side effect also increased the range of the Trident missiles (because the throw weight in metric tons has been reduced), and allows for a larger number of decoys to be fitted (though AFAIK this isn't done because there are no known weapons that can target incoming SLBM warheads).
@@jwenting SM-3 missiles under the AEGIS platform can target them and destroy them.
I was at a mixer once that included the CO of Yorktown Naval Weapon Station who himself was a submariner. We were talking about our fields of study and when I told him I was studying economics he said "That requires a lot of math. You're a lot smarter than me." And I was thinking from that point on "Jfc I hope that's not true" 😂 Hilarious dude though, submariners are fun af.
A major advantage of MIRVing a warhead, especially in the early days of the tech, was to increase the likelihood of hitting the desired target. Each warhead had a CEP or circular error probability, or the chance that it would land within a particular distance of its intended target. With earlier tech, the CEP may have been measured in miles or so. Buy putting 2-3 warheads per target, you increased the chance that one would land close enough to obtain the desired effect. Today, i strongly suspect that CEPs tend to be much, much smaller and that the primary benefit is being able to comply with treaties limiting he number of warheads, plus the need to maintain fewer rockets, silos and the like.
CEP was about the size of home plate in a baseball field when i was on Ohio class Subs
Just to make you more or less comfortable. America can drop the warhead with 5m or around 15 to 20 feet of our target.
I’m pretty sure that at least later MIRVs were a counter to ABMs in that suddenly one missile becomes 8 warheads that each individually need to be shot down.
@@sgtrpcommand3778 No doubt that is part of the benefit.
Underwasser Boot
The Lusitania was carrying munitions. Thats why one torpedo was able to take out the massive ship. It hit a compartment full of explosives and went down fast.
Speaking of noise on submarines, the Australians used sound conditioning in an exercise with the USA off Hawaii, the whole way there the submarine made as much noise as possible to condition the US crews to the sound, but as soon as they got to the exercise area they went completely silent and the US never found them. The Australians won the exercise by taking a photo of their aircraft carrier through the periscope well within torpedo range then slipped away undetected, they were in the Collins class submarines which is diesel electric.
Diesel electric subs had historically been quieter than nuke powered subs because a turbine-driven screw (propeller) is not as quiet as an electric motor-driven screw. The trade-off is that they still need to get close enough to the surface to charge their batteries with the diesel engine (which is also noisy - ask me how I know)
@@Caffin8tor I’ve talked with someone who served on HMAS Ovens, an Oberon class diesel electric submarine, he said they usually ran the diesel engines around 5pm every day, but only for short periods and away from enemy activity. On electric only, they were the quietest submarines of the Cold War, perfect for covert surveillance or insertion and recovery for special ops teams.
Also one thing to consider is that even "loud" nuke boats can be a lot quieter then the ocean itself during bad weather. There are tons of incedents where subs collide with each other or with surface ships due to the environment noise preventing detection. I believe there was also a russian Viktor III class sub that infiltrated a US carrier group and took pictures of its operations for over a month without ever being detected. Being inside the group, surrounded by dozends of loud surface ships, US sonar never picked it out of all that noise.
The US also usually ties at least one hand behind its back during these exercises, both to limit how much an enemy could learn about our true capabilities, but also to give the opposing force wins cuz we're kinda the best at everything 😂
In the video they say that nuclear submarines use their reactor to get energy to make oxygen. This is not the whole truth, as explained in the video from Smarter Everyday ua-cam.com/video/g3Ud6mHdhlQ/v-deo.htmlsi=hOZYp0UCmStxzAfy
He got to spend a substantial amount of time on bord a US nuclear submarine with surprisingly little restrictions about what to film or talk about in this amazing series
ua-cam.com/play/PLjHf9jaFs8XWoGULb2HQRvhzBclS1yimW.html
Came to check if anyone else mentioned this. Exactly the video I was thinking of.
Nuclear weapons are why we have not had World War III.
