Nuclear Power in the Past

In the past, nuclear power has been used mainly for the military. The first use of this great energy was in the form of an explosive, far more powerful than anything anyone had ever seen. It was started in World War II in secrecy, by the name of The Manhattan project, located in the deserts of New Mexico. There, a scientist created one of the greatest bombs in the world. These explosives were then dropped first on Hiroshima, then Nagasaki, in order to bring Japan to its knees. That was one thing nuclear energy was used for, but it was not the end.

The army had other plans for nuclear energy other than just building bombs. The army used nuclear power to build nuclear reactors that would propel ships. In 1955, the US built the USS Nautilus, a submarine. With nuclear energy, submarines would be able to move up to 20-25 knots, something they could not do before. However, they did not stop there. In 1960, the army produced the USS Enterprise, an aircraft carrier propelled by 8 reactor units. By 1962, 26 nuclear propelled submarines were in action, and 30 more were in the making. This information was shared with the United Kingdom, but France, Soviet Union, and China progressed individually. The army however, wasn't the only ones who started to use nuclear power.

The US also started to build merchant vessels. In 1962, the United States of America built the NS Savannah. It was fast, but not economically practical. The Germans caught up and built the Otto Hahn. It was powerful, and traveled close to 650,000 nautical miles in ten years. In those ten years, it never faced problems with the engine. Like the Savannah however, it became too expensive and was changed to diesel. In all, nuclear energy did not work out very well for civil ships.

In contrast, nuclear energy was viable with icebreakers in the artic. One of the factors that proved nuclear energy would be great in the artic, was simply the fact that refueling was a problem with other fuels. Also, nuclear energy provided more of the thrust and power needed to break the great ice fields of the cold artic. The Soviet Union came up with the first nuclear powered icebreaker, the Lenin. It served for thirty years, then came in an even larger class of nuclear propelled icebreakers, the Arktika class. In 1975 the NS Arktika was launched into the artic.