2026 - NR-HA Focus Paper on USS Nimitz Early History

The 2026 NR-HA focus paper examines the creation of USS Nimitz (CVN-68), the second U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and the ship that turned nuclear carrier propulsion from a first-of-kind achievement into a repeatable fleet design. It traces the long delay after USS Enterprise, the failed effort to make CVA-67/USS John F. Kennedy nuclear powered, and the budgetary and policy debates among Naval Reactors, the Navy, Secretary McNamara’s Department of Defense, President Johnson, and Congress. The paper gives particular attention to the design transition from Enterprise’s eight-reactor plant to the two-reactor carrier concept, including the political importance of reducing reactor count, manpower, component complexity, and cost. It also discusses the decision not to follow the Enterprise model with a new full-scale land prototype, instead relying on accumulated operating experience, Bettis development, component testing, and Naval Reactors’ engineering judgment. Overall, it argues that Nimitz was both a technical evolution and a political compromise: a more practical nuclear carrier that preserved Enterprise’s operational advantages while making nuclear aircraft carriers acceptable as the foundation of the modern U.S. carrier fleet.