[cva66snipe]

The propulsion plant config for Enterprise also differs greatly from Nimitz class. Enterprise has two reactors the Nimitz class has eight. You're right about the issues faced to replace them. Both conventional and Nuke the propulsion plant including boilers, reduction gears, generators, reactors,De-Sal plants etc all go in first as the keel is laid. It is not economical nor time use wise to change to plants once the keel is laid. A complete rebid and start all over is faster.

The conditions you describe go along with a ship the Navy is fixing to decommission. Kennedy was in bad shape and America had a pier side boiler room explosion. The persons who put their lives on the line keeping the ship going deserve the best. They deserve as safe a ship as we can reasonably provide. To be honest I hope and pray the ship makes the deployment without a catastrophic failure. I'm just looking at the reality of it.

[tanknetter]

Enterprise has two reactors the Nimitz class has eight. You're right about the issues faced to replace them.

Other way around, actually.

Both conventional and Nuke the propulsion plant including boilers, reduction gears, generators, reactors,De-Sal plants etc all go in first as the keel is laid. It is not economical nor time use wise to change to plants once the keel is laid. A complete rebid and start all over is faster.

IIRC we, and the other major world powers, reboilered and returbined many WWI-era dreadnoughts during the post-WWI "building holiday". The Japanese even cut some of their battleships in two in order to insert additional boilers to allow for faster speeds.

But that was an exceptional situation where manpower was cheap and building new ships wasn't an option (as it was prohibited by treaty).

IIRC(2), the US carriers that were SLEP'd in the 1980s had their turbines yanked for refirb. There was an article I read at the time about either Indy or Connie's SLEP that specifically mentioned that the new mounts were in waiting for the turbines to be reinstalled. But replacing turbines is considerably different from replacing an entire engineering plant.