I'm getting e-mails and questions from readers, so let me answer everyone here.
As some of you already know, I spent 20 years in the U.S. Navy's nuclear submarine force before retiring in 2002. Five years of that was sea duty on two submarines. Another eight years was instructor duty at two training commands, including nuclear reactor curriculum at Naval Submarine Training Center Pacific (Pearl Harbor). Of course before I got to any of that, I went through the nuclear training pipeline as a student.
As a geezer nuke, I've seen a few swings of the pendulum. The Navy's nuclear program is hard, and it takes a certain personality as well as a sustained overtime effort. Admissions screening criteria are very high, minimum daily standards are rigorous, and performance is constantly under scrutiny. You're always training and practicing and upgrading. When you're out in the fleet, you're only as good as your last inspection-- and you're never as good as you think you are. Annual inspections are augmented with surprise visits, and the crews beat themselves senseless with their own review programs. We're very hard on ourselves, and my spouse & daughter will attest that we can be impossible to live with. Imagine an entire submarine engineering department crewed by Star Trek Vulcans: even my spouse, let alone the rest of the Navy, refers to me as a "f$%^in' nuke". Sometimes our hypercompetitive attitude goes too far, while other times we slack off a millimeter and then smack ourselves in the face with our own hubris.
I've been through more nuclear inspections that I can remember, and we're perpetually tempted to cheat. (Oh, the sea stories.) These days I don't have any inside knowledge at NPS or at the fleet command level, but when I was in uniform I'd say that every year a submarine or aircraft carrier (out of 65+) had to deal with one or two people who crossed the line. It's far less than 1%. More frequently, a CO or supervisor is fired for general incompetence-- maybe 1%-3%. Many more people fail exams or interviews or screw up a task and have to recover through retraining and re-inspection. Every decade or so a submarine will actually fail an inspection, have to shut down the reactor, and return to port on the surface on diesel propulsion until they fix their deficiencies.
NPS is a year-long student crucible that forecasts how well you'll do in the life (or not). You want to weed 'em out during training before they fail at sea and risk the whole crew (or spread radioactive material across an entire harbor). Even after the entry screening, classroom attrition is probably 10-20% and performance attrition on the training reactors is probably another 5-10%. Some students can't learn fast enough or can't perform under pressure. Others just give up. I was an above-average student, yet I failed several written exams and a final exam before I qualified. Every nuke remembers a classmate who cracked (mentally or physically) under the pressure, or who failed their written/oral exams and couldn't recover.
When you get through the nuclear training pipeline, you're rewarded with 3-5 years of sea duty. When it's (finally) time to rotate to shore duty, the top-performing nukes can become instructors at NPS.
NPS staff duty is a great career boost. You used to have to agree to an additional "payback" service obligation of 2-3 years to get stationed there, and maybe that's still the case. You learn how to manage personnel, run a training program, and excel at public speaking. You learn a lot more about nuclear theory and the rest of the engineering plant. You get tons of training experience, and you can take the materials with you to your next sea duty to boost your own training program. NPS is also a nice quality of life. If you're an instructor then you're on regular shifts with minimal overtime. (You still work some weekends, but you get weekday comp time.) Unlike sea duty, your schedule is largely predictable and you sleep at home every day. If a college degree is your priority, you have the opportunity to make it happen. If liberty is a priority, you can make that happen too.
However the staff duty privileges depend on requalifying on the NPS nuclear plants. We used to have land-based military nuclear reactors that were the prototype designs for the fleet propulsion systems. There are still one or two of these prototypes in operation for training & research. However most of today's students train in Charleston SC on two 1970s submarine carcasses, literally welded to the piers, nicknamed "floatotypes". They have ancient (by today's standards) tech that does not exist anywhere else in the Navy. The basics are the same as the fleet nuclear plants, but there are plenty of unique systems and lots of material challenges. The instructors studied these plants for a few months as students, but when they return to them 3-5 years later they've forgotten a lot-- and now they have to learn a lot more than the students. This piles on more pressure to qualify.
http://navylive.dodlive.mil/2014/02/04/press-briefing-transcript-about-navy-investigation-into-cheating-allegations-at-nuke-reactor-school/The admiral on the left is Jon Greenert, the Navy's CNO and a legendary Pearl Harbor submariner as well as a genuinely nice guy. (In 1990 he was the CO of USS HONOLULU and winning every award that COMSUBPAC hands out. I was a department head on another boat in the squadron-- we hated HONO while secretly wishing we could replicate their success.) The guy on the right is John Richardson, one of the top ten midshipmen from my USNA class and well on his way to becoming another legendary nuke. He's in the second year of his 4-8-year tour as the head of Naval Reactors.
From their press briefing (and from what I'm reading on a few submariner blogs) it looks like some qualified NPS instructors were letting unqualified NPS instructors study their actual written exams before they took them. The exams were for the job of Engineering Watch Supervisor, the top enlisted watchstation in the engineering duty section. It's handled by E-6s or chief petty officers, either from aircraft carriers or submarines, with ~6-10 years of experience. In addition to the written exams they had to pass a one-hour oral interview with a supervisory board and then demonstrate satisfactory on-watch performance as EWS (including casualty drills).
