Nuclear Power Training Unit Idaho Falls Patch

The S1W prototype in the Idaho desert began operating in 1953 as the land-based prototype of USS Nautilus, and for the next four decades the Navy sent its nukes out past Idaho Falls to learn the plant on the real thing. NPTU Idaho was the training side of the Naval Reactors Facility, 52 miles northwest of Idaho Falls on what was then the National Reactor Testing Station. Students qualified on the prototypes stitched on this patch, standing watch on working reactors before they ever reported to a boat or a carrier. By the time the last prototype shut down in the mid-1990s, the facility had trained close to 40,000 Navy personnel. A good share of the submarine force and the carrier engine rooms came through this desert.

Every star on the patch is a plant. S1W, built in 1951 and operating from 1953, was the submarine thermal reactor prototype for USS Nautilus (SSN-571) and ran until October 1989. A1W, built in 1958, was the prototype for USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the first plant with two reactors driving one propeller shaft, and it ran until January 1994. S5G, built in 1965, sat inside a submarine hull section that could simulate the ship's motion at sea, and it ran until May 1995. In the Navy's reactor code the first letter is the ship type, the number is the generation, and the last letter names the contractor, W for Westinghouse and G for General Electric.

The patch is a 5 inch white circle with a navy blue merrowed border. NPTU IDAHO runs across the top in black block letters, a small blue star between, over a gold scroll reading E PAUCIBUS PLURES. In the center a gold atom throws red and gold rays out to four gold stars marked MTG, S1W, A1W and S5G, and to a submarine running flat, a gray flattop and a second boat set at a steep angle. Crossed hammers on a red ring sit at the top of the burst. It is a busy design, and every piece of it is something a student in Idaho stood watch on or worked toward.

Prototype was the hard part of the pipeline. After Nuclear Power School, students came out to the desert for shift work on an operating plant, qualifying system by system before they could stand watch on their own. A1W carried the carrier side of the program for more than three decades, while S1W and S5G turned out the submarine crews. The Idaho prototypes are all shut down now, and the last was defueled in 1999. The sailors who qualified here took that plant knowledge to the boats and the carriers, and this patch is for them.

Frame it in a shadow box beside your dolphins or carrier patches, a Nuclear Power School patch and the certificate from prototype, or sew it on a jacket for the next nuke reunion. It also makes a good gift for a son or daughter headed into the nuclear pipeline who wants to see where the old hands qualified. The iron-on backing holds, and a few stitches around the merrowed edge make it permanent. Qualified in Idaho.