Very interesting subject, I'd like to recommend watching the smartereveryday series by Destin, he was on board a nuclear sub and talked about a lot of interesting subjects with demonstrations. (from diving/surfacing to the torpedo tubes, how to create oxigen and how the toilets work)
3:18 your use of the phrase 'Willy Nilly' in this context makes me think of the recent Aesop Rock song 'Mindful Solutionism' where he has the line 'You can split an atom willy nilly, if it's energy that can be used for killing than it will be'.
I sometimes think that nuclear weapons and nuclear power are as closely related as the oil and candy industry.
Yes, very deep down at the nuclear/molecular level they deal with the same basic phenomenons, but how much overlap is there really between them in practice?
A LOT. The physics of critical mass, reactivity, etc; essentially for a reactor, you want the reaction to react, but not go supercritical, whilst you want a nuke to do so.
You can use weapons grade fissionable materials in a reactor as well
@@Shinzon23in fact we do, or at least did. Those surplus Russian nukes that got banned by START were turned into fuel and we bought it for our reactors. This kept Russian nukes from finding their way to a black market and kept Russian nuclear techs out of trouble.
@@Shinzon23 I'm being kind of pedantic here but it's a YT channel about nuclear power, if the reactor never goes supercritical it can't power up. The way I would say it is that with a nuclear warhead you want to burn all of the fuel in as short a time as possible but with a reactor you want to burn just enough fuel to produce the power you need, sometimes over 20-30 years.
Check out the Russian/Soviet nuclear powerd icebreakers, there's some pretty cool, and also pretty terrifying stories to them.
I think I'm going to watch Down Periscope again.
Actually, the first nuclear submarines were carrying nuclear weapons at that time. They were just usually attached to their torpedos.
Johnny Harris has done too many dumb click-bait video for me to take him seriously. Not that he can't make a good video but I lost all respect for him with his UFO videos.
he's such a goober
FYI : the bomb on a stick sank twice killing all or most its crew. Then finally hit a ship, and killed more of its occupant then on the ship they attacked.
Most importantly they died instantly when the bomb exploded because they had unintentionally designed a depth charge on a stick, not realizing that water was not compressive and the full force of that blast would be slamming through their sub.
Electrolysis of seawater isn't the method of oxygen generation on a submarine. If you do electrolysis on seawater you end up producing chlorine gas, releasing a chemical weapon onboard. Oxygen is through electrolysis of desalinated water (again showing the power of nuclear as it runs a desalination plant) or oxygen candles (they expel more O2 than they consume).
Also, Russia has nuclear icebreakers, and a floating nuclear reactor. I don't want to post links as this comment might be deleted, but they can be easily found online
interesting he glosses over all of the UK's contributions especially since they have the most silent and destructive Nuclear Armed submarines one earth, the New Dreadnaught nuclear armed submarines along with the US counterpart Columbia class are the most advanced piece of technology to have ever been designed and built in human history. they are also HUGE
Ah Ronald Pelton, the NSA employee who was jailed for selling secrets for Operation Ivy Bells. Three consecutive life sentences plus ten years. Released on bail in 2015. Died in 2022.
Speaking of countries that are not too keen on nuclear reactors on ships: Last year, when USS Gerald Ford came to Norway, the authorities were very keen on keeping an eye on it, due to the nuclear plant onboard.
This guy (original video) is one of the panic junkies. Gets all excited over nothing. Spreading ideas that need to be shut down.
Im pretty sure the Diesel engine was powered by peanut oil. Not petroleum
The oldest and most important weapon we still use to fight wars is information. What you know, what you share, and what you dont know.
Sure planes and underwater boats reshaped a lot in the 20th century but intelligence sector is more impactful.
This is why I don't read superhero stories that don't have characters with information-based powers
Lol, seeing you talk about how stupidly effective Nuclear power was funny. You were basically just like, "Yeah, it's great! Welcome to my world." XD
When I first joined the Royal Navy my training class visited a Trafalgar class nuclear powered sub. To show us how safe it was the officer showing us around used a geiger counter and it blew my mind that it showed a lower count when we were stood 2 feet above the reactor than what we got from the background radiation in the dockyard outside surrounded by granite.
