The First Floating Nuclear Power Station

Nuclear power really hit its stride in the 1950s. In the post-war period, there was a rush to develop peaceful uses for splitting the atom, beyond its application as a …. The First Floating Nuclear Power Station.

Soon enough, nuclear reactors were hooking up to power grids and helping propel ships and submarines around the globe. Eventually, this led to an obvious idea—what if a ship with a reactor could serve as a floating nuclear power station. That question would be answered in the mid-1960s, with an American project of some strategic importance.

Whatever Floats Your Boat You might think that the first floating nuclear power plant would have been a US or Soviet navy project, but you’d be quite wrong. Instead, it was actually the US Army which was responsible for achieving this feat. The project began as part of the US Army Nuclear Power Program, which was intended to develop small reactors that could be deployed to remote regions to supply electricity.