It'll Cost $1 Billion To Dismantle America's Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier (popularmechanics.com) 209
"Six years after decommissioning USS Enterprise, the world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the U.S. Navy is still figuring out how to safely dismantle the ship," reports Popular Mechanics. schwit1 tipped us off to their report:
The General Accounting Office estimates the cost of taking apart the vessel and sending the reactors to a nuclear waste storage facility at up to $1.5 billion, or about one-eighth the cost of a brand-new aircraft carrier.
The USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1961 to be the centerpiece of a nuclear-powered carrier task force, Task Force One, that could sail around the world without refueling.... The Navy decommissioned Enterprise in 2012 and removed the fuel from the eight Westinghouse A2W nuclear reactors in 2013. The plan was to scrap the ship and remove the reactors, transporting them by barge from Puget Sound Naval Base down the Washington Coast and up the Columbia River, then trucking them to the Department of Energy's Hanford Site for permanent storage. However, after decommissioning the cost of disposing of the 93,000-ton ship soared from an estimated $500-$750 million to more than a billion dollars. This caused the Navy to put a pause on disposal while it sought out cheaper options. Today the stripped-down hull of the Enterprise sits in Newport News, Virginia awaiting its fate.
"Although the Navy believes disposing of the reactors will be fairly straightforward, no one has dismantled a nuclear-powered carrier before...
"Whatever the Navy ends up doing, this will only be the first of many nuclear-powered carrier disposals."
The USS Enterprise was commissioned in 1961 to be the centerpiece of a nuclear-powered carrier task force, Task Force One, that could sail around the world without refueling.... The Navy decommissioned Enterprise in 2012 and removed the fuel from the eight Westinghouse A2W nuclear reactors in 2013. The plan was to scrap the ship and remove the reactors, transporting them by barge from Puget Sound Naval Base down the Washington Coast and up the Columbia River, then trucking them to the Department of Energy's Hanford Site for permanent storage. However, after decommissioning the cost of disposing of the 93,000-ton ship soared from an estimated $500-$750 million to more than a billion dollars. This caused the Navy to put a pause on disposal while it sought out cheaper options. Today the stripped-down hull of the Enterprise sits in Newport News, Virginia awaiting its fate.
"Although the Navy believes disposing of the reactors will be fairly straightforward, no one has dismantled a nuclear-powered carrier before...
"Whatever the Navy ends up doing, this will only be the first of many nuclear-powered carrier disposals."
No tribble at all (Score:3, Funny)
Just beam the nuclear junk onto a Klingon ship.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re: (Score:3)
Why can't they just pull that decommissioned vessel to somewhere above the Mariana Trench and then sink it?
The bottom of the Marianas Trench is not the Earth's interior.
Radioactive? We live on the surface of a planet with a very, very hot interior, and it is the Radioactive Shits such as Uranium / Plutonium / whatever -ium which provide all the warmth
Only about half the heat of the interior is the result of radioactive decay—most of the rest is heat energy left over from the Earth's formation, with a small amount also being due to gravitational pressure.
Re:Just sink that MOTHERFUCKER !! (Score:5, Insightful)
The price is ridiculous. I have been involved as an overseer in decommissioning several nuclear power stations in the UK. What happens is that most of the people and organisations involved see it as a money spinner and drag things out as far as possible. The on-site people (power station staff plus contractors) knew they would be out of a job once decommissioning finished, so they dragged everything out - things were done with agonisiing, unnecessary and theatrical "care", more so than when the stations were running which was already far more than careful enough, as the record shows on my watch. Visiting the sites was like watching movies in slow motion.
It is not helped by politicians (who know fuck all about tech, least of all about nuclear) worried about PR, with the anti-nukes (who also know fuck all about tech, least of all about nuclear) screaming that we were not being careful enough. The real agenda of the anti-nukes was for the sites not to be decommissioned at all, to remain as what they saw as an embarassing monuments requiring expensive staffing for ever more; to make things as expensive as possible as a continuing argument against nuclear tech.
Once the fuel had gone (a routine operation - it is replaced routinely when running), and the site left in mothballs for a couple of years for radioactivity to decay before dismantling begins, the remaining risk is actually trivial. I was senior enough to expedite some major operations and eliminate some unnecesary ones, and saved quite a few $millions.
Scrappers (Score:2, Funny)
We got some scrappers in Detroit that will make that thing disappear fast.
The cheapest and dangerous option. (Score:2, Informative)
To sink it somewhere will cost them $0.