I've heard nuclear weapons described as the Fifth Horseman of the Apocalypse, which is perhaps most true of nuclear submarines‒their actual function is to lie in wait and finish off humanity if the other four horsemen don't get round to everybody.
They truly are.
Thank the twelve for cavitation. Something about going through water so fast that the water can nary keep up leaving a layer of vacuum that keeps it dry the entire time, is: terrifying, awesome, confounding, and mesmerizing all at the same time.
My best friend is an ETN aboard a boomer.
Oooo! Reacting to "The Abyss" film I'd enjoy
15:22 Incorrect. The older nuclear boats absolutely needed refueling - the Nautilus got refueled 3 times. Newer boats need to be refueled less often, but the current bulk of the U.S. fleet (688 & Trident subs, as well as Nimitz carriers) require one refuel about 20 to 25 years into their lifespan. Not sure about the Virginia subs or the Ford carriers.
You gotta admire Johnny Harris's artistic license and childlike exuberance/imagination! Although Alexander the Great did live over 2000 years ago (approx 2300 years), pretty sure he never went underwater in a glass barrel. The depiction of him doing so (in this video) was painted 1600 years after his death so again, pretty sure this was not a contemporaneous depiction of this extraordinary man's exploits.
Nimitz class aircraft carriers get a refuelling at 25 years, I think for Ohio and LA class subs it's 20 years, but might also be 25(I don't remember, it's been around 30 years since I looked into it lol) but yes, they generally get refuelled around the halfway point of the service life
In WW 1 German subs
o r i g i n a l l y
surfaced to allow enemy ships to disembark. 1st lord of the Admiralty - a man called Winston Churchill (yes, the Churchill who f****d up the Dardenelles attack - Gallipolli - and who in WW 2 tried to stop an Australian army returning from the middle east when Australian territory was actively being being invaded by Japan) ordered his ships to fire on the surfacing submarines. As a result the Lucetania (which was carrying munitions and other supplies) was sunk by a German submarine which didn't surface. The Lucitania was part of a civilian convoy being protected by British warships. As an aside an add was published in a New York paper by Germany warning of this
the only problems I have with the original video is the semi obsession with german submarine tech as if it was magical and the notion that unrestricted submarine warfare was unique to the germans. The US built 120 Baleo class submarines and 77 Gato class submarines between 1940 and 1944 and basically tried to sink anything that looked Japanese, any ship in ww2 with the name maru after it sunk was a civilian ship that was nationalized for the war, but operated by civilians. These were very successful submarine designs that were held back until late 1943 by faulty torpedoes. The US submarine crews started running out of ships to sink. The crew of USS Barb took it upon themselves to send a raiding party ashore and blow up a train in mainland japan, which they successfully did and made it back to the submarine safely. They didn't end up needing the scuttling charges used on the train for their intended purpose.
Medium bombers from the US and ANZAC forces were modified with up to 12 machine guns in place of the bombadier to shoot at these too. Japan was facing a massive food crisis by mid 1944 because of US submarines. The british rationing and churchill's angry speeches about starving is what you hear about in school but the nationwide starvation of japan was markedly much worse. Grave of the Fireflies is a depressing but amazing movie about trying to survivve amist the starvation and firebombings of tokyo in 1944.
The germans built so many U-Boats mostly because they couldn't do anything useful or cost effectively with their surface fleet, they had no carriers and the battleship that was enormously expensive was sunk, it's only sister ship was constantly being bombed in port by the british and under constant repair efforts.
other than those two things it's pretty spot on, glad he mentioned the confederate underwater coffin.
The UK has only submarine launched nukes,we don't have silo launched ballistic missiles or air launched although i think the eurofighters and the f35s are capable of launching nuclear cruise missiles and GPS guided gravity bombs.
modern diesel submarines are returning, they are not so bad. The guy in the video skips the development of coal submarines, the story is very simplified
Yeah. They also developed a reactor small enough to probably fit into your car, as long as you didn't mind it always continually producing the same heat as a catalitic converter, even when sitting in yoir drive way. They then hit it with a train, to prove it wouldn't fail in an accident. Of course, having millions of cars producing 1,000 degree of heat 24/7 would be a bad idea and you wouldn't want the thing in your garage, so... still, imagine one a bit bigger powering a neighborhood... Shrug...
