[wnewman]

Why would Carter know about QM? As far as I know, little in a nuclear reactor can be usefully analyzed at the quantum level even today. (And FWIW, even if some things in flight can be usefully analyzed in terms of simple limiting cases of the Navier-Stokes equations, I'd be surprised to hear someone assuming that a Republican president "knows a fair bit about fluid mechanics" just because he was an officer and pilot.)

Most of the nuclear fission stuff that is simple enough that you might hope to analyze with back-of-the-envelope QM has so much energy that it tends to act like a classical particle of negligibly short wavelength (but not enough energy to bring QM back into the picture by QED creating new particles upon collision). And while there is probably various quantum mechanical stuff deeply involved in a power reactor in one way or another --- e.g., electrical conductivity tends to involve band theory, and water is often used as a working fluid and at a fundamental level its thermal properties depend on stuff like hydrogen bonds --- I doubt it was helpful for a naval nuclear reactors guy to try to analyze things at that level in the middle of the last century.

[dnautics]

The US Naval Academy has a pretty good science program, and (IIRC) during Carter's era, all midshipmen were trained as engineers first, with the requisite science background, including (presumably) what QM was known in 1946. Moreover, as a nuke officer during that era he was personally vetted by Adm. Hyman Rickover, who had placed legendarily[0] high demands on the intellect, technical skill, moral integrity, and ingenuity of the Nuclear corps.

[neurotech1]

Rickover was promoted to the rank of vice admiral in 1958, the same year that he was awarded the first of two Congressional Gold Medals. Rickover exercised tight control for the next three decades over the ships, technology, and personnel of the nuclear Navy, interviewing and approving or denying every prospective officer being considered for a nuclear ship.

Adm. Rickover [0] certainly set the standard with personal vetting of nuclear offices, but with the stakes of a reactor mishap being so high, who can really blame him?

Contrast Adm. Rickover's tough stance with the managers in charge of the shuttle program [1] that led to STS-51L Challenger disaster.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyman_G._Rickover

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_disas...

[selimthegrim]

http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/19...

[navbaker]

The Admiral in charge of the US Navy nuclear propulsion program still personally interviews and has final say on any individual applying for surface or subsurface nuke programs. From what I hear, it's a fairly nerve-wracking experience!