Career Autobiography - Part 3: Inside the Nuclear Training Pipeline

Part 2 is Here

I survived boot camp, and then started the technical portion of Navy training.

The first technical school that I went through in the Navy was Basic Electricity and Electronics, which started shortly after boot camp.

This was one of the most interesting schools that I've ever attended, and maybe that's because I was finally being exposed to something useful and practical to the real world.

It was fascinating learning about simple circuits, and the relationship between current, voltage, and resistance.  You might be given a series-parallel circuit, given a few values, and have to calculate the current through each pathway.  Below is an example. 

Students learned about capacitors and inductors - and how those influence the phase shift between voltage and current in an AC circuit.  They learned how transformers and rectifiers worked, and how transistors can be used both as on-off switches, oscillators, or amplifiers.  The final pass/fail exam was in a simple electronics lab where you troubleshot a simple AM radio to determine down to the component why it wasn't working.

To pass the final exam, students used a signal generator to inject a radio signal into different sections of the radio.  Then students would use an oscilloscope to determine where the injected signal was good, and roughly where it stopped passing through the radio.

I'm pretty sure this was the oscilloscope the school used to teach the class - The Tektronix Model 2235, also known by its military number, AN/USM-488.

I remember at the time thinking how beautiful it was, with that cool blue screen with the time and voltage graduations.  At the time it was the most complex and fascinating piece of equipment that I'd ever touched.  That was before I got to play with submarines, generators, gas turbines and nuclear reactors.  I'm still quite fond of oscilloscopes though!
 
After getting a rough idea where the signal failed to get through the radio, students would have to use a multimeter to identify the specific component that had failed.  Excellent training!

This course provided the basic technical understanding required for what the Navy refers to as "A" School.  "A" School is the actual trade school that the Navy guaranteed you when you enlisted, and the school that determines your "Rate", or trade.

Since Nuclear Power candidates are only allowed to choose the nuclear program, and not their "Rate", the Navy assigns the desired number of nuclear students to each rate.  I would guess offhand that the assignment ratio is roughly 40% are assigned to Machinist's Mate, 30% to Electrician's Mate, and 30% to Electronics Technician.  As mentioned in the previous post, I learned during boot camp that I was to become an Electrician's Mate.

After completing Basic Electricity and Electronics in San Diego at the Naval Training Center, I was sent to Great Lakes Naval Training Center for Electrician's Mate "A" School.  Frankly, Electrician's Mate School was a bit of a disappointment, after learning some of the neat stuff that goes on in  electronic circuits.

Below, the administrative building at Great Lakes Naval Training Center

Electrician's Mate "A" school taught the systems that deliver electricity throughout aship, and how to identify and correct problems within those systems.  The school taught about AC Motors and Generators, DC motors and Generators, different types of relays, fuses and wires, as well as motor control schemes for starting DC, single and multi-phase AC motors.  It was all very good training, but it wasn't very difficult to learn.  I graduated 2nd in the class, behind a guy who had previously been an Electrician's Mate, but had returned to the Navy.  Not too bad, I figured. 

At the end of this school, I was automatically promoted to pay grade E-4 (enlisted pay rank 4), with the military title of Electrician's Mate, 3rd Class.  This was a step up from (E-3) Fireman.  I had skipped the ranks of E-1 (Fireman Recruit) and E-2 (Fireman Apprentice) by virtue of signing up for 5 years active duty, with extension to 6 years during Nuclear Power School.

Electrician's Mate "A" School was short, and this was actually very fortunate, because Great Lakes Naval Training Center was an unpleasant place to be stationed in the early 1980s.  In 1979, there had been a two-day long riot by trainees at the base.  In the aftermath, the commanding officer was relieved of his command and replaced.  Nearly sixty enlisted sailors were put through summary court-martial.  Some of these sailors were found not guilty, others were punished with confinement and loss of pay, and some were dishonorably discharged following punishment.

