Navy plans to scrap ex-carrier Enterprise at private shipyard instead of PSNS

BREMERTON — The Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is too busy maintaining the active Navy fleet to scrap the former Enterprise aircraft carrier, Navy officials announced Friday.

Instead, the "Big E," the Navy's first nuclear-powered flattop, will head for a private scrapyard somewhere in the American South for disposal, under plans outlined in a draft environmental impact statement.

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It's a decision that pivots hundreds of millions of dollars of work away from the Pacific Northwest. But the Navy's rationale is that Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is stretched too thin to take on the Enterprise job.

"Leveraging options to perform ex-Enterprise disposal at commercial facilities is advantageous to the Navy and allows (the shipyard) to prioritize the limited public shipyard infrastructure and workforce for active fleet maintenance," the Navy wrote in the document, released Friday.

In recent years, the Navy's submarine and aircraft carrier fleets have been pushed by Navy leaders in the face of global conflict, from the War on Terror to disputes in the South China Sea over a rising Chinese Navy presence. Add to that, shortages of skilled workers have led to delayed maintenance.

The Navy is "under tremendous pressure to execute their primary mission of maintaining the operational fleet," officials said.

"This is just a case of capacity," said Brad Martin, a retired Navy captain who now heads the Institute for Supply Chain Security at the RAND Corporation. "There's no shortage of work at the public shipyards right now."

Puget Sound is the biggest of the Navy's four public yards, with more than 15,000 employees. The other shipyards are located in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; Norfolk, Virginia; and Kittery, Maine.

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Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Gig Harbor, had previously lobbied for the Enterprise work to come to Bremerton. But he said Friday that the Navy's investments in Puget Sound show a commitment here that will remain unchanged by wherever the Enterprise is recycled. Billions of dollars in federal money will optimize the shipyard in coming years, including the construction of a more than $1 billion state-of-the-art dry dock capable of working on the newest Virginia-class attack submarines and Ford-class aircraft carriers.

"The Navy’s perspective – and it’s a reasonable perspective – is that maintenance of the active fleet is more important to our national security and a better use of the extraordinary talents of workers at PSNS than recycling work for retired vessels," Kilmer said.

A 2018 Government Accountability Report found the cost to dismantle Enterprise will likely be between $750 million and $1.55 billion.

Completing the job in Puget Sound would also take longer and cost more money, Navy officials acknowledged. Bremerton's shipyard would likely have to wait to perform the work until between 2030 and 2040.

Alan Beam, a board member of the Bremerton-Olympic Peninsula Council Navy League, said he was disappointed but not surprised by the news. Beam agreed that Puget Sound Naval Shipyard has to be focused on active ships. But he'd hoped the work could still occur locally, giving an opportunity for apprentices and younger workers to gain experience on former vessels before transitioning to the operational fleet.

"We could train on them before they begin working on the active duty fleet," said Beam, a retired Navy captain who commanded the USS Bremerton fast-attack submarine.

The Enterprise was inactivated in Virginia at Huntington Ingalls Industries' Newport News Shipbuilding division following 51 years and more than a million miles traveled at sea. The ship deployed in response to threats ranging from the Cuban Missile Crisis to Operation Enduring Freedom in the Persian Gulf. It was inactivated in 2012.

Newport News Shipbuilding this year won an $11 million contract to store the vessel until September 2024.

It's a peculiar ship. Nothing like Enterprise had been built before, and likely nothing will again. It was outfitted with eight nuclear reactors, unlike the modern Nimitz class, whose ships each possess two.

Those reactors have been defueled but they still have to be packaged and disposed of. The work could go to Brownsville, Texas, where International Shipbreaking recently took apart the USS Constellation, USS Ranger, USS Kitty Hawk and USS Independence. But those flattops were conventionally powered. Shipbreakers in the Hampton Roads Metropolitan Area of Virginia and Mobile, Alabama, will also be considered.

The Navy's environmental impact statement is only a draft, and public comment will continue through October. No final decision on Enterprise has yet been made; doing the work at a private shipbreaker is officially now the Navy's "preferred alternative."

The shipyard has for decades served as the Navy's go-to installation to recycle nuclear Navy vessels, including submarines and cruisers. More than 130 reactor compartments have been packaged, floated out of Puget Sound, and shipped up the Columbia River to the Hanford site. There, they'll sit in a ditch for the next 1,000 years or so.

The Enterprise is among a long line of vessels bearing the storied name; the Navy will soon build another of the same name as a Gerald Ford-class aircraft carrier.

This story has been corrected. Transported to the Hanford site is a packaged reactor compartment.

This article originally appeared on Kitsap Sun: Navy won't scrap former Enterprise aircraft carrier in Puget Sound