any other Nukes out there?

Post Reply New Topic

I'm just curious if anyone else here was a Nuke in the Navy. If you have to ask what I mean, then you weren't one. Nuke is a the short term for those of us who were in the Nuclear Power Program in the US Navy, we were/are the ones who operate and maintain the nuclear reactors aboard ships.

I joined the Navy upon graduating from high school, and I took the ASVAB, and my recruiter talked me into the nuke program, telling me that I was best suited as an electrician. I later found out that my scores were high enough for any of the fields, and electrician was actually my lowest, but it was still high enough to qualify, and they needed electricians, and it meant a better bonus for my recruiter.

Anyway, after boot camp, all the 'nukes' were shipped off to A-Schools together, and Nuke Power School directly after that, and we all had 4-man dorms together. I discovered several things about myself, my classmates, and the other people at the base. Mainly, I discovered that all 'nukes' were considered weird by the rest of the navy, and i noticed it too, and I fit right in with them. To get into nuke school, you had to be very intelligent, mechanically inclined, and good at math and physics. Social skills were not on the agenda. In short, at least half of my classmates were more than likely aspies, though it would be more than 15 years before I would hear about AS.

So, since there were 7 classes a year, and about 180 students per class, that makes a lot of aspies in a high concentration. I'm just wondering how many of them have found this site yet.

I was not in the navy (This was before 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell') but I have known a person who was a Nuke, and another who was an Army and later NSA Cryptoanalyst. The guy who was a Nuke was fairly normal. The Cryptoanalyst OTOH, was strange even to me, but we got along ok.

There are a lot of NTs in the crypto community, but all of the good cryptos had more aspie traits. Me included (but I was Air Force, working mostly with Navy).

Hi Tanz,

Yes, I was a Nuke too. USS Enterprise from 1986 to 1991. And the Nimitz from 1991 to 1993. I was also an electrician. I was Load Dispatcher qual'ed on both and never tried for Watch Supervisor.

Dang, brings back memories- I *HATE* salinity cells!

I'm a self DX'd aspie, but some of my buddies were *really* strange.

Have you found the "official reactor department home page" by King Paul? Google ranks it first over the legitimate sites. If you're really bored and want to read some sea stories.

After taking my ASVAB my recruiter tried to talk me into the Nuke program as well but I elected to stick with my Corpsman duty. Currently, I'm to ship to boot camp this Summer but now they are trying to talk me into ROTC. I haven't made up my mind yet.

somehow I missed the notify of replies for this thread when you did, but no, I had never seen that. Thanks for the info, it looks like a great site.

BTW JYossarian, I would take the ROTC if offered. I was too late to get that, and I regret it to this day. Back then I had no idea what I wanted. Also, I would have gone corpsman, but one of my Aspie things is 90% of biological fluids make me really queasy; not good for a HM.