World’s First Nuclear-Powered Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise Nears Mobile For Dismantling

World’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Enterprise is due to reach Mobile, Alabama, for dismantling this week, and the U.S Coast Guard has put safety zones in place on Mobile Bay and the Mobile River for its arrival.

The decommissioned carrier, which left Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia under tow on November 2, was expected to arrive on or about November 11 as per a navigation bulletin of the U.S Army Corps of Engineers in Mobile. The Navy had earlier put its arrival at around November 13.

On November 12, the Coast Guard published a final rule for two temporary safety zones linked to the arrival and dismantling of the former USS Enterprise. The first one closes the shipping channel from the Mobile Bar entrance to the Cochrane Bridge for the dead-ship tow, and lifts once the vessel is moored.

Boats would also have to stay outside 100 yards of the carrier unless the Coast Guard permits them, as part of a 500-yard Naval Vessel Protection Zone.

The second zone would surround the hull at its berth at 701 South Royal Street on the Mobile River, and could remain in force till around May 2030, by when the dismantling is expected to reach a safe stage. It leaves out the federal channel, thus causing no impact on commercial traffic.

NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services has bagged a $418.5 million Navy contract to take apart the 1,123-foot carrier, a job which has to be completed by September 2030. As per the Navy, hazardous and low-level radioactive waste from the ship would be packed and sent to licensed disposal sites.

No nuclear-powered aircraft carrier has been scrapped before. USS Enterprise ran on eight nuclear reactors, which were defueled by 2017.

The project came to Mobile after a legal fight between NorthStar and HII over who would handle the disposal. The Mobile Chamber had opposed the plan in 2024, saying that it could hurt the development of the downtown waterfront.

Mobile was also where the ocean liner SS United States was prepared for reefing. The liner left the city on November 9 and was sunk off Florida two days later to become the world’s largest artificial reef.

Commissioned on November 25, 1961, USS Enterprise covered more than 1 million nautical miles under nuclear power during a career that spanned the Cold War, the Vietnam War and Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom. The carrier was inactivated in December 2012 and decommissioned on February 3, 2017.

The Enterprise name would live on through the Ford-class aircraft carrier Enterprise (CVN 80), which is being built at Newport News Shipbuilding.

References: U.S. Coast Guard (Federal Register), U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District, U.S. Navy, USNI News, Stars and Stripes