Up until the riot, the base apparently had an atmosphere more like a college campus.  Civilian clothes and drinking were allowed, etc.  When I was there, uniforms were required.  When it was time to attend class, we assembled and marched.  It felt like a step backwards from Basic Electricity and Electronics school, back to boot camp.  There were few times in life that I was more happy than when I left Great Lakes - it felt like what I imagined a dour Soviet work camp might feel like.

Most of the students in my Electrician's Mate "A" school class were bound for the fleet.  A handful were nukes, and we were all bound for the next training duty station in Orlando, Florida.  Everyone went home on leave after "A" school, except for me.  I had no home to return to - my mother having moved to Japan shortly after I left for boot camp.  I flew directly to Orlando, and then hung out in an empty barracks until my classmates started arriving a couple of weeks later.

After about a month, enough students were assembled to commence a training class.  Pre-nuclear power school started in September of 1981.  This was a six week long, broad review of high school mathematics.  The class started with basic stuff like multiplication and division, and quickly moved into fractions, scientific notation, logarithms, and toward the end, Algebra and Trigonometry.

Nobody, including the Navy, saw any value in failing out of Nuclear Power School as a result of being unprepared for it.  Even so, about 35% of the class failed academically.  Between boot camp and the fleet, the attrition rate was well over 50%.

I had never been very concerned about the kind of grades I got in High School, and that was because there was no way to motivate me.  The Navy knew how to motivate me, with the threat of corporal punishment and an extended enlistment without getting nuclear operating experience.  I was quite focused the entire time I was being trained, trust me on this.

Below:  Nuclear Power School (NPS), Orlando, Florida.  The Y-shaped building on the right held the preschool and the first three months of Power School.  Afterwards, all training material was hauled across the courtyard to the left Y-shaped building, and three more months of class followed.  Nuke school barracks are at the top, bordering Lake Susannah.  The mess hall is just off shot to the right.

Below: View of the school from a different angle.  The mess hall is the flat building at the lower left, and the barracks are the three story structures.

After NPS preschool, I was assigned to class 8201 - the first two numbers are the year, and the second two numbers are the class of that year.  There are normally 6-8 classes per year, in various stages of completion.

There are a quite a few deeply technical subjects taught at nuclear power school.  I've touched on a few of them in other posts:

• Nuclear Instrumentation 
• Electrical Theory
• Radiation Protection
• Reactor Kinetics
• More Reactor Theory
• Steam Cycle 

All the stuff above is unclassified information and readily available on the internet.

They taught all that in much more depth - and a whole bunch of other material that is specific to US military nuclear propulsion that I won't try to remember, and wouldn't discuss anyway.  There was constant testing and quizzes.  Since the material was marked Confidential - NOFORN (not releasable to foreign nationals), all after-class study had to be done inside the building.

There were several system drawings that you had to be able to draw from memory, showing various flow paths for unusual operating scenarios.  Which is funny, because nobody at that point had ever been near a real reactor and steam plant, let alone experienced abnormal operating conditions.

A typical weekday would be:  Get up, shower, eat chow (the mess hall was conveniently close to school) , to to school, get lunch, return to school.  Study, go to dinner, return to school and study, go to bed.  Repeat.  Weekends would involve at least 4 hours homework in the building.  I think they shut extended study hours down at 10 PM - and maybe ran as late as midnight.  I was usually done with homework and studies by around 8:00 PM.

At the end of the ordeal, we were given The Final.  This was a comprehensive written exam that was an all-day long affair.  Each section that you were taught was tested extensively.  The test went four hours during the morning, with a break for lunch, followed by four more hours of testing.  We lost several guys academically to the final test.  I felt bad for them, because by completing Nuclear Power Training, they had extended their active duty by another year.

At the end, I graduated with a 3.53 GPA, which is a high B or low A.  Good enough for the Navy and good enough for me.