What would be the consequences of an active nuclear reactor (or at least the extremely refined fuel) sinking to the bottom of the ocean? I imagine its happened already with nuclear powered submarines, but I imagine there would be A LOT of them scattered in the depths if they were commonly used in boats.
would the sheer scale of the ocean and its diluting effects make them negligible? Or do we go out of our way to recover them?
Also would the waves and surface weather conditions make them less feasible? (in addition to the geo-political tension aspect, which I had not considered, so I'm glad that was mentioned)
I've toured the USS Nautilus many times, and on 2 trip went from the Nautilus museum over to the Navy base in Groton and got to tour a Los Angeles class fast attack submarine
11:19- To be fair, the allies were sneaking war supplies on civilian ships (even medical ships) which the Germans did warn the allies not to do or they would sink them; They gave many warnings and kinda had a point about civilian ship no longer being civilian if they had weapons and ammo on board, even if the civilians had nary a clue that those things were onboard. Did the Germans fire on unarmed ships as well?...Yes and in those cases it is definitely a war crime :P
Cant stand Johnny Harris faux live reaction presentation style
He is one of the most cringe youtubers
I have less of a problem with nuclear armed submarines than I do with the other parts of the triad. ICBM is mostly just first strike capable at this point, and air dropped is easily stopped while posing the highest accident risk, but submarines lean hardest towards second strike deterrence. And when they have gone down in accidents, they were very manageable accidents unlike the airborne broken arrow incidents.
It might be nice not to have nuclear weapons at all, but the genie is out of the bottle and arms reduction treaties have a natural limiting factor. Nobody is willing to go below second strike annihilation of the other treaty signatories. My hope for the distant future is that the nuclear powers gradually stop threatening wars and eventually feel safe disarming. But that will require fundamental changes in the governance of all of them first.
10:20 Yeah, imagine a country constructing an actual science based submarine, but they would launch weather satellites instead of nukes... would literally never happen, this kind of tech needs wars 👍 what an advanced species we are 🤣
The USS Growler was a diesel/electric sub that was modified to carry a nuclear tipped cruise missile.
The missile was stored in, basically, a shed welded to the deck of the boat, which had to surface to open the shed and prepare the missile for launch.
cavitation is bad for propellers but...great for keeoing a rocket completely dry even when loosed from many fathoms bellow the waves. yes you heard right...that rocket stays 100% dry the whole time
Part of that unrestricted submarine warfare was because 'neautral' countries were shipping war supplies via civilian boats.
Not justifying it. I'm just saying. That's why it happened.
As a Swede, I have to say good pronunciation of Alfred Nobel. 👍 Many English speakers say "Alfred noble" instead.
28:15 did you hear about the spy satilites taking film photos that were dropped from space and caught by a plane?
Yup, natural circulation (I forget the actual term for the type of reactor) is why the easiest way to find an Ohio class boomer is to look for the equivalent of a black hole in the ocean
Technically I think nuclear weapons were on submarines before the nuclear powered submarine.
The soviets had missiles on diesel electric strapped to the outside. And the US and USSR both had nuclear tipped torpedoes
It would be really interesting to see you react to a video of another person I am subscribed to called sub brief. His video called "belgorod enters service" from about a year ago. It would be interesting to see your take on russia's new torpedo that is neuclear powered with a nuclear warhead so they can launch it from the submarine and it just roams around the ocean by itself waiting for a command for a target.
