<story><title>Black Start</title><url>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mpyne</author><text>For fun, consider the question of how you&apos;d &quot;black start&quot; from a loss of all AC power on a submerged nuclear submarine? :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hudibras</author><text>Finally, a HN thread that I can contribute to and I&apos;m 9 hours late to the party.&lt;p&gt;I was serving in the engineering department on a USN aircraft carrier (non-nuclear) when a cascading casualty led to all boilers going off line. The ship had an emergency diesel generator aligned to automatically power up, but it failed to start due to a previously-unknown problem. So an 80,000 ton warship with 5,000 people on board slowly drifted to a stop, completely dark except for emergency 60&apos;s-era-battle lanterns that were already starting to dim.&lt;p&gt;No steam = no electricity (the normal ship&apos;s generators were steam-powered) and no electricity = no steam (because the start-up feedwater pumps and air blowers for the boilers were electric).
One of the other two EDGs was already down with a casualty which left a single diesel generator that had to be started with compressed air stored in two huge bottles--so basically had two chances to get the ship moving again. (No electricity = no air compressors to refill the bottles.) After a few hours of double- and triple-checking the alignment of the diesels, electrical systems, and boilers (the original steam plant casualty had to be diagnosed) using flashlights in temperatures well into the triple digits (no electricity = no air condi...you get the idea) we successfully started the one remaining diesel which provided AC to the boilers to start up.&lt;p&gt;By far the scariest day I ever had in the navy. Only saving grace was that we weren&apos;t flying planes at the time.</text></comment>
<story><title>Black Start</title><url>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_start</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mpyne</author><text>For fun, consider the question of how you&apos;d &quot;black start&quot; from a loss of all AC power on a submerged nuclear submarine? :)</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>brk</author><text>&quot;Carefully&quot;.</text></comment>