During Nuclear Power School, we had been asked where we would like to attend "Prototype Training".  Prototypes were/are the Navy's land-based test reactors, where initial design testing was done, and afterwards these first-of-their-kind propulsion plants were turned into hands-on training schools.

At the time, there were a number of prototype reactor plants to train on:

• S1W - Submarine, 1st generation core, Westinghouse design.  In central Idaho
• A1W - Aircraft Carrier, 1st generation core, Westinghouse design.  In central Idaho
• S5G - Submarine, 5th generation core, General Electric design.  In central Idaho
• S1C - Submarine, 1st generation core, Combustion Engineering design.  In Windsor, CT
• D1G - Destroyer (Cruiser really), 1st generation core, General Electric design.  In upstate NY
• S3G - Submarine, 3rd generation core, General Electric design.  In upstate New York
• S7G - Submarine, 7th gen core, General Electric design.  In upstate New York
• S8G - Submarine, 8th gen core, General Electric design.  In upstate New York

I was hoping to get back to Idaho, and had requested assignment to any of the Idaho prototypes.  A few days after passing Nuclear Power School, new duty stations were announced.  Nobody was going to Idaho.  Apparently there were refuelings or other maintenance issues, so nobody from class 8201 was assigned to Idaho prototypes.  I was feeling a bit homesick, so that was a bit depressing.

Instead, I was assigned to get hands-on training on the S8G prototype.  This in fact was pretty cool, even though it was far from home.  This was the power plant for the then brand-new Ohio Class Ballistic Missile Submarines.  These are the largest submarines ever built by the US, and the power plant was accordingly powerful.


Below: Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory, Kesselring site.  Upstate New York

Only two previous training classes had been through the S8G training.  These were sea-going submariners who needed the training to transfer and become the crew for Ohio Class ships that were then under construction, and going through commissioning and sea trials.  We were the first class to come directly from Nuclear Power School and train on the S8G prototype reactor and power plant.

One of the things about Prototype Training is that you have to throw out quite a bit of what was burned into your brain over and over so that you could pass the previous school.  Life isn't fair.  The nuclear Navy trained you in their most common reactor propulsion plant in Orlando.  Unfortunately, each of the Prototype reactors was significantly different from that, so you had to learn the new power plant in excruciating detail, and retain only that which applied.  Which with S8G, wasn't a lot.

The plant was so new and advanced (at the time) that only the theory stuff applied.  The reactor core could run in natural circulation mode, so the core design was way different, the coolant system was different, the arrangement was different.  The propulsion and electrical systems were larger and different.  Nothing was the same.  At the same time, it was fascinating being exposed to learning the very latest technology that nuclear propulsion that the Navy's had. 

 There was attrition at this school as well.  It was a different sort of attrition than we had experienced at the other schools.  This attrition was due to drinking/driving fatalities.  We lost 4 guys out of about 160 in the class.  The commanding officer held a stand-down and addressed all of us.  He stated that our odds of surviving prototype at this point were worse than if we had been shipped off to Vietnam.

I just looked it up.  2.59 million served in Vietnam.  58,000 died there.  That's a 2.2% death rate.  The death rate for prototype was 2.5%.  Higher if you were single and drank (and drove), which everyone I knew did back then.  Anyway, I survived the class.

In the process, I learned how to monitor equipment, take readings, how to do 3-way communications, how to do maintenance, how to operate and synchronize generators, how to operate the throttles of a submarine, and several other things I probably overlooked.

Amazing training, and it took place where it wouldn't endanger a ship and the lives of its crew.  Some of the values that the Navy Nuclear Program ingrained in me that I still hold dear are to value integrity and knowledge, as well as persistence and excellence.  The transition back to the civilian world was more difficult than it should have been, because I was used to everyone around me holding those same values.  In the civilian world, not all those things apply to everyone.

At the end of Prototype training, I was given orders to report to the fleet.  The next four years of my life would be aboard USS Barb, hull number SSN 596.

Part 4 is Here