Nuclear submarine is a kind of submarine, which is designed with nuclear reactor as power source. Due to the production and operation costs of this submarine and the volume and weight of related equipment, only military submarines use this power source, and the submarine's underwater endurance can reach 200,000 nautical miles and its self-sustaining power can reach 60-90 days. The first nuclear submarine in the world was the American Nautilus, 65438+ 1954.

There are six countries in the world that openly claim to have nuclear submarines, namely the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China and India. Among them, the United States and Russia have the most nuclear submarines. The emergence of nuclear submarines and the use of nuclear strategic missiles have brought the development of submarines into a new stage. The nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear strategic missiles is a nuclear force for underwater deterrence.

Research and development of nuclear submarines

The submarine's experience in World War II exposed a big problem, that is, whether the submarine can continue to sail underwater, and the underwater action time of the submarine is seriously limited by the storage capacity of the battery. Even if you sail at the lowest speed, you must surface to charge after a period of time, and the submarine is very vulnerable to attack during charging.

Another limitation is the maximum speed and duration of the battery on the submarine, especially the maximum sailing speed under water is much lower than that above water. If you want to follow a high-speed ship, the submarine must come out of the sea and use a diesel engine to output power, so that you can barely catch up with a slow and fast ship. But in this way, the submarine will lose the protection of seawater and its operational advantage.