The USS Nautilus (SSN-571), Submarine Force Museum
“I have a hope that USS ENTERPRISE (CVN-65) will not meet a similar fate. ENTERPRISE should be preserved as a museum, but she will need a home port that can accommodate her and she won’t be cheap to keep in shape. [But, the same can be said of all museum ships.]”
I predict that you won’t see the current USS ENTERPRISE, or any other CVN converted into a museum ship for the simple fact that the vessel was nuclear powered.
It’s one thing to clean up & mothball the engineering spaces on a conventional naval vessel, but quite another to do so for a nuke. You pretty much have to cut into the vessel to remove the reactors (8 of them on the Big E) and primary steam lines. By the time you do that you’ve got a real expensive mess on your hands to put things back.
One also wonders about trace nuclear contamination on the vessel.
Consider that the only piece of the first nuclear submarine USS NAUTILUS that survives is the sail/conning tower. The rest is razor blades.
The Cold War Memorial at Patriot's Point, Charleston, SC has the sail and rudder of the USS LEWIS AND CLARK (SSBN-644) on display. You may be thinking of this memorial.
The legend goes that Rickover never wanted a nuclear powered carrier but Congress forced him to build one. With eight reactors and an armored stern amongst other extremely expensive features Rickover won, at least temporarily. The next couple of carriers were conventional.
Well they are defueling the reactors here in Newport News right now. I don’t think they so scrapping here though. so they will have to at least weld it back up to float it out of here.