The exams come from a database of hundreds of questions. It's all essay, no multiple choice or short answers. The answers are relatively straightforward (to a nuke, anyway) but they're extremely detailed and take a while to write out, so time pressure is high. A "good exam" is considered one where the group's average grade is 2.8-3.2, with maybe one or two below 2.5 and one or two above 3.6. (Nobody ever gets a 4.0.) To prepare for the exam, everyone studies the exam bank (with the answers) and they spend more hours drilling each other on the topics.
I don't know the details. Perhaps the instructors cheated by revealing what questions would be on the tests, or possibly even not properly proctoring the exam. One of the new unqualified NPS staff objected at what had apparently deteriorated into a common practice among 20-30 staff, and now we're reading about it.
Let me point out that cheating at NPS is exceptionally stupid. If you have several years of sea-duty experience, then you already know enough to score a 2.8 and you just have to learn a few new unique procedures or numbers to hit a 3.8. The unqualified instructors were lazy (or unmotivated) and lacking in ethical standards. Maybe the staff "accelerated" the qualification process so that they could take leave (as soon as the newly-qualified staff could fill the watchbill) or maybe they just wanted to have a better duty rotation. Instead of cheating they could have helped the unqualified staff to study up on the unique questions, or let them work through old exams (different questions), or simply demonstrated the standards and motivated the new staff to pull their weight. Instead they threw away their careers-- and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
I should mention that none of this affected the floatotypes themselves. There was no release of radiation or plant damage or other misbehavior. The unqualified staff were always following the authorized operating procedures under the supervision of the regular staff. When people were named in the cheating scandal, they were removed from training duties. The reactors were shut down and will stay that way until Naval Reactors is satisfied that the rest of the staff has the integrity and knowledge to restart.
Despite what you heard from a confused anchor or two on FOX or CNN, NPS is not connected to the Air Force's issues with nuclear missiles. Even the Navy's nuclear missiles are maintained & launched by a separate group of enlisted techs.
The NPS scandal could turn into a witch hunt, but I think the investigators will sort things out fairly quickly. Note that the admirals were in front of the press less than 24 hours after the first phone call. A nuclear-trained admiral is supervising the investigation, and he'll be able to ask for help from NCIS or staff from the other prototypes. ADM Richardson has the decision authority. The Navy's IG will review the whole investigation afterward and weigh in with their own recommendations. The CNO cannot allow the rest of the Navy to think that he's cutting slack for his fellow bubbleheads.
I doubt that anyone will go to jail. Everyone who cheated will lose their nuke designators and be reassigned to administrative duties not connected with students or training. Those who clearly violated the UCMJ will go to admiral's mast or a court martial (their "choice"). The most flagrant cheaters could be discharged. Some may lose a few months' pay or be reduced in rank or be sentenced to 30 days' restriction. All those found guilty will spend the rest of their service obligations on (*shudder*) submarine tenders or shore maintenance facilities, and they'll probably be unable to re-enlist. (This means they can't earn an active-duty pension.) A few officers or chief petty officers may be held accountable at mast for lax oversight and will get career-ending letters of reprimand. If the investigators find that NPS had a culture of poor integrity or a bad command climate then the CO may be relieved.
This update implies that up to 30 people have been implicated.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2014/02/05/navy-nuclear-cheating-scandal-grows-to-30-sailors.html?comp=700001075741&rank=1That probably includes most of the EWS-qualified staff and the officers as well as the unqualified staff, so I doubt that the number will rise much higher. I think it'll go back down to fewer than 20.
Even when Naval Reactors is ready to restart the reactors, the watchbill will be very tight. They could try to return to the 24/7 training schedule but they'd be working 14-hour shifts. The Navy's assignment officers are bringing in new instructors, of course, but it'll take a few months to get them up to speed. Management (and some civilian contractor nuclear engineers) will all go back on the watchbill. The students have plenty of other studying to do during this shutdown, but a few will be waiting their turn to demonstrate "practical factors" like reactor startups/shutdowns. The worst case is that they'll be held up for 4-6 weeks before going to sea duty.
I know that we have a few more nukes among the posters here, so please offer whatever details you can-- and feel free to correct my mistakes.
Again, pendulum swings. I see this as an indication that the system is healthy and working the way it should. Navy nuclear propulsion has been in business for nearly 60 years and has never had a reactor core accident. We've discharged plenty of radioactive liquids as authorized by federal regulations, and we've certainly broken our fair share of expensive gear. However we've never had a Three Mile Island, let alone a Fukushima or a Chernobyl or a SL-1, and dealing with cheaters is part of the process that keeps us on track.
Yes, "us". Just as a U.S. Marine is always a Marine for life, I'll always be a recovering f$%^in' nuke.