The Balao-Class was the best submarine that saw service in WW2. However, the German Type XXI was the best design, though it did nothing
Plc? Better? I think the iranians trying to enrich uranium have something to say about that. If u have plc in powerplants then i hope its 100% airgapped and u cant in any way connect outside datacarriers.
all nuclear weapons may not eliminate all life but i bet it can eliminate all humans
I don't think nuclear subs detain enything, quite sure that it is as any other lethal weapon, made to kill, you can't have peace out of war
however, the tech itself is really incredible, just like magic
Well I can’t speak for anyone else by I sure sleep easier at night knowing Trident 🔱 is out there cover my butt. Thanks 🙏 UK 🇬🇧
I just saw a video that Tyler could check: Exploring SKALA: The UNIQUE COMPUTER of CHERNOBYL (by Chornobyl Family)
They are basically metal whales.
So what I'm hearing here, is that the Navy needs to license mass production of sub reactors to pepper all over the US.
The subculture you speak of is simple to understand. The rules are easy. If you are in the military, you can take the piss out of the other military units etc, if youre on the outside and never been in, you dont get too and the entire military family will remind you of that.
JAG did an episode on this (the US sub listening to Soviet communications), project stoneshark l think it was
Side note most of our subs are nuclear weapon compatible. Many of them have the needed room and capability with vls tubes
The fact that modern SSBNs are around as massive as early *battleships* kind of blows my mind.
Smarter Every Day has a nuke powered submarine walkthrough in a multipart series. maybe watch those too? c:
I strongly agree about the use of nuclear on commercial shipping, would you be interested in doing a video on that?
You should play barotrauma
The US captured a u-boat before the end of the war. You can still see it in Chicago if I remember correctly
You cant run a nuclear sub forever, forget about feeding the crew - all moving parts need maintenance and lubrication - and often.
Your adversary and you pointing loaded guns at each others heads in a stand off is not a viable long term survival strategy.
Spacecraft dont take such pressure. But do get hit by super fast dust.
I prefer not to be in any of those.
This is probably the worst history of the submarine i've ever seen. It's tiktok facts level bad.
N.E.S.T Nuclear Emergency Safety Team. Is Mr. Folse on the team.
johnny harris is a fearful peace and love dude out of touch with reality spreading hyperbole..
Johnny is a hack. He overhypes things and poorly checks his facts. Take his videos with a lot of salt.
i would like to see a personal content from you beside the reaction videos that you do , to make more value and enjoy of your chanel
17:30- They also have some cool Oxygen candles for emergencies and extra stealthy things when needed :3
The og video guy like, just discovered this? lol
seriously how did this surprise him.
and not just were the first nuclear submarines not armed with nuclear weapons, but the first submarines armed with nuclear weapons weren't nuclear powered.
They were conventional powered guided missile and ballistic missile submarines.
The nuclear powers with nuclear armed submarines are the USA, USSR/Russia, PRC/China, France, and the UK.
Suspected nuclear powers that MAY have the capability are North Korea, Iran, and Israel (the latter 2 extremely unlikely given the size of their nuclear weapons and the submarine types they are operating).
There are some other countries that have the technology and knowhow to produce both nuclear weapons and submarines but choose not to do so, countries like Japan and South Korea (both have submarines but no nuclear weapons).
The old spar torpedo wasn't intended to detonate while attached to the spar. Rather it was intended to act as a sticky mine, getting attached to the target vessel and then detached, triggering a timed detonation system. Of course sometimes that didn't work properly (as has been the problem with complex systems basically forever).
Nuclear weapons have preserved peace since 1945. Their existence has stopped the pattern of large scale conflagrations between major powers that had a cadence of happening every 3-4 decades for centuries dead in its tracks.
They're a potential first strike weapon, given the much reduced reaction time given to the target nation by launching SLBMs and SLCMs from much closer to their shores without prior detection than is possible with surface ships, aircraft, or land based systems.
But their main function as a deterrence mechanism, providing a powerful second strike capability more than offsets that (at least for now, the suspected Soviet/Russian capability of delivering nuclear warheads by long range torpedo into foreign harbours and have them sit there, ready to detonate or be retrieved for potentially months at a time from hundreds of miles off shore is useful as a first strike weapon only, and NATO has no counter to it).
