Washington
(CNN) -- The USS Enterprise is the nation's oldest active duty warship, the
first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and a history-making symbol of America's
naval might for half a century.
But
it's now headed for the scrap heap.
 |
The
USS Enterprise crosses the Suez Canal earlier this month, its last deployment
in more than 50 years of service.
|
Virtually
all the weapons and ammunition has been off loaded. By the end of the week,
it'll make its final return to its home port of Norfolk, Virginia. On Dec. 1,
"The Big E" will be become officially inactive.
But
one doesn't just take an aircraft carrier with eight nuclear reactors in its
hold and park it somewhere. The Navy will spend three years and tens of
millions of dollars removing the ship's radioactive fuel and reactors before
cutting it into scrap.
Mike
Maus, a spokesperson for Naval Air Force Atlantic, said the process starts just
up the James River.
"Following
the inactivation period, it will be towed over to Newport News -- to Huntington
Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding -- where it will be defueled. They'll remove
all the fuel from it."
The
fuel will be shipped to Idaho for temporary storage, Maus said. "Sometime
at a later date, it will be disposed of."
While
in Newport News, some of the Enterprise's equipment will be removed then the
next phase begins.
The
carrier, minus planes, ammunition and a propulsion system, heads to Puget
Sound, the long way.
"It
will be towed around (Cape) Horn to Puget Sound, Washington," Maus said.
The
Enterprise, like America's other nuclear carriers, is too big to fit through
the Panama Canal, so it must round the southern-most point of South America to
get to Washington State.
"It'll
be a very lengthy tow," he said.
Once
it reaches the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, the long and difficult task of
removing the eight reactors from the Enterprise's hold begins.
"In
order to remove the reactors, it takes a lot of cutting and hacking on the ship
to do that," Maus said. "They do cut through the flight deck and they
may very well be cutting through the hull of the ship itself."
Once
the reactors are removed, CVN-65 will be formally decommissioned.
According
to a Navy Environmental Impact Statement, the reactors will be put on barges,
floated up the Columbia River to the site of the former Hanford nuclear
production complex where they will be buried in a huge trench near reactors
from smaller decommissioned naval warships.
But
unlike the USS Intrepid in New York City or the USS Midway in San Diego, the
Enterprise is not destined to become a floating museum.
Removing
the reactors essentially destroys the ship.
"Once
the reactors are removed, to put the ship back in any shape to where it still
resembles a ship the cost would be over the moon," said Maus.
So
the ship, all 90,000 tons of it will be cut up and the metal sold for scrap.
But
that doesn't mean the name Enterprise will fade from U.S. Navy history. There
have been seven other warships to bear that name and there is already a
petition to name a yet-to-be-built carrier the ninth USS Enterprise.
Source:
By Larry Shaughnessy. 01 November 2012
http://edition.cnn.com/2012/11/01/us/enterprise-scrap/index.html
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