For those wondering what is going to happen to the "Big E" i can give you some insight. She is being planned for scraping at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. An east coast shipyard may remove everything from hanger up though. But PSNS is the only shipyard that can recycle reactors so they will get "the bottom half".
But that isn't going to be quick or easy. For reference when the USS Kitty Hawk was decommissioned it took PSNS for almost a year just to get her ready to be mothballed. Thats just how long it takes to "clean out" a carrier of all the electronics and other material to be recycled as well as drain all the systems.
As for exactly why the Big E will be scraped instead of sold as a museum. Well i believe some of that is just due to being nuclear powered and treaties. I dont think you can really just have 8 (even defueled) reactors sitting around. Then again we do have some old subs that are nuclear waiting to be cut up (and have been for a 10 years or so).
The main reason is something i couldn't find any news articles on so not really willing to say. Its pretty widely known at the Navy shipyards and by the workers though. Lets just say there is a reason that overhaul was 50% over budget and surprisingly it wasn't by the shipyard workers but instead by contractors!
As for actual cut up of Big E the estimates i have heard are 10-15 years. A lot of that is just uniqueness. These one or two boat classes didnt really have plans to follow and things were often changed on the fly. We have run into random pipes that you can identify and other random things when dissecting these old beasts. That and reactors with shared bulkheads pose interesting problems since the packages do have to be able to be moved to Hanford.
But if you think carriers are expensive dont look at submarines cost
Close to the same costs for maintaining them on average
I got to work when we recycled the Triton. let me tell you it sucked! First everything was asbestos. Radiation controls from that period were laughable. I'd be amazed if any sailors from her were alive with no medical problems that could be related to her. They over did everything. 8 SSTG's (ships service steam generators....electricity) compared to the 2 found on our modern subs. We did find a lot of cool stuff. Found dozen of letters from the 60's, a .22 rifle with barrel sawed off, and lots of other ships items.
But that isn't going to be quick or easy. For reference when the USS Kitty Hawk was decommissioned it took PSNS for almost a year just to get her ready to be mothballed. Thats just how long it takes to "clean out" a carrier of all the electronics and other material to be recycled as well as drain all the systems.
As for exactly why the Big E will be scraped instead of sold as a museum. Well i believe some of that is just due to being nuclear powered and treaties. I dont think you can really just have 8 (even defueled) reactors sitting around. Then again we do have some old subs that are nuclear waiting to be cut up (and have been for a 10 years or so).
The main reason is something i couldn't find any news articles on so not really willing to say. Its pretty widely known at the Navy shipyards and by the workers though. Lets just say there is a reason that overhaul was 50% over budget and surprisingly it wasn't by the shipyard workers but instead by contractors!
As for actual cut up of Big E the estimates i have heard are 10-15 years. A lot of that is just uniqueness. These one or two boat classes didnt really have plans to follow and things were often changed on the fly. We have run into random pipes that you can identify and other random things when dissecting these old beasts. That and reactors with shared bulkheads pose interesting problems since the packages do have to be able to be moved to Hanford.
But if you think carriers are expensive dont look at submarines cost
Close to the same costs for maintaining them on averageI got to work when we recycled the Triton. let me tell you it sucked! First everything was asbestos. Radiation controls from that period were laughable. I'd be amazed if any sailors from her were alive with no medical problems that could be related to her. They over did everything. 8 SSTG's (ships service steam generators....electricity) compared to the 2 found on our modern subs. We did find a lot of cool stuff. Found dozen of letters from the 60's, a .22 rifle with barrel sawed off, and lots of other ships items.
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