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US Navy Decommissions the First Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier (engadget.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the end-of-an-era dept.

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.

14 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Obligatory... by lord_mike · · Score: 5, Insightful

    “Let’s make sure that history never forgets the name Enterprise. Picard out”

    1. Re:Obligatory... by MachineShedFred · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yeah, because the Navy wasn't going to continue building aircraft carriers after they proved invaluable in every armed conflict since World War II. Would you rather they continued to burn millions of gallons of oil to move the thing around and generate steam?

      This ship proved that nuclear propulsion works, and is far better than diesel. And since the US Navy has had a grand total of zero nuclear reactor accidents in over 50 years of operating dozens of vessels, maybe this was a good thing. Chalk it up to Admiral Rickover's insistence that every officer serving on one of his nuclear ships needed proper training, and got it before taking the post.

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    2. Re:Obligatory... by dunkelfalke · · Score: 5, Informative

      US Navy never had a reactor accident not only because of the training but also because of a quite different reactor construction, generally quite small reactors built from prohibitively expensive materials and ridiculously high fuel enrichment (nuclear submarines run on almost pure U-235).
      Naval reactors are also refueled just once or twice in their (rather short) lifetime. Nuclear propulsion works, but it is so expensive that only a military organisation with basically limitless funding can afford it. Civilian nuclear propulsion won't ever happen, icebreakers are the only exception.

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  2. Defueling by Registered+Coward+v2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Enterprise had 8 A2W reactors so there was a lot of cutting and fuel removal that had to take place. In contrast, the next Enterprise will have 2 propulsion reactors. It would be nice if they can turn he into a museum somewhere, much like was done with the Nautilus.

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    1. Re:Defueling by FireballX301 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I heard once that if Enterprise had ever operated with all four propulsion plants in dual reactor mode, the ship would easily be the fastest capital ship in the world, and that the Nimitz classes are all much slower than the Enterprise was if taken to flank speed.

    2. Re: Defueling by gweilo8888 · · Score: 5, Informative

      You'd think so, but apparently Entreprise is to be entirely scrapped, and not even a significant piece of her such as her island will be placed in a museum:

      http://www.military.com/daily-news/2012/10/22/enterprise-nimitz-class-carriers-wont-be-museums.html

    3. Re:Defueling by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 5, Funny

      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...

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    4. Re:Defueling by tomhath · · Score: 5, Informative

      The limiting factor with nuke powered ships is the propellers; you can only spin them so fast before they start to cavitate (usually somewhere around 100 knots for a big surface ship, somewhat higher for a submarine), The engines can deliver the horsepower.

  3. Re:That's not a "quote" of Engadget's report... by bws111 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Oh, but they did abbreviate it! They managed to remove all the paragraph formatting.

  4. Re:Enterprise by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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"?

  5. Re:Enterprise by Tokolosh · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

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  6. Re:Who would sink a nuclear ship? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 5, Informative

    what army/navy/etc. would sink a nuclear ship in their own waters during war?

    Given the opportunity, all of them.

    If sunk, it could be a major issue in your region for generations to come.

    Nine nuclear ships have sunk at sea. None of them resulted in significant radiation release. The reactors are designed to withstand sinking.

  7. Re:That's not a "quote" of Engadget's report... by SeaFox · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

  8. Re:Trump class a-coming by 93+Escort+Wagon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Are you that afraid of there appearing a Trump-class of ships some day?

    Weapons on any Trump class ships will probably be unable to aim properly, inflicting equal damage on friend, foe, and crew.

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