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",
Nautilus (1800 submarine) proposal to the Minister of Marine, who granted him permission to build. Fulton built the first "Nautilus" of copper sheets over iron ribs at the Perrier boatyard in Rouen. It was long and in the beam. Propulsion was provided by a hand-cranked screw propeller. The hollow iron keel was the vessel's ballast tank, flooded and emptied to change buoyancy. Two horizontal fins, diving planes in modern terms, on the stubby horizontal rudder controlled angle of dive. Overall, "Nautilus" resembled a modern research submarine, such as the NR-1, having a long teardrop hull. The design included an observation dome, somewhat similar