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I was told by a former U.S. submarine officer that Admiral Rickover's nuclear submarines were far less dangerous than the Soviet ones, because ours surrounded the power plant with ballast tanks (water), effectively blocking the deadly neutron radiation (freed neutrons being the essence of an atomic chain reaction).
As the story went on, Rickover was at one point given a tour of a USSR sub and learned with his own eyes that they hadn't come up with a similar design. Their nuclear reactor was not surrounded by water.
Because of this, sailors on Soviet nuclear submarines were on a suicide mission. At the end of a 1-year term they were released from further duty with the the honor: "Hero of the Soviet Union."
Let me put a finer point on what that sub officer relayed to you. Not only, in an earlier career, did I help build nuke subs but I taught those guys how to use and maintain them.
The part about water shielding is just partially accurate. The control room on a nuke is just forward of the reactor compartment. There is a seawater tank called “emergency cooling system” on the forward side of the reactor. It shields the upper half of the manned space. The lower part is essentially solid lead and polyethylene.
The aft bulkhead of the reactor is essentially solid lead with some portable poly panels for acces to stuff. The aft space is not manned in a regular way since it’s just full of electric stuff.
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.
Rickover did indeed understand the shortcomings of Russian nukes. They go for maximum power and they try for speed but it doesn’t work out for them with the side-by-side hulls. They just poke a big, noisy, hole in the water. Ivan has always been too cheap to hook up his machinery with flex hoses. He just bolts them down tight which gives our noise profile guys a lot to work with.
And our RADCON guys keep strict limits on sailor’s radiation exposure. Notably, those total exposures are available for life should an ex sailor have a health issue.
I failed to mention that the biggest risks to peacetime US sub sailors is a vitamin D deficiency, obesity, and possibly coffee addiction. That’s some powerful stuff. I’ve known a few that got injured but it had nothing to do with reactors-——just carelessness handling stuff.