Re:The cheapest and dangerous option. (Score:5, Interesting)
Drop it on a subduction zone and watch it get pulled into the crust over the course of a few thousand years. It's a geologic time scale shredder, with all natural, organic, pesticide free, gluten free recycling!
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Dread_ed suggested:
Drop it on a subduction zone and watch it get pulled into the crust over the course of a few thousand years. It's a geologic time scale shredder, with all natural, organic, pesticide free, gluten free recycling!
Unfortunately, I see two potentially-serious problems with that proposal: firstly keeping the exceedingly-radioactive material of the actual reactor cores (there're two of them, btw) safely contained between the time they're scuttled and the time they've been completely subducted, and are on their way to the mantle; and secondly, safely guiding them to the proper resting place(s ... ?) on the ocean floor for them to be fully subducted in as short a time as possible.
Neither problem is triv
Re: (Score:3)
"There are two of them, btw"
Wrong. There are EIGHT of them. All US nuke carriers SINCE the Enterprise have two reactors.
Re: (Score:2)
Watch a volcano in Iceland or Indonesia blast the still-highly-radioactive material into the atmosphere in the form of finely divided ash.
(yeah, I'm concerned about the Earth and whatever may be inhabiting it in 1000, 10,000, even 100,000 years)
Re: (Score:2)
(yeah, I'm concerned about the Earth and whatever may be inhabiting it in 1000, 10,000, even 100,000 years)
I'd be a lot more concerned if I thought humans would be inhabiting it in 100,000, 10,000, even 1,000 years. As it is, though, there's plenty to worry about even in the shorter term. How much will they pollute places people already live, how much energy will it take and where will it come from...
Re: (Score:2)
Drop it on a subduction zone and watch it get pulled into the crust over the course of a few thousand years. It's a geologic time scale shredder, with all natural, organic, pesticide free, gluten free recycling!
Yeah that's a great idea until Godzilla trashes Tokyo.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Agreed. Pull the reactors. Check for residual radioactivity and remediate as needed.
Then find a nice spot for a reef and let the navy have some target practice.
Now what to do with those pesky spent reactors?
Re: (Score:3)
Now what to do with those pesky spent reactors?
You cut them up into pieces and feed them into a Gen IV reactor. The radioactive bits get turned into energy and valuable medical isotopes.
https://articles.thmsr.nl/the-... [thmsr.nl]
New reactors solve the problems of radioactive waste, energy shortages, and provide cures for nasty diseases that previous treatments have proven ineffective. Then there is the US Navy project to synthesize jet fuel and fuel oil from CO2 and hydrogen, both of which would be extracted from the sea.
https://www.nrl.navy.mil/news/... [navy.mil]
Synthes
Re: (Score:2)
Perhaps you should learn what "waste" is and what "waste" is and what kind of "waste" the LFTR49 reactor actually burns ...
Hint: it does not burn radioactive steel.
You could learn all this by simply reading the links you provided ....
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, what happened to America fuck yeah. Just force a vassal state to buy it, take their pick of NATO nations, just make it 'er' low cost, pay the required bribes and the vassal state in question can brag about their newly refurbished nuclear attack carrier, it's the American way. Not only get rid of the problem but make profit whilst doing it ;D.
Re: The cheapest and dangerous option. (Score:2)
According to that link, nothing whatsoever. We are not talking about dumping high-level waste here.
Price, Value... (Score:2, Interesting)
Just goes to show how fake the quantization into money is.
How many Economists does it take to get anything done?
an infinite amount, since nothing will ever get done if you use economists.
passphrase : chirped
I cannot change the laws of physics, Captain (Score:5, Funny)
I cannot change the laws of physics, Captain
Och, see you, Jimmy! (Score:2)
It's life, Jim, but not as we know it, not as we know it.
It's life, Jim, but not as *we* know it, not as we know it, Captain.
Leave it unattended for a night in Eastern Europe (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Leave it unattended for a night in Eastern Euro (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Thanks, hadn't heard about that one. Interesting and scary reading.
"Whatever the Navy ends up doing..... (Score:5, Informative)
"Whatever the Navy ends up doing, this will only be the first of many nuclear-powered carrier disposals."
And this one will be unique. The Enterprise is the ONLY nuclear carrier in its class, with EIGHT nuclear reactors. Every carrier built since then, both Nimitz and Ford class, has TWO reactors. Taking apart these will be much less onerous.
Re: (Score:3)
Why? What fundamental axiom dictates that the cost is proportional to the number of reactors?
Shit scales in all kinds of ways. I don't know which apply here, but unlike you I know that I don't know.
