Nuclear Navy

"Gentleman", the officer paused for dramatic effect pointing to a table loaded with large manila envelopes. "Your orders. Congratulations on passing ET A School”. Pandemonium ensued.

Fantastic, made it out of 'A' School and on to the toughest school in the Navy, Nuclear Power School. I had been in the Navy for almost a year at this point. ET school was behind me on to the monster, Nuclear Power School.

Let me back up a bit and explain what the hell I am talking about. Nuclear Power School, 'Nuke' School is the second leg of a very long path to becoming a "Nuke". Being a nuke means working on Navy nuclear reactors. This is a moment of extreme joy and terror. Joy, that you have passed with a sufficiently high score in your 'rating' and terror at just what is coming next. To move on from ET school to Nuke School you had to be in the top graduating percentage of your class.

Three rates make up the enlisted portion of the Nuclear Navy. ET, Electronic Technician, trains to be Reactor Operators. EM or Electrician Mate train to take care of all the electrical stuff around a Nuclear Reactor and then there are the MM's, Machinist Mates. Those guys take care of all the mechanical stuff. All are tough but Reactor Operator may be the toughest, or at least that's what the instructor told us on the first day of classes. I was an ET.

I enlisted for the simple reason I was out of work. This was 1980, things were different then. Ask your folks they’ll fill you in. Never been out of work before and now I was married and had bills and life stuff to deal with. I saw an ad in the paper, yep we used the paper back then, no social media, hell no personal computers. The ad said there was immediate work available so I called up the phone number. I got to be honest I hung up when I heard it was the Navy recruiter. I thought about it so I called back and; well I joined up.

Being a nuke is tough, get through ET school, that's a long 6 months in Great Lakes, Ilinois. After successfully graduating from boot camp. If anyone ever suggests going to Great Lakes for any reason, just say no. Trust me.

Well after your A school you get your orders to Orlando Florida. Now you may be wondering why there is a Navy base in the middle of Florida. Go ahead and wonder, we sure as hell didn't know why, but that was where the school was located. Nuclear Power School is another very intense 6 months of school. I would like to describe just what this school is like but unfortunately, this is classified. It's tough. A large percentage of students do not make it through this school. I believe for my class of Twidgets, (that's Navy slang for ET's and EM's. MM's were known as "Snipes") was about thirty percent failed out. The MM class was around a sixty percent drop rate.

Tough school.

Now I know a bunch of egg head ET's studying thermodynamics and electrons splitting apart are not the SEALS, not even close, but at least they get a bell they can ring to exit the program. Nukes don't. If you want out of the program you have to fail school or get busted for something. A bag of green leafy material in your pocket would suffice to get you booted. So our only exit was to be a failure.

Failure was not an option.

Well if you make it through you get to go to Nuclear Power Prototype Training Unit. That’s right another school. This is where you qualify on a Navel Nuclear Reactor, a real one. Idaho Falls, Idaho is the location of the Prototype Training Unit that I attended. You may have thought Orlando was a strange place for a base, go to Idaho Falls, reality slips away pretty quick.

I have it on good authority that the country there is beautiful, at least my wife says it was nice. You live in town but it’s a long-ass bus ride to the “site” every day for twelve-hour shifts. I saw a bus, a reactor and that’s about it. If you had trouble in Nuke school you probably weren’t going to pass prototype. Drop rates were in the high eighty percent range, and worse. Be nice to see Hollywood do a picture about getting “Qualified” I could see Brad Pitt or Depp struggling to draw the electrical system of a reactor plant from memory. On second thought maybe not. Keanu Reeves maybe.

The fact is you can't tell anyone what hell we were going through. Once you hit the door for Reactor Training you lived in the land of Secret classifications. Hollywood makes lots of Navy movies, and we are very appreciative of that effort. But the Navy is more than fighter jets taking off the deck of a carrier. In fact, if it weren't for the boys in engineering making steam the jets couldn't take off at all. Oh well, I guess making hot water just isn't as exciting as Tom Cruise flying upside down.

I served on the aircraft carrier CVN70 Carl Vinson as a Reactor Operator and that basically is as far as I can go in telling you what I did. Shame really there were some very exciting moments. Wish I could tell you about them.