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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.
“Let’s make sure that history never forgets the name Enterprise. Picard out”
Personally, I wish they'd named the first ship of that class Enterprise, and let Ford be one of the latter ones
Personally, I think we should stop naming ships, or anything else, after dead politicians. Or, even worse, living politicians.
...it's the entire contents of the article, minus the ads and with Slashdot's wrapped around it instead..
If the entire article is only 255 words, Engadget's paying that editor too much.
No, that's simply copyright infringement.
You can't really "steal" a copyright unless you actually re-registered it in your own name somehow, perhaps by creating a fake memorandum of transfer. I don't see anyone depriving them of the copyright itself, just infringing upon some of the exclusive rights granted to them by copyright. At least, assuming the submitter wasn't authorized by the copyright holder. I sincerely doubt that they do have any such authorization, but Engaget and anyone they chose to inform are the only ones who have actual knowledge of that fact one way or another.
Ha, indeed. Democrats are waking up to the realization that giving the government power will backfire.
Republicans, being slower on the uptake, have yet to learn this lesson.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Water absorbs radiation pretty effectively, and the oceans are in fact rather big[citation needed] and contain currents that will dilute and disperse the radionuclides. That's not to say there will definitely be zero impact, but it's not going to be catastrophic even if it sinks over an economically important part of the continental shelf. The biggest issue will probably be bioaccumulation in the sea life. So yes, fishing industries a bit damaged for a while. Beyond that, there's no huge problem other than those stemming from nuclear/radiation hysteria.
If you really want to know what can happen, then look to the Dai-Ichi reactor complex in Fukushima.
Non sequitur much? This is about a reactor at the bottom of the sea which stands a good chance of being flooded due damage to the vessel before anything melts down. Fukushima was about a reactor overheating and sending crap into the air. It also wasn't nearly as dangerous as the hysteria would have you believe, but that's another story.
As I said elsewhere, people will happily poison themselves and stunt their childrens' IQs by a few points by eating tuna that's been contaminated (*worldwide*) by mercury from coal burning and gold mining and then afterwards go for a nice relaxing lie-down on the beach to give themselves cancer-inducing radiation burns, but god forbid there's a localized incidence of slightly increased radionuclide-based radioactivity somewhere in the world.
Centralia also needs to be brought up whenever people like to imply that the damage from nuclear is uniquely long-lived compared to the alternatives. And the situation there isn't unique.