Voyage of the Devilfish

Maneuvering, the nuclear control room, was close to the forward bulkhead of engine room upper level on the starboard side. It was a closet-sized space filled to bursting with three control panels facing forward, a large panel on the aft wall and four watchstanders. Nearest the door of maneuvering on the ship’s centerline the throttleman stood at the steel wheel of the throttle. His panel was the steam plant control panel, his gages read steam pressures and temperatures — the heartbeat of the steam plant. Touching the throttleman’s right shoulder was the reactor operator, who sat in front of the reactor-plant control panel. Its slanting lower surface had a mock-up piping diagram of the main coolant system that showed the portcoolant loop on the left and its mirror image on the right. In the center of the coolant system was a reactor core with a pistolgrip lever protruding from it that moved the control rods. With the plant critical, the rods only affected coolant temperature, but when the plant was shut down the rods were withdrawn to start the nuclear fission reactions that heated the main coolant water, boiling the water in the steam generators and thereby providing steam to the turbines. The vertical section of the panel was mostly stuffed with electrical gages showing reactor-plant temperatures and pressures and the reactor-power meter, which went from zero to 150 %. Above 100 % the meter face was painted blood red. No naval reactor had ever been above 103 % power. Much over 100 %, the core would experience some fuel melting. At some level above that, say 130 %, the fuel melting would get substantially worse, irradiating the crew.

Against the starboard bulkhead was the electric-plant control panel where the remote circuit breakers that channelled the electricity to ship’s distribution were operated. Behind the electrical operator was the Engineering Officer of the Watch, the EOOW, a nuclear-qualified officer who supervised the watchstanders and was responsible for the engineering spaces. The battle stations EOOW was Lieutenant Commander Matthew Delaney, a rotund red-faced man with a seemingly perpetual frown. Delaney, a deadly serious man, could be at odds with Captain Pacino over what he perceived as the sometimes not sufficient concern showed by Pacino toward the potentially dangerous reactor. After all, unlike civilian reactors with their low-power density-cores, a Navy reactor could blow sky high. Navy engineers called such a potential catastrophe a “rapid prompt critical disassembly.” Delaney called it a nuclear explosion. In the moments after the “torpedo in the water” announcement, the order to scram the plant took Delaney by surprise. An exchange of weapons with the Russian he could understand. Under the ice, it had been rumored to happen. But with an exchange of torpedoes came standard evasive tactics — all-ahead flank, cavitate the screw, run like hell at max speed until the ship was hit or the weapon exhausted its fuel.

Delaney, though assigned as the ship’s engineer, was also qualified for command of a nuclear submarine. The U.S. Navy insisted on all officers being tactically qualified. So the goings-on in the control room were no mystery to Matt Delaney. However, the order to scram the reactor was. Instead of continuing the run at flank, as the plant was just seconds before, the Conn had ordered all stop. That was wrong, Delaney thought. He realized that fear of an ice-raft collision and subsequent hull rupture was justified. But an underice collision was a roll of the dice. Maybe it would happen, maybe not. A Russian torpedo was not a game of chance. If the target failed to run it had less chance of surviving than a wide-eyed doe staring down a hungry wolf. Pacino must be playing dead, Delaney realized. But under the ice there was no surface to go to when the battery died. Delaney would need power to restart the reactor, especially for the power-hungry reactor main coolant pumps. And without juice from the battery, the ship would die. Worse, the loss of the hovering system after the collision meant the ship would need to keep bare steerage way over the fairwater and sternplanes to keep from sinking — which required propulsion — another reason to stay critical. But with a dead reactor they’d have to use the Emergency Propulsion Motor, another damned electricity hog. The battery would be exhausted in fifteen minutes, and when it died so would the Devilfish.