Nuclear submarine nuclear-powered submarine was first proposed in the United States Navy by the Naval Research Laboratory's Ross Gunn in 1939. Construction of the world's first nuclear powered submarine was made possible by the successful development of a nuclear propulsion plant by a group of scientists and engineers at the Naval Reactors Branch of the Bureau of Ships and the Atomic Energy Commission. In July 1951 the U.S. Congress authorized construction of the first nuclear-powered submarine, "Nautilus", under the leadership of Captain Hyman G. Rickover, USN (sharing names with Captain Nemo's fictional submarine in Jules Verne's "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea",
Skate-class submarine Skate-class submarine The "Skate"-class submarines were the United States Navy's first production run of nuclear-powered submarines. They were an evolution of the in everything except their propulsion plants, which were based on the operational prototype . The four "Skate" class boats re-introduced stern torpedo tubes. Although among the smallest nuclear-powered attack submarines ever built, the "Skate" class served for many years, with the last being decommissioned in 1989. USS "Skate" was the first submarine to surface at the North Pole, on 17 March 1959. "Skate" and "Sargo" were built with the S3W reactor, "Swordfish" and "Seadragon" also had the S3W