United States naval reactors

For the U.S. government office, see Naval Reactors.

46°33′54.8″N 119°31′09.7″W / 46.565222°N 119.519361°W / 46.565222; -119.519361

The Naval Reactor Disposal Site, Trench 94 200 Area East Hanford Site in Benton County in the U.S. state of Washington, in November 2009. Stored Reactor Compartment Packages of pre-Los Angeles class, Los Angeles class, and cruisers.

United States naval reactors are nuclear reactors used by the United States Navy aboard certain ships to generate the steam used to produce power for propulsion, electric power, catapulting airplanes in aircraft carriers, and a few minor uses. Such naval nuclear reactors have a complete power plant associated with them. All commissioned U.S. Navy submarines and supercarriers built since 1975 are nuclear powered, with the last conventional carrier, USS Kitty Hawk, being decommissioned in May 2009. The U.S. Navy also had nine nuclear-powered cruisers with such reactors, but they have since been decommissioned also.

Reactors are designed by a number of contractors,[who?] then developed and tested at one of several Department of Energy-owned and prime contractor-operated facilities: Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania and its associated Naval Reactors Facility in Idaho, and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in Niskayuna, New York and its associated Kesselring site in West Milton, New York, all under the management of the office of Naval Reactors. Sometimes there were full-scale nuclear-powered prototype plants built at the Naval Reactors Facility, Kesselring, and Windsor (in Connecticut) to test the nuclear plants, which were operated for years to train nuclear-qualified sailors.