Ww2 diesel subs were using 1940s battery tech with no or very inefficient co2 scrubbers so 48 hrs was the limit on paper. And it would be extremely unpleasant with stale air stinking bodies, no bathing etc... so those we2 subs spent most of their time on the surface
Baron Munchausen : What's this?
Vulcan : Oh, this is our prototype. RX, uh, Intercontinental, radar-seeking, multi-warheaded nuclear missile.
Baron Munchausen : Ah! What does it do?
Vulcan : Do? Kills the enemy.
Baron Munchausen : All the enemy?
Vulcan : Aye, all of them. All their wives, and all their children, and all their sheep, and all their cattle, and all their cats and dogs. All of them. All of them gone for good.
Sally : That's horrible.
Vulcan : Ahh. Well, you see, the advantage is you don't have to see one single one of them die. You just sit comfortably thousands of miles away from the battlefield and simply press the button.
Berthold : Well, where's the fun in that?
There's been some controversy down here in Australia regarding nuclear submarines recently. Essentially, Australia is very anti-nuclear with very little public knowledge of the risks and safety of nuclear fuels, despite uranium being one of our major exports. Australia only has one nuclear reactor, at ANSTO, and it's a tiny (~50MW, I think) research/medical reactor. Its enriched fuel assemblies are imported from France. I visited it once in high school, and learned a little about how nuclear waste is stored safely. We are also not a nuclear armed nation, and the treaty on the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons prevents us from becoming one.
However, in spite of the low level of Australia's nuclear industry, we have agreed to field a fleet of nuclear submarines in accordance with the AUKUS security agreement (Australia, UK, US). Both of our major political parties are in support of this agreement, but it comes under criticism primarily from the greens, who are anti-nuclear power. There are some legitimate concerns that subs require higher enriched fuel than our research reactor, and the distribution or creation of that enriched fuel may set a precedent that undermines the non-proliferation treaty, but the vast majority of the criticism I have seen stems from either misinformation (as in the case of the anit-aukus coalition, conjuring images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, implying that the submarines would be nuclear armed and that we would have to store "large quantities" of nuclear waste), or just the price (people who want to further cut military spending).
While I've never served on a sub since i was never served in the Navy. I did serve in the Air Force assigned to Space Command which was spun off into the Space Force. I did work as an electrician on Virginia class attack submarines in Newport News shipyard in Newport News Virginia i would be interested in doing a week or two on a shakedown cruise where they test the new equipment . But I'm very familiar with how little space their is on a submarine for the people at anytime. Having crawled all in the engineering spaces that normally can't be accessable while underway. They didn't always give away their position since they could extend a snorkel which would allow fresh air for the engines charging the batteries and allowing it to power the boat at the same time. It pumped the exhaust out underwater to help defuse the smoke so there isn't a plum of smoke that would draw attention. And of course passive sonor could detect ships and subs at a distance. But its nothing compared to today where they can distinguish between different boats and ships by the sound that they produce accurately enough to assign them an actual ships name and place it sounds into a library that is outdated on each sub and surface ship so they can identify which navy vessels from other navys they are encountering both friendly and enemy plus cargo ships so they don't have to sink every vessel just those of the enemy.
I was on a Spruance-class destroyer in the late 80s-early 1990s, this class was designed to track down and destroy submarines. What bothered me the most was the guy calling that Missile a "Rocket", rockets are not guided and nobody really uses them very much except for land weapons designed for close proximity..
With the "ending life as we know it" that reminds me of an anime with a pretty interesting nuclear scene. The anime is called Zankyou no Terror, or the English title of Terror in Resonance
SPOILERS BELOW
The main characters are teens that were turned into human test subjects as kids in a project kept secret by a lot of powerful people. The become terrorists, although without killing, and with lots of riddles and specific targets so that they could find a detective to uncover what had happened and bring the story to the light. During the story they stole a small nuke, and threatened to blow it up in the city. In the end they did set it off, but at high altitude in order to create an EMP.
