Replies

Why is this ship not being preserved as a museum? You would think that the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, one of the longest-serving ships ever in the Navy, and the namesake of the Navy’s most decorated ship of World War II would be worth preserving and saving for future generations instead of “dismantling and recycling.” Then again, the mighty CV-6 wasn’t saved either.

}:-)4

They’ll dismantle so much of the internals of the ship around the reactors there won’t be much left of it. My dad’s ship, the USS Gilmore AS-16 was basically gutted around the nuclear areas from services to nuclear submarines. There was a huge void in the middle of the ship from it over multiple decks from pictures I’ve seen of it at James River.

It’s been scrapped now.

Why is this ship not being preserved as a museum? You would think that the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, one of the longest-serving ships ever in the Navy, and the namesake of the Navy’s most decorated ship of World War II would be worth preserving and saving for future generations instead of “dismantling and recycling.”

The Navy's explanation, as noted earlier, is that the ship will need to be deconstructed past the point of economical repair in order to get to the reactors.

Enterprise is a modified Kitty Hawk-class hull, and her eight reactors roughly correspond to the eight boilers that the Kitty Hawks carried (apparently Enterprise has two more reactors than necessary; Hyman Rickover - allegedly - personally ordered the number increased from six to eight to correspond to the Kitty Hawk boiler numbers).

The ship was built around the reactors. USN policy for scrapping nuclear wessels (inside Star Trek joke there) is to defuel then remove the reactor vessels intact for containment and burial at Hanford. Getting to the eight reactors and removing them per this policy is going to require cutting massive holes straight down from the flight deck. It's going to be a brutal undertaking, given not only how the reactors are shielded but also the armor plating on the hangar and flight decks.

HOWEVER .... (and there's always a however)

There's been some speculation that the Enterprise was actually designed to have its reactor vessels removed and replaced. Enterprise was the first nuclear carrier, essentially a prototype/proof-of-concept that was both wildly expensive to build and maintain but also highly successful (she was designed with a 25-year lifespan in mind), and she carried early (2nd generation?) nuclear reactors.

The USN had already replaced a prototype (liquid sodium cooled) reactor in the USS Seawolf (the second nuclear submarine after Nautilus). Given that experience, the expense associated with Enterprise (2x as much as a Kitty Hawk and so costly that she was completed without any defensive weaponry) and the very real possibility of having problems with a reactor at some point that would be serious enough to warrant replacement of the reactor but otherwise wouldn't compromise the integrity of the ship (requiring complete removal from service very early in its career and flushing a $500 million investment right down the toilet), it does make logical sense that the Navy would have contingency plans to swap out the reactors.

The USN has shown an extreme reticence towards preserving nuclear-powered ships as museums. Nautilus is the only one, and even though her reactor was yanked when decommissioned in the mid 1980s the Navy still owns her and maintains operational control. Efforts to preserve the nuclear cruiser USS Long Beach and the submarines USS Cincinnati and USS Mariano G. Vallejo were denied outright. Senator John Warner tried really hard to get the nuclear cruiser USS Virginia for Nauticus in Norfolk and was politely told "no" and given the battleship Wisconsin and the lead ship of the next class of SSNs as a consolation prize. Heck, if you go to the Udvar-Hazy center for the National Air and Space Museum they have an F6F Hellcat that was flown - as a drone - through the fallout from the Bikini tests ... and the placard for the plane very specifically points out that there's only trace amounts of residual radiation.

So given all that, while I'm inclined to believe the Navy when they say that they really do have to cut Enterprise to pieces to get the reactors out, I do have a nagging feeling that if the truth were otherwise they'd never willingly let it be known.