To avoid confusion: there are no ballast tanks surrounding the RC. The hulls are arranged so that the reactor compartment is under water except for a couple feet when fully surfaced. The only shielding on the exterior of the RC is hull steel and seawater with some lead where the walkways are.
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Thank you very much for clarifying/correcting my post, which was based on but a brief conversation about 25 years ago.
As you mentioned, the radiation of crewmembers was carefully recorded. My friend, the submarine officer, had lifelong health issues because apparently on one of his voyages the reactor was leaking and he picked up a significant exposure. (He knew exactly when this occurred.)
It would be instructive to know what class of nuke sub your friend was on? In all cases it requires an extreme act of carelessness or breach of protocol to get over exposure. Refueling operations on the earlier boats did create opportunities to get close to spent fuel.
When a sub is operating on nuke power any leakage would blow the monitors into freeking crazy mode. Sometimes it’s necessary to shut a reactor down briefly to photo, measure, count, etc. something that will be worked on later. The rule is that the access hatch won’t even be cracked until ambient is below 140 degrees. You get about five minutes of working time. Any more will turn you into a prune. But radiation exposure is very small since the core is scrammed. Ship’s crew doesn’t even get to do that because they are all still at duty stations itching to go critical and go someplace.
It’s curious to watch the camera guy try to keep his film cool.
It’s a different world.