RE: Submarine K-19

["Dukelow, James S Jr" <jim.dukelow@PNL.GOV>]

Possibly apocryphal, but I have heard from submariner friends that the crew

of the Sea Wolf had the dark joke, "If the sea were sodium, they'd give us a

water reactor."



Best regards.



Jim Dukelow

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory

Richland, WA

jim.dukelow@pnl.gov



-----Original Message-----

From: Ted Rockwell [mailto:tedrock@CPCUG.ORG]

Sent: Friday, July 19, 2002 8:30 AM

To: RADSAFE; ANS-PIE

Subject: Submarine K-19





Friends:



Here's the attachment that didn't transmit, concerning the claim that

Russian nuclear submarine technology had outstripped ours.  It was printed

in the Naval Institute Procedings, April 1996.



Dr. Theodore Rockwell, author, The Rickover Effect (Naval Institute Press,

1994)-The Naval Institute recently issued Nautilus, a book by the British

Broadcasting Company writer Roy Davies, to accompany the BBC documentary on

submarines still showing worldwide. A generally good book to accompany an

excellent broadcast, it ended on a sour note with some petulant remarks

about how the Russians had scored "an incredible breakthrough," a liquid-

metal reactor "the principle that Rickover, ten years before, had refused to

reconsider ." The author had previously confided that "once Admiral [Hyman]

Rick- over had set his mind against something it was not his way to allow it

to be reconsidered." This "breakthrough" was deemed important "because it

made possible a smaller craft." The book bemoans "the finite constraints

imposed upon U.S. submarine designers by Admiral Rickover" which kept

America from matching Russian sub- marines as "the best in the world."

As Admiral Rickover's Technical Director during much of time in question,

I'd like to set the record straight. The conclusions cited cannot be drawn

from the broadcast itself, nor from the histories reported by Duncan,

Hewlett and others.

The Russians did develop some submarines of great speed and quietness. But

these characteristics resulted primarily from hull form, hull material,

jet-propulsion pumps, acoustic silencing, and other developments that were

wholly out of Rickover's sphere. He had no responsibility or authority in

those areas. Reducing the reactor to an infinitesimal point has little

impact on ship size; the reactor is small to begin with and requires the

same amount of radiation shielding regardless of size.

This is illustrated by the Seawolf (SSN-575) which was cooled by liquid

sodium. Although its reactor was thermally efficient, the additional

shielding required for the sodium system resulted in a power plant no

smaller than the equivalent pressurized water system in the Nautilus. The

ship was no smaller and no faster. When the sodium plant was replaced by a

water system, the ship was made no heavier by the change. So the crew was

burdened with sodium' s tremendous operational disadvantages and major

safety problems, with no compensating benefits. We were greatly relieved to

find that water did the job and we did not have to deal with sodium.

Rickover's long-range study group constantly evaluated various exotic

concepts, including the lead-bismuth system used by the Russians. We would

loved to have discovered a breakthrough that would lead to a reliable plant,

dramatically smaller in size and weight. But we did not, presumably for the

same thermodynamic and engineering reasons that power-plants ashore have not

found advantages in such systems, although they have tried for decades.



    <snip>

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