Such words of encouragement.
Well Nic_Flo, it is all up to you. Granted there may be issues with MJ and the advice to cleanup first is the best to consider, or you won't be able to get in.
There is a little more to consider then just the Navy nuke program however. Have to remember where you will be serving. I know the Long Beach and Bainbridge are decommissioned, so you only have a few nuke carriers or duty on submarines. You can be pretty certain you'll be on a sub and that is a totally different thing to consider.
The submariners are a little different breed. On a surface ship, you can haul ass to a life boat if the ship is sinking. On a sub, you are already sunk, so where can you haul ass to? That makes them totally reliant upon each other. US Navy hasn't lost a sub since the Thresher and Scorpion and todays boats are marvels of technology compared to what I sailed on in the 70's. But one thing hasn't changed in 30 years, or in the history of the sub service, all subs are just a hulk of steel with out a well trained crew that can count on each other in a crisis.
When your a thousand feet down and a line breaks and the ocean is coming into the "People Tank" at 1000 gallons per minute, you better know that the guy in the lower level knows exactly which valve to close to isolate leak. Getting through Nuke Power School and Prototype, is is just beginning of your training. There are watch station qualifications and ships qualifications that you have to get through. Figure a year to qualify for your Dolphins and a year to qualify as reactor operator, and you do them both at the same time. Go Dink and you'll be studying your butt off get off the Dink List. No movies, card games or anything else except study when you are on the Dink List.
To qualify subs isn't like the old diesel boats where every man knew every other man's jobs. But you are expected to know the boat from end to end and where all the major equipment is in each compartment and where all the major isolations in an emergency.
Nuke quals are another story, you ARE expected to know EVERYTHING. And the guys who make sure you do are the ones who will be sleeping when you are on watch. No doubt about it, any Reactor Operator I trained knew more then I did when I signed off his card.
Then of course once you qualify, there are drills and drills and more drills. Reactor Scrams, Main Steam Leaks, Flooding, Fire, etc. Training never stops. I checked the startup log at the end of patrol once. Besides the normal reactor startup for sea trials and getting under way for patrol, I logged 30 reactor startups in 76 days of patrol, with two from out in the machinery space. We could go from a scram to full power line up in 24 minutes. That was all training and not what you got from nuke school or prototype. The best fleet operators I served with, didn't finish nuke school in the top of the class and the Hot Runners at Basic NPS washed out in prototype.
It's isn't so much are you cut out for the nuke program, but are you cut out to be a Submariner?
