Photo By Petty Officer 2nd Class Simon Pike | Engineman 3rd Class Sean Toscano, from Costa Mesa, California, assigned to the...... read more read more
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“We’re the backup; when all else fails, we’re there to supply power so the plant can get back up and operational when we need to have propulsion,” said Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Maxwell Caldwell, from Columbia, Tennessee, assigned to the world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford’s (CVN 78) reactor auxiliaries (RA) division. “We may not be in the limelight of reactor, but we’re there. We’re always there and ready for the event where something goes wrong. When the lights turn out, we turn them back on.”
Reactor auxiliaries is responsible for the non-nuclear mechanics who take care of the emergency diesel generators, providing backup power to the whole ship.
“The diesel generators are these huge engines that commercial ships use for propulsion,” Segura said. “On this ship, they’re backup power.”
They also take in all of the oily waste, oily fuel and oily water off the ship to process and separate.
“We’re able to discharge clean water overboard while at sea, and maintain the dirty pure oil to discharge to shore facilities for them to take care of it,” said Machinist’s Mate 1st Class Brandon Segura, from Lititz, Pennsylvania, also assigned to reactor auxiliaries. “It helps the environment a lot in that regard.”
Reactor auxiliaries on the Gerald R. Ford is also responsible for supporting the shaft components that make up the propulsion plant.
“After the reactor spins the shaft, we take care of the components, the bearings, and the seals at the bottom of the ship,” said Segura.
For Segura, the personnel that make up reactor auxiliary are top notch, even if they’re younger.
“It’s a bunch of highly-trained Sailors in their early twenties, operating one of the most important pieces of equipment on the ship,” Segura said. “[The Navy] entrusts young people with a year and a half, to two years of training to operate this reactor safely, even in foreign countries and around large amounts of people. It’s very important to highlight because not everyone gets that kind of responsibility.”
Segura finds that this idea only reinforces the capability of the Sailors that Navy is training.
“It says a lot about the trust that the Navy has in these Sailors and the training that has to be done,” he said. “Even in our division; we’re not nuclear trained, perse, but we are entrusted to upkeep emergency diesel generators and the shafting components too. We use the shafts on everyday propulsion. The training and the knowledge of this department is at a very high level.”
Gerald R. Ford, as a first-in-class carrier, is outfitted with the first reactor plant redesign for an aircraft carrier in over 40 years. Improvements in power production, monitoring technology and refining established design principles of its predecessor, the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier.
“On this ship, they took operational stuff and day-to-day tasking into consideration to make things easier for us,” Segura said. “This ship has a lot of valves that can be operated electronically from a remote station. Those kinds of things add to our quality of life, where we don’t have to go to a space to operate a valve, we can do it remotely, and remotely monitor a lot of things as well. Something our chiefs harp on when we come into the division is that back on their previous ships, they had to manually look at every single gauge on the diesels, on the propulsion plant. Here, everything is electronic; we can look at a screen and assess the health of our equipment pretty easily. That, air conditioning, valve manipulation, training: all of that’s possible with the new plant.”
These improvements also mean being able to do the same job more easily, and with less Sailors.
“On a conventional ship, you might have a group of 20 people on watch, monitoring and manipulating valves and controlling the system,” said Caldwell. “Here, a person can control that system from a monitor.”
By reducing the workload, the improved capabilities of Gerald R. Ford allow RA Sailors to engage in other pursuits that make them an even more valuable asset to the ship.
“Being able to not have to stress about operating and monitoring equipment as much, and now with electronic logs, allow us as a division to give our guys the opportunity to actually qualify outside of reactor and help with engineering: high-pressure air compressor, low-pressure air compressor, refrigeration. It’s a challenge, since our job is outside of what we’d normally do as a machinist’s mate, but there’s other things that we have an advantage of people can get more qualified and be better overall.”
Gerald R. Ford is the U.S. Navy’s newest and most advanced aircraft carrier. As the first-in-class ship of Ford-class aircraft carriers, CVN 78 represents a generational leap in the U.S. Navy’s capacity to project power on a global scale. Ford-class aircraft carriers introduce 23 new technologies, including EMALS, AAG and Advanced Weapons Elevators. The new systems incorporated onto Ford-class ships are designed to deliver greater lethality, survivability and joint interoperability with a 20% smaller crew than a Nimitz-class carrier, paving the way forward for naval aviation.
For more information about the USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), visit https://www.airlant.usff.navy.mil/cvn78/ and follow along on Facebook: @USSGeraldRFord, Instagram: @cvn78_grford, Twitter: @Warship_78, DVIDS www.dvids.net/CVN78 and LinkedIn at USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78).
| Date Taken: | 08.22.2023 |
| Date Posted: | 08.21.2023 18:23 |
| Story ID: | 451838 |
| Location: | MEDITERRANEAN SEA |
| Web Views: | 974 |
| Downloads: | 2 |
This work, The Backup: Gerald R. Ford’s Reactor Auxiliary Division, by PO2 Simon Pike, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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