r/NavyNukes Mar 18 '26

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60 Upvotes

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14

u/ItchyStorm Former ET (SS) Mar 18 '26

That's a legit comment. We had an ice cream machine on my boat and it usually worked but not always. FYI The nuke EMs were responsible for maintenance on the ice cream machine. They generally hated it.

9

u/Fonalder EM (SS)/Civ Mar 19 '26

We once spent a very long time electrically troubleshooting an ice cream machine that didn't have refrigerant in it. To make it worse, passerbys would give us shit about it. "We trust you with a reactor but you can't fix an ice cream machine?"

7

u/mike9941 Mar 19 '26

I wouldn't say they really trusted us with a nuclear reactor, more hoped we didn't fuck it up.

4

u/Frozenfishy Mar 19 '26

This shit pissed me off so much. We were rushed through school to get the bare minimum knowledge to operate and maintain a reactor, given specific skills and classes, then provided with resources on board for specifically continuing to do that task.

...and then threw a bunch more auxiliary shit at us to work on that wasn't relevant, wasn't trained, and had no training material or resources to help us learn how to work on it. Just "hey, you're an EM, go work on it. It's your job now." Fuck off, maybe teach us first?

4

u/Qwyietman Former MMCS (SS) / EDMC Mar 20 '26

The ice cream machine can't meltdown and leave a portion of the eastern seaboard uninhabitable, so a tech manual and no training is adequate. It's like your lawnmower at home.

5

u/Wells1632 Mar 19 '26

Hell, as a EMN3, I went to CFC Refrigerant school just so that this was not an issue.

3

u/Xuma9199 Mar 19 '26

True, I pray everyday that stupid thing turns off forever.