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US Navy Decommissions the First Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier (engadget.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Engadget: The Navy has decommissioned the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. The vessel launched in 1961 and is mainly known for playing a pivotal role in several major incidents and conflicts, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Vietnam War and the 2003 Iraq War. However, it also served as the quintessential showcase for what nuclear ships could do. Its eight reactors let it run for years at a time, all the while making more room for the aircraft and their fuel. As you might guess, the decommissioning process (which started when the Enterprise went inactive in 2012) is considerably trickier than it would be for a conventional warship. It wasn't until December 2016 that crews finished extracting nuclear fuel, and the ship will have to be partly dismantled to remove the reactors. They'll be disposed of relatively safely at Hanford Site, home of the world's first plutonium reactor. Whatever you think of the tech, the ship leaves a long legacy on top of its military accomplishments. It proved the viability of nuclear aircraft carriers, leading the US to build the largest such fleet in the world. Also, this definitely isn't the last (real-world) ship to bear the Enterprise name -- the future CVN-80 will build on its predecessor with both more efficient reactors and systems designed for modern combat, where drones and stealth are as important as fighters and bombers. It won't be ready until 2027, but it should reflect many of the lessons learned over the outgoing Enterprise's 55 years of service.
Oh, but they did abbreviate it! They managed to remove all the paragraph formatting.
Personally, I wish they'd named the first ship of that class Enterprise, and let Ford be one of the latter ones, so it could be the "Enterprise Class." Ah well. :)
Why not keep the ship name "Enterprise", but rename the class to "Constitution"?
Navy ships should have proper, bold, majestic, fighting names. Stop naming them after defunct politicians and overambitious military blowhards.
The Royal Navy knows how to do it.
Only after they learned the hard way with what happened to The Prince of Wales.
Name them like Iain M. Banks does. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
I wonder how much it cost to take all the radioactive parts from the ship and store them until they are no longer radioactive. I'm guessing that's quite a long time, as spent nuke fuel has a half life of 10,000 years. What's the cost of just one night watchman for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for 10,000 years? I hope that was included in the costs/benefits analysis.
To be fair, the costs drop considerably after civilization ends...
You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office
Are you that afraid of there appearing a Trump-class of ships some day?
It will be huge. And beautiful...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
The next one should be Abstract class.