Re: (Score:3)
Unlike you, I was in the Navy and I do know what I'm talking about in this small, narrow field of knowledge. In fact, I was "a nuke," not that you'd know what that means. But basically it means I have more credibility with regards to Navy nuclear reactors than you do.
Re: (Score:2)
About the simplest axiom there is - the more man hours you spend doing something, the more it costs. And it takes many more man hours to remove and package eight of something for disposal than it does two of something. (Duh.) Then there's another axiom - the more touch labor a job requires (and removing reactor compartments takes a lot of touch labor), the lower your economies of scale.
Plus, if the rumors
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking of reactors, Exactly where are the Enterprise reactors? Still on the ship in Newport News? (Why Newport News? How did it get there?) Maybe sitting in a parking lot at the Puget Sound Naval Base? Maybe at Hanford? (Permanent storage? At Hanford? What then was Yucca Mountain for?) Has the Navy lost track of them?
Re: (Score:2)
They are still in the ship, awaiting removal. They have been defueled, but the reactors are still there. Deciding how to do that is a large part of the question.
The TFA says one option is:
The Navy would allow industry to scrap the non-nuclear parts of the ship but preserve a 27,000-ton propulsion space containing the reactors. The propulsion space would then be transported to Puget Sound Naval Base, where the reactors would be removed and sent to Hanford.
Re: (Score:2)
Jobs.
Senators and congressmen love bringing jobs to their constinuants
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly. If Trump gets a second term somebody (probably China or North Korea) will get rid of it for nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Why are they decommissioning these anyways, instead of maintaining them?
It seems like an insane waste to be continually building new vessels and shredding old ones.
They scrap them because the reactors run out of fuel, and the equipment on board get out of date. It costs nearly one billion dollars to do a mid-life refuel and refit on an aircraft carrier. Each carrier is built with the intent to sail for 50 to 60 years with a mid-life refuel and refit. One big problem with these older aircraft carriers is that they were built with the electrical loads of the time. There's a lot more electronics on board modern navy ships. Maybe they can upgrade the reactors but the
Re: (Score:2)
One big problem with these older aircraft carriers is that they were built with the electrical loads of the time. There's a lot more electronics on board modern navy ships.
CVN-65 has an excess of electrical power, compared to other carriers. I suspect the real problem is just that it's aged, and the number of problems is mounting. That and the refueling thing. Plus of course there is more money going around to be skimmed if you build a new carrier to replace it.
Re: (Score:2)
Plus of course there is more money going around to be skimmed if you build a new carrier to replace it.
This has been repeated over and over in this discussion, not only do I doubt this is relevant (since there is plenty of room to skim off refuel and refit), I'm quite certain the Navy doesn't much care so long as they get newer and more capable ships.
Compare Enterprise CVN-65 with Enterprise CVN-80. Both ships carry about 90 aircraft, and displace about 100,000 tons. CVN-80 has a magnetic catapult which is capable of launching light drones to heavy fighters, which CVN-65 cannot. CVN-80 has a reduced radar
Re: (Score:2)
ie they want a new ship with new tech. Not something that needs constant work and tax money.
Re: (Score:2)
The cost will be similar. The reactor removals themselves are only a small part of the operation. They have to do the bulkheads around them, the decks, all of that. Once the hottest things are out it's still months and months of dangerous work.
It's four times as much dangerous work, because the reactors are spread around the ship. Or maybe they are only in four locations and it's only twice as much work, I can't remember and my first search result didn't have a useful diagram. IIRC they are not located in just one or two places, though.
Re: (Score:2)
Not "spread around the ship", they are all in the same section, next to the turbines to which they provided steam.
Re: (Score:2)
Not "spread around the ship", they are all in the same section, next to the turbines to which they provided steam.
[citation needed]
I looked, but couldn't find a diagram which showed the reactor locations.
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's a LARGE part of the operation. The only way to get the reactors out is to slice through the flight deck down to the eight reactors and lift them out. Since the reactors are set very low in the carrier, that effectively means ripping apart the entire carrier.
Take it out to the Laurentian Abyss and sink it (Score:3)
Pressurized salt water will eat that ship up.
Re: (Score:3)
Pressurized salt water will eat that ship up.
I'm sure it will, and in doing so could expose the radioactive material in the engineering sections to the sea. I'm not particularly concerned with that since the ocean is quite large, is already "contaminated" with naturally occurring radioactive elements, and adding whatever is inside the ship can only be a rounding error in estimating the radiation that would be in the sea. I'm just thinking that there would be considerable international outcry in dropping 100,000 tons of scrap metal and radioactive wa
New Forge (Score:2)
It might make sense to build a new forge right next to a port with a dry dock. Pull a boat or freighter in, start stripping the metal off and load it right into the forge for recycling into new steel. Sell the steel to defray the cost of scrapping the boat.
