Nuclear Submarine's Reactor Powers Entire Crew's Phone Chargers, Captain Considers It 'Biggest Achievement'

Captain Rebecca Fission of the USS Nautilus II has identified the 'single most important tactical achievement' of her six-month Pacific deployment: ensuring that every crew member's personal phone remains fully charged at all times. 'This submarine carries 12 Tomahawk cruise missiles, a spherical sonar array that can detect a shrimp at 40 nautical miles, and a nuclear reactor that could power a small city for 30 years,' Captain Fission said. 'But if Petty Officer Jenkins's iPhone dies during movie night, I have a mutiny on my hands. Priorities are priorities.' The submarine's S9G pressurized water reactor, designed to produce 210 megawatts of thermal energy for propulsion and weapons systems, is currently dedicating approximately 0.003 percent of its output to a network of USB charging stations that the engineering department installed in every berthing compartment. 'From a nuclear engineering perspective, it's like using a fire hose to fill a thimble,' said chief engineer Lieutenant Commander Paul Neutron. 'But morale-wise, it's the single best modification we've ever made. The crew would give up torpedoes before they'd give up their chargers.' The charging infrastructure was not in the submarine's original specifications. Lt. Cmdr. Neutron designed it during a particularly long patrol using spare parts and what he described as 'the kind of ingenuity that only comes from extreme boredom at 400 feet below sea level.' The Navy's Bureau of Ships has expressed interest in formalizing the modification for the fleet, noting that 'crew retention improves 23 percent when personnel have reliable access to streaming services while submerged.' Captain Fission's recommendation for fleet-wide implementation concludes: 'A submarine with dead phones is just a very expensive, very dark tube. Morale is a weapon system.'