The aircraft carrier USS Nimitz (CVN 68) navigates the Strait of Juan de Fuca. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class John Hetherington)
GREEN BAY, Wisc. – The Navy this month began planning the years-long attrition and disposal test of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Nimitz (CVN-68), only the second ship of its type to undergo the process.
The 2024 budget request extends the Nimitz’s service life by 13 months, from April 2025 to May 2026, a Navy spokeswoman told Breaking Defense. But the process of removing a massive warship, commissioned in 1975, that has long carried nuclear reactors, requires the service to start planning years in advance.
To do so, the Navy has tapped HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding to help establish the requirements, according to a notice available to the public published last week on the government procurement website, SAM.gov.
“Our shipbuilding team in Newport News has experience in decommissioning and defueling nuclear-powered aircraft carriers. We look forward to leveraging our experience and industry relationships to collaborate with the Navy in decommissioning and inactivation of USS Nimitz (CVN 68),” HII spokesman Todd Corillo said.
As the Navy and HII begin work to safely shut down the Nimitz, the former aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN-65), which was decommissioned in 2017, is also awaiting final disposal. This ship is located at Newport News Shipbuilding just a few hundred yards from where the next ship to bear her name is being built.
The process of how the Navy decommissions and decommissions the old Enterprise will likely set precedents for the service to follow when the Nimitz and other nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are phased out. But not all aircraft carriers are created equal. Navy spokeswoman Jamie Koehler told Breaking Defense that while the ships are of a similar type, they also contain significant design differences that will be reflected in the scrapping process.
“Ex-Enterprise and Nimitz are similar in that they are large, rugged ships that contain low levels of various hazardous materials. However, they have a considerably different design, so the approach to inactivation will reflect those differences,” he said. “Any removal option involving Nimitz will be evaluated to ensure it is [National Environmental Policy Act] compliance, as is currently being done with the former Company”.
One of the key reasons the company’s disposal process has taken so long is because it will be the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier the service has had to decommission, and the Pentagon is required, under the National Environmental Policy Act, to to minimize potential damage. to the environment.
The final step in the process involved the Navy publishing a environmental impact statement project in August 2022, a document outlining a handful of options.
The first involves the use of a commercial decommissioning facility for non-radiological parts of the ship, while the reactors would be transported to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard “for recycling, the construction of eight packages of compartments d an individual reactor and shipping it by barge to the Port of Benton near the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford site and via a large capacity multi-wheeled conveyor to the DOE Hanford site for its removal,” according to the draft impact statement.
The second method is largely the same as the first, except that the service would build “four twin reactor compartment packs” instead of eight. “The packages would be heavier and larger than the reactor compartment packages currently transported to the Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford site under the existing Navy program,” the statement added.
The third alternative, which the Navy says is its preferred method, involves contracting out all parts of the dump, including the reactors, to industry. “The Navy is evaluating three locations for commercial decommissioning: the Hampton Roads, Virginia metropolitan area; Brownsville, Texas; and Mobile, Alabama,” according to the impact statement.
The Navy said it prefers this option because it allows Puget Sound workers to stay focused on maintaining the fleet, rather than diverting their attention to the Enterprise.
In its environmental impact statements, the Navy also routinely includes a “no-action alternative,” which in this case states that the service should keep the old Enterprise in port indefinitely and continue to monitor and maintain its nuclear components.
The draft statement underwent a public comment period last year that has now closed. Koehler, the Navy spokeswoman, said the final impact statement is expected to be released in late 2023.
Koehler also did not directly address a question about whether the Nimitz would require a separate environmental impact statement, except to say the Navy would comply with NEPA.
The former USS Enterprise (CVN-65) is in port at Newport News Shipbuilding awaiting final disposition. (Justin Katz/Breaking Defense)
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