I'm not sure how much forges cost, but I'd imagine it's a lot less than a billion dollars.
Re: (Score:3)
heh, no reason for a navy owned forge.
The navy (and plenty of corporations) already sell ship steel for scrap. the radioactive parts are the problem. If you look at current picture of it you'll see a lot of steel has been removed for scrap already.
Economies of scale (Score:2)
"Whatever the Navy ends up doing, this will only be the first of many nuclear-powered carrier disposals."
Good. So, spend the billion dollars to dismantle the first one, figure out the steps, construct the necessary infrastructure, and then economies of scale suggest that the subsequent ones will be much cheaper to dismantle.
Not just nuclear ships (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The eight reactors have already been removed, according to TFS. So they're irrelevant to the question of how much more it's going to cost to scrap the Enterprise.
It's a huge ship. Biggest in the world when built. It's also full of all sorts of hazardous things (asbestos removal alone will be a nightmare). When you consider the lawsuits that will appear wherever they take the ship for final disposal, it'll be a mirac
Re: (Score:2)
No, the nuclear MATERIAL has been removed, but the REACTORS remain.
Re: (Score:2)
Before they sink the ships everything dangerous is stripped out of them. At a minimum that means everything that could harm the environment. Depending on where they sink a ship they could also take extra precautions to ensure it's safe for divers to be around or go in.
Re: (Score:2)
Far more ships went to the breakers than were used in SINKEXs. Not to mention that a ship clean enough for a SINKEX is one far cleaners than one sent to breakers (I.E. no money is saved).
Nope. The core basket and the rest of the internals as well as the rea
Delay is actually a good option here (Score:2)
For the time being, just move the Big E to a naval mothballing area and let it sit. Wait until a general nuclear recycling system is in place. By the time we have robots feeding it piece by piece to a breeder reactor along with spent fuel rods, the cost will be substantially less. Depending on the value of medical/industrial isotopes at the time, it may even turn a profit.
Easy fix. (Score:2)
Stick a $500.00 sticker on it and it will vanish overnight.
Carrier (Score:2)
Its a floating city. Why are we are we taking it apart? Make it a homeless shelter.
Re: (Score:3)
That didn't work out so very well [wikipedia.org] in this noted documentary.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Are you making a Snow Crash reference, because this feels like a Snow Crash reference...
I would like to see that (Score:3)
"sending the reactors to a nuclear waste storage facility"
Problem is, there is no such thing.
'This leaves American utilities and the United States government, ... without any designated long-term storage site for the high-level radioactive waste stored on site at various nuclear facilities around the country. '
Wikipedia
Re: (Score:2)
Many dismantled reactor vessels have been moved to Hanford. Spent nuclear fuel is a different story, there is no place to store that in the US except in pools and dry store on reactor sites.
Actually the title gets it wrong. (Score:5, Interesting)
The current promise is that they'll be able to do it for a billion and a half. It'd be more reasonable to say that nobody really knows what it will cost, but it's going to be more than a billion and a half.
Even if it cost, say, three billion to decommission this, it's not so bad when you amortize that cost over fifty years of service and consider it costs about a half billion dollars annually to operate one of these things, not counting all the other supporting ships in a carrier group. And we operate ten carrier groups...
The fact that people find a multi-billion dollar bill to scrap an old nuclear carrier surprising suggests to me a lot of folks don't really understand how much we spend on this kind of stuff.
Best deal ever (Score:2)
N. Korea will nuke it in the middle of the Pacific for half that.
Re: (Score:2)
Good info on decommissioning (Score:4, Informative)
If you want to learn more about nuclear decommissioning, see this link [world-nuclear.org].
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
‘ left single quotation mark
’ right single quotation mark
“ left double quotation mark
” right double quotation mark
affordable living quarters for Bay Area? (Score:2)
1) Get the Navy to pay you half of this cost say 500 millions and then tow it to San Francisco,
2) Build a bridge to the deck, convert and rent out all the space for living quarters.
3) Profit!
We decommission nuclear submarines all the time (Score:2, Informative)
We decommission and dispose of nuclear submarines all the time.
We'll figure it out.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Is that actually true? Installing an alternative power plant might cost more than building one from scratch, or buying a second hand one.
Wouldn't cost much to knock holes in the side for oars, I suppose. Or install masts, matey!
