Boy, but did it bring back old memories. I worked at all of those control panels, primarily at the electrical one, bringing generators online, synchronizing power sources and watching the state of the ship's battery. I also was qualified as a throttleman so I got to spin those wheels while ensuring I didn't lose all the level in the reactor pressurizer and cause a nuclear meltdown. (If you opened the throttle too fast and cooled down the reactor coolant loop too quickly, it not only shrunk the volume of the coolant and threatened to drain the pressurizer vessel and possibly the core, but the cooling of liquid also made the neutron flux higher due to the greater density of the water.) While the throttle was being opened quickly the reactor operator had to always coordinate with the reactor control rods.

The other major task at the throttles was to prevent cavitation. If the speed of the prop increased too quickly, the rapid pressure drops occuring would cause bubbles to come out of solution around the prop. This was a noise that was readily identifiable by other ships.

The reactor control panel in the middle was great fun and I caused a minor incident on that with a great practical joke. Everyone on a sub had to qualify on all systems, meaning you had to have a pretty in-depth knowledge of how everything worked onboard. Part of that qualification was a familiarization with the panels in that area. We had a number of small warning lights on all the panels and many were unused. I took the lens of one of the unused alarms off and scratched the word "TILT" into the back of it. You couldn't see it unless you clicked a test switch and lit it up. From that point on, it became a standing joke to ask every person qualifying, what the purpose of the reactor tilt light was. Of course nobody knew so we'd tell them that if the sub leaned over so far the reactor tilt light would go on similar to a pinball machine and the reactor would SCRAM (drop its control rods). Well, eventually the joke got out and an actually reactor incident report was logged with the NRC guaranteeing my immortality in nuclear history.