The CSS Hunley was originally designed to tow what we would today call a mine behind it on a line but they were concerned about the line fouling on the prop, or simply drifting into the sub thus they deemed the spar torpedo to be a safer option. Also all the major powers had pretty equally advanced submarines by the end of WWII. The Japanese had the best torpedo (long lance) and the US Gato and Balao class were as effective as any U-Boat, with some notable late war exceptions of designs by Japan and Germany that came too late for any impact, but they were also very specialized to certain purposes and certainly not representing any tech that the Allies could not have conceived or built for themselves had they seen a need for it (such as huge cargo carriers, or literal aircraft carrier submarines). The only real advancement was the German submarines being designed at the end of the war that were optimized for underwater performance at the expense of being good submersible surface ships (a true submarine teardrop hull form). It would not be until they made miniature nuclear power plants that a true submarine optimized hull form was practical since an air breathing engine required a submarine to spend a lot of time on the surface where that hull form would be very poor performing, have poor seakeeping, and be very inefficient during surface operations, but would be light years ahead in its subsurface performance and greatly reduce flow noise at speed.
Besides generating breathable air in submarines, even in the event of a life support system failure, submariners can still produce air by lighting special 'chlorate candles' ( a mixture of sodium chlorate and iron powder... Enough nerding...). It's quite fascinating, isn't it?
Could/are there any designs to just get hydrogen directly from a reactor skipping all costs/losses associated with steam, turbines, generators and electrolysis?
Nuclear sourced hydrogen/hydrocarbon fuels would be really useful for existing vehicles removing the need to replace everything with electric alternatives by indirectly using nuclear power.
Actually this is where the strangeness and brilliance of engineering comes in.
Nuclear submarines do not use electric propulsion, it is just too complicated and heavy duty, so instead they are direct drive off the turbine itself.
And THAT is made silent, through bearings and all, which is why the Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal with the Soviet Union happened.
I only know of one electric nuclear boat, and it is british, however that was only for low speed.
Once you needed to go places, it was direct drive like the rest of them.
@CMDRSweeper Intresting, but I was asking if there exists any nuclear reactor designed to produce hydrogen instead of electricity.
The hydrogen would be used as a replacement fuel (or as an ingredient for fuel) for cars, so we don't need to replace all existing hydrocarbon infrastructure.
You talked a little about differences between manual operation and automated/PLC driven operations. I operate (currently) the only hydraulically operated draw/swing bridge in my city (currently the world) and we still use PLC's, sometimes to the detriment of the operation of the bridge. Due to the size and safety needs of the bridge manual operation is still backed up by the PLC's, but that technology was old when the bridge was built.
We do refuel nuclear submarines. but only after about 20 years of service. The ship i served on has already been refueled. i was one of the very first crew members when it was built back in the mid 90's.
Please. Do videos about all the rabbit holes you wanted to dive down.
thoses arent rockets coming out of nuclear subs, they are missiles lol
I was on CVN-72 AC use to see signs in the line that said cuation radiation nearby no berthing. Our TV's in 2000 used to change colors.
this overly dramatic hat guy really grinds my nerves :D
Day two of asking for a breakdown of what would happen should humans suddenly abandon a running reactor and never return.
I hate when they say the range is "unlimited, except for food"... No it isn't.
There is only so far a nuclear boat can go before it needs maintenance and would otherwise break down.
Even not counting that, the reactor cores have a lifespan/limit to producing useful energy, in the early days of submarine nuclear power, the reactors needed refuelling at least every decade (Sea Wolf was commissioned in '57 and went in for refuelling in '65, just 8 years into her career, the sub can only travel a finite distance in that time.
we can make it way longer on a fuel load now. My boat never got refueled and was commissioned in 88 and just went to the yard for decom. Fair point about maintenance though, only so long you can put off rebuilding pumps or machinery before you need to go into the yard for an availability
@@nakkajin oh yeah, a modern highly enriched core will last 25+ years, practically the lifetime of the boat.
But in the early days it was very much not the case. Even when France came to build their first (and to this date, only) nuclear powered aircraft carrier, came into service in 2001, even then, it still only lasted something like 8 years before it needed an 18-month long refuelling and overhaul.