Re: (Score:2)
Modern aircraft carriers are more hydrodynamic, use lighter metals, are designed to have fewer staff and make use of greater automation.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
I doubt a ship from the 1960s has that many secrets of interest to competing powers.
Re: (Score:3)
I doubt a ship from the 1960s has that many secrets of interest to competing powers.
You'd think that, but I've been trying to find a diagram that shows where the reactors are even located, and I haven't managed anything except probably being put on a whole bunch of watch lists. Maybe that stuff is in Jane's, but I don't have a subscription :p
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Because we're not fighting China or Russia, so the carriers are not obsolete. They are 5 acres of sovereign American territory that can be parked nearly anywhere on 70% of the Earth's surface.
Re: Give me a break. (Score:2)
You need real-time satellite imagery for that and you can blind satellites or take a course that avoids their orbital tracks which are well known.
Very few countries have that kind of capability. Unless they are within visible sight of a coastline they are hard to find - to hit it with a missile you need to get close enough to target it.
Re: (Score:2)
So yes the US tech is the best and still holds secrets spies have not found and given away to other nations.
Re: (Score:2)
For a nation like China, which never build their own carrier, but bought a nearly finished one from Russia, it might.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Give me a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
"Simply"
You keep using that word.
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Re: (Score:2)
Everything is recyclable if you put enough energy into it. When it costs more in energy to recycle versus what it would cost in just getting more material elsewhere is when recycling becomes pointless. If we want to see more recycling then we need cheaper energy.
Until then breaking up junk into pieces and dropping the bits in a hole in the ground is a perfectly viable means of disposal. We are not going to run out of places to dig a hole any time soon. When we have the technology to recycle this stuff a
Re: (Score:3)
Until then breaking up junk into pieces and dropping the bits in a hole in the ground is a perfectly viable means of disposal.
You misspelled "means of creating a future superfund site" there. Ships are toxic AF.
Re: (Score:2)
BUT, I agree about wanting cheap energy. That will always be the case. That is why we need things like SMRs.
Re: Give me a break. (Score:2)
Re:Give me a break. (Score:5, Informative)
Bulk steel in the US costs roughly $1000 per metric tonne (depends on who you ask, that's a high estimate). At 93,000 metric tonnes, that's only $95 million dollars in steel. I strongly suspect that a 60 year old ship made of probably millions of pieces costs far more than that just to physically strip it down, not to mention the costs of reprocessing the metal. But it gets better: the ship isn't just made of steel, it's also got aluminium and copper (which, to be fair, are work 2-4 times that of steel), all of which needs to be separated out, graded, and reprocessed. Recycling might recoup some of the costs, but it's definitely not going to be nearly enough to cover it all. Maybe if it was small enough to break into cargo-container sized pieces, but this is a 342 meter long ship. Recycling it is not a trivial problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
I'm afraid she won't fit :)
USS Enterprise is 342 m long, 78.4m wide, and has 12m draft. The (new) panama locks allows max 49m beam. The real problem is the st. Lawrence seaway, however: to get beyond Montreal max draft is 8.2m, and the locks can only accomodate 233.5 m length and 24.4m beam.
Sources: good ol' wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Give me a break. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems to me, a Somali crew could strip that sucker clean for free... just cruise off the coast of Somalia and let it drift, the pirates will take care of the rest.
Re: (Score:2)
Right, lure all the pirates on board the Enterprise, then activate the self destruct. Problem solved. I saw that in a movie once.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously, the coming ships are ideal for breaking down with robotics and simply recycling.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it possible in the case where there are fewer reactors that they're bigger? And therefore the 1/X number of them each contain X times as much shit to be cleaned out?
Leaving aside that they may be wildly differing designs anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Is it possible in the case where there are fewer reactors that they're bigger?
Sure, but the size isn't the chief problem. It's doing it at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Per the article, they've already removed the reactor material.
They have some large stainless pieces that are neutron soaked, so will have to be buried.
They just cut up K-25 in Oak Ridge; it was a mile-long conglomeration many times the size of the ship in question, all stainless steel.
It was decommissioned and buried; unlike the ship, most of which can be recycled.
We do this everyday; I can't see why it's that expensive.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
All of those problems can be easily solved by passing yet another revenue-generating tax cut.
Re: (Score:2)
revenues in April totaled $515 billion — a 13% increase over last April
But apparently, they didn't cut taxes enough: The budget deficit this year is up by 21%.
Re: Just turn it into a pre-school (Score:2, Offtopic)
Isn't it hilarious how the so called progressives are just as bigoted as those they hate
Re: (Score:2)
All the unicodes