The real problem is that any reserve force of submarines would be nuclear powered ones... In my day aboard the boats (1960s-70s) we constantly drilled on nuclear safety procedures so I cannot envision a reserve submarine where, for one weekend out of a month, Sailors would be operating nuclear power plants. The old diesel boats, too, were accidents waiting to happen. All it would take is one false reading of the ballast control panel "green board" and a tragedy would occur (that's essentially what happened to the old Squalus in the late 1930s and perhaps the Scorpion in the 1960s). The environment that submarines operate in, like the environment that airplanes operate in, is extremely unforgiving.
"Recently, the nation celebrated the dedication of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. to honor the 18.2 million men and women who served in uniform during that conflict. Members of the Guard and Reserve represented 80 percent of this total, or 14.5 million personnel. In the Navy, the citizen-sailor accounted for 90 percent of the crews who sailed in the greatest armada of recent times.
In some submarines, the crew and wardroom were composed entirely of reservists, with the exception of the commanding officer who was most often a Naval Academy graduate."
Transforming the Force During the Cold War
From 1946 to 1972, Navy Reservists drilled in 26 cities on 44 diesel boats. Submarines like the USS Silversides (SS-236) in Chicago; the USS Tambor (SS-198) in Detroit; and the USS Carp (SS-338) in Boston served as training platforms on which Sailors prepared themselves for active service in the event that a global war heated up. For the most part, their training utilized surplus equipment and platforms from the active-duty fleet. With the shift to nuclear-powered submarines and a transition away from reserve units focused on platforms and hardware, the program gradually morphed into the submarine reserve we know today. Although this transition did not take place overnight, the submarine reserve became increasingly focused on its own reserve obligations and infrastructure, and by late in the Cold War, it had become fairly independent of the active-duty component and not truly aligned with the mission or structure of the latter.
In the aftermath of the Cold War, the senior leadership of the submarine reserve realized that while a structure based on mass mobilization may have been appropriate for a traditional wartime scenario, it was inadequate for the fluid nature of the coming era and its potential short-term demands. As RDML Jay DeLoach remarked, We could no longer afford to think that mustering at the local reserve center to conduct General Military Training (GMT) was enough. Likewise, having two separate entities that didnt speak the same language wouldnt work. We began to realize that the submarine reserve needed to be relevant to current operations in the fleet on a day-to-day basis.