“The Navy and the Army looked at nuclear power in fundamentally different ways. The Army, as indicated by its plans for nuclear tanks and locomotives, believed that nuclear power was just a wonderful new form of energy, a natural step in the same evolution that gave rise to coal-fired boilers and diesel engines. They treated their reactors and their nuclear-trained personnel accordingly. They were special, perhaps even elite, but they were not fundamentally different.
Rickover saw nuclear power as "something new under the sun," as Lewis Strauss said during the christening of the Nautilus. The admiral therefore created a program, a ship, and a corps of leaders who were also fundamentally different. While Rickover was a supremely skilled propagandist for himself and for the nuclear Navy, he was no spokesman for the concept of nuclear power as a panacea. After the Nautilus visited New York Harbor in August 1958, he quietly banned nuclear vessels from visiting large cities, a ban that lasted for decades. Despite the perfect safety record of his ships, he thought it too risky. He often spoke publicly about nuclear power as a necessary evil, something that required caretakers of extraordinary diligence and dedication. In a chance meeting on a train in 1954, the first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, David Lilienthal, suggested to Rickover that the utopian optimism swirling around nuclear power was unwarranted. Lilienthal recalled Rickover's reaction: "To my surprise, instead of rearing back and letting me have it—as I expected and almost counted on—his little face grew very sad. He couldn't agree with me more; why do people say things that don't make sense, and mislead people?" The Father of the Nuclear Navy summed up his mixed feelings about nuclear power again, shortly before the completion of the civilian nuclear power plant at Shippingport: "The whole reactor game hangs on a much more slender thread than most people are aware. There are a lot of things that can go wrong and it requires eternal vigilance."
The Army, in contrast, seemed to have accepted wholeheartedly that nuclear power was a benevolent, powerful ally to the American dream, dangerous in the same way automobiles were dangerous at the speeds they could attain on Eisenhower's new interstate highways: it was an entirely acceptable risk more than compensated for by the benefits of the new technology.” (p. 113, 114)
“Rickover's testimony took a curious turn when Senator Proxmire asked him about the long-term prospects for civilian nuclear energy. Rickover responded by explaining how nuclear power created radiation, something that had had to be reduced millions of years ago on Earth to allow life even to exist. To create radiation, Rickover concluded, was in some ways to go against nature. While Rickover had long been recognized as the nation's nuclear patriarch, those closest to him often discerned this ambivalence about nuclear energy. He had always seen nuclear power as something worthwhile only if the survival of the nation depended upon it, and, even under those circumstances, something that required diligence of religious intensity. These feelings came out in his final congressional testimony, and it startled many in the room, even those like Senator Proxmire who were accustomed to Rickover's trademark churlishness.
Admiral Rickover: I do not believe that nuclear power is worth it, if it creates radiation. Then you might ask me, why do I have nuclear powered ships? That's a necessary evil. I would sink them all. Have I given you an answer to your question?
Senator Proxmire: You've certainly given me a surprising answer. I didn't expect it and it's very logical.
Admiral Rickover: Why wouldn't you expect it?
Senator Proxmire: Well, I hadn't felt that somebody who's been as close to nuclear power as you have and who's been so expert in it and advanced it so greatly would point out that, as you say, it destroys life.
Admiral Rickover: I'm not proud...
Senator Proxmire: Without eliminating it or reducing it many, many years ago, we couldn't have had life on earth. It's fascinating.
Admiral Rickover: I'm not proud of the part I've played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I'm such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war.” (p. 217, 218)
