[Retric]

It’s very possible that a broken pipe would have shorted out all batteries on an equivalent non nuclear sub. But, that would also have been a significant design flaw.

Anyway, I think this is more a case of disagreements about what constitutes a system than about what happened. I would say if the design of a critical system lets people mess up then that’s a failure of the design and the system. Chernobyl was very much a case of operators doing a long series of dumb things as people do. Similarly, the operators caused an issue with the steam system, but that just means the system and it’s design was also faulty. (IMO, the steam system should be considered part of the nuclear power plant as civilian nuclear power plants also use a steam loop for similar reasons.)

I would rate the US Navy highly on nuclear safety operations especially over the last 50 years.