11 years after its deactivation and 6 years after its decommission, the Navy finally reaches a decision on CVN-65

The USS Enterprise (CVN-65) and her 8 nuclear reactors will be broken at either Newport News, Virginia, Mobile, Alabama or Brownsville Texas. Of those three options, I believe Brownsville to be far and away the most likely choice.

Enterprise completed her final deployment and was deactivated in 2012. She was decommissioned in 2017 after defueling of her reactors was complete.

The selected facility will break the Enterprise and her reactors. Non-radioactive metal will be recycled in the ordinary process. Radioactive metal will be quarantined and shipped to one of three nuclear disposal sites around the country.

The Navy rightly rejected the far more expensive and time consuming option of towing the Enterprise all the way to Bremerton, Washington, removing the reactors whole and shipping them by barge to Hanford for disposal. Under that option, breaking of the Enterprise could not even begin until 2034 due to the backlog of nuclear ships and boats awaiting disposal in Bremerton.

Under the selected option, the selected breaking yard will likely be able to begin breaking the Enterprise almost immediately upon arrival.

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It always makes me a little sad to see these big and/or historic ships scrapped.

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It’s a little depressing, especially considering how important she was for the Navy as just a concept.

But the E is just too large and too complicated to ever be a museum ship. Plus they have to cut the hull to remove the reactors. No way to float with a huge hole in her anyway.

I assume some small piece of her could be kept as a museum piece if they wanted to.

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I really like the idea of recycling what can be in order to make more modern, more powerful ships. They did something similar with metal from the WTC. More of that would be awesome.

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This video is back from March, showing two superlifts of side modules on CVN-80. Still very early in construction at this point, with modules for the keel area and lower sides in place.

I believe at least 14 tons of metal from CVN-65 has been used in CVN-80 to this point. This was metal from the plates that were cut loose to facilitate defueling of CVN-65’s reactors.

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