If to be sunk, all tanks have to be cleaned, all asbestos and any hazardous material has to be removed from the ship. The ship has to meet the standards that the environmentalists in government have established to scuttle the ship. The same thing is true with scrapping a ship in this country, the contractor is paid for asbestos removal, tank cleaning, hazard remediation. With the price of scrap iron and steel these days, they will have to pay the contractor big bucks for the job. The days of buying old ships and breaking them up for a profit passed years ago.
Is that why all the ship scrapping done in the far east so they don’t worry about those “added” costs?