Overview
- The hulk of USS Enterprise began its final transit from Newport News to Mobile on Monday, Nov. 2, to enter a contracted dismantling program.
- The Navy awarded the tow and dismantlement work to NorthStar after Huntington Ingalls Industries dropped a legal challenge to the roughly $418 million contract.
- Dismantling will be unusually difficult because Enterprise houses eight A2W reactor plants, so crews will disassemble hull sections and treat radioactive components rather than remove a single reactor compartment.
- The contract calls for tearing down the ship, recycling about 35,000 tons of steel and disposing of low-level radioactive waste in a process the Navy says should finish by September 2030, with roughly $1.3 billion already spent and about $1.43 billion expected in total program costs.
- The work will create new procedures and lessons for future carrier retirements, affect shipyard and dismantling workers in Mobile and Newport News, and offer a model for how the Navy manages radiological cleanup of large nuclear surface ships.