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Naval Reactors (often abbreviated to NR) is an umbrella term for the U.S. government office that has comprehensive responsibility for the continued safe and reliable operation of the United States Navy's nuclear propulsion program. A single entity, it has authority and reporting responsibilities within both the Department of the Navy and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Soon after his U.S. Navy service during World War II, Admiral Hyman G. Rickover became an early convert to the idea of nuclear marine propulsion. Assigned to the Bureau of Ships in September 1947, Rickover received training in nuclear power at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and worked with the bureau to explore the possibility of nuclear ship propulsion. In February 1949 he received an assignment to the Division of Reactor Development, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and then assumed control of the Navy's effort as Director of the Naval Reactors Branch in the Bureau of Ships.

As noted above, the office was originally a joint activity of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Ships. When the AEC was abolished, Naval Reactors became a joint effort of the Navy and the Energy Research and Development Administration, which partly replaced the AEC. In 1977, ERDA was combined with the Federal Energy Administration to form the US Department of Energy. On the Navy side of the organization, the Bureau of Ships has given way since the 1950s to the Naval Sea Systems Command, within which NR is Code 08, usually abbreviated NAVSEA-08.

Within seven years of its inception, the organization that developed out of this concept would put into operation the nation's first power reactor (the Nautilus prototype). The following four years would see three more nuclear submarines and two reactor plant prototypes operating and another seven ships and two prototypes being built. To date, more reactors have been built and safely operated by the NR program than any other U.S. program.

Many books (including those referenced below) and articles have been written about core NR management principles such as attention to detail and adherence to rigidly-defined standards and specifications, as well as the organization's unique (for government) personnel practices. NR staff and alumni (including Admiral Rickover himself) have often been called by Congress, the President and other government agencies to provide expert opinion and management support to other important government programs, most notably the large scale reviews following the destruction of the Space Shuttles Columbia and Challenger. NR alumni have also founded or led numerous corporate and industrial organizations, for example MPR Associates, Inc. [1], founded by three of Admiral Rickover's leading technical managers in NR's early days.

NR originally recruited the majority of its personnel from three sources: the Navy Engineering Duty Officer (EDO) community, other government technology programs and the submarine force. At that time, these selectees from other agencies and programs comprised the "cream" of the available crop. These personnel had been highly successful in their respective fields, whether in naval engineering and construction, in atomic energy laboratories or in submarines. NR attempted to "skim the cream" from those already competitive sources. The importance of this effort, to select only from the "cream of the crop," cannot be overestimated. In addition, it is believed that insight can be gained from evaluating the education, training and qualification programs at NR; programs considered by many to have made a lasting contribution to the field of nuclear safety.

It is sometimes assumed that the comprehensive personnel management system developed by NR was, somehow, readily available at the outset. This was not the case, either as regards selection or the education, training and qualification areas. The system as it exists today was built through vision, will, and persistence. In addition, it drew upon a number of already competitive Navy education programs (e.g., Naval Academy and the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC)). A number of obstacles had to be overcome to reach the point where it is today; maintaining such a system requires unremitting top management attention to keep further obstacles from arising and old ones from resurfacing.

United States Naval reactor

• The Rickover Effect: How One Man Made a Difference, Theodore Rockwell, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 1992
• Nuclear Navy: 1946-1962, Francis Duncan and Richard G. Hewlett, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 1974
• Rickover and the Nuclear Navy: The Discipline of Technology, Francis Duncan, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 1990