The U.S. Navy vessel known as CVN 65 has already ceased to be the USS Enterprise. On Mobile’s waterfront it will cease to be a ship, or even a hull.
That’s the outlook since late Friday, when the U.S. Department of Defense posted a brief notice that a contract worth more than half a billion dollars had been awarded to NorthStar Marine Dismantlement, a company planning to break down the world’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier in Mobile.
The announcement, made without fanfare, was a big step forward for a project that has been in the works for a decade. And in some respects it was a surprising decision: Last November, the Mobile Chamber took a position opposed to the project, saying it wasn’t a good fit for Mobile.
On Monday, a Chamber representative said the organization is waiting to meet with the companies involved and learn more details of the plan, but “has no comment at this time.”
Assuming the contract is carried out as planned, the Mobile waterfront will get a huge new temporary landmark sometime in the not-too-distant future. What’s left of the Enterprise will be dismantled at the Modern American Recycling Service (MARS) yard on the west bank of the Mobile River, south of the National Maritime Museum of the Gulf of Mexico, north of the APM container terminal.
There’s a handy precedent for the kind of impression this might make. Since early March, the yard has been home to the SS United States, an ocean liner being prepped to be sunk as a fishing reef off the Florida coast. Docked alongside the yard, the United States is big enough to be seen from miles off on the Bayway and from closer at hand along Interstate 10. It has generated considerable interest and tourist traffic.
The Enterprise will occupy much the same stretch of skyline: NorthStar CEO Scott State said Monday that the ship will be docked south of where the S.S. United States now sits. But it’s bigger in every way. The SS United States is just under 1,000 feet long and barely over 100 feet wide, with a draft of 31 feet, a height above the waterline of around 145 feet and a designed displacement of 45,000 tons. The Enterprise has a length of 1,123 feet. Her beam is 132 feet at the waterline, more than 250 feet on the flight deck. When active she had a draft of 39 feet, a height above waterline of around 210 feet and a displacement of almost 95,000 tons.
According to one naval technology site, construction materials included 60,923 tons of steel, 1,507 tons of aluminum, 230 miles of pipe and tubing and 1,700 tons of quarter-inch welding rod. Launched in 1960, the ship completed her last official voyage and was deactivated in 2012. After nuclear defueling was completed at the end of 2016, she was officially decommissioned in early 2017.
Since then, the Department of Defense has been mapping out how to dispose of the hull. It determined that outsourcing the job would be more economical than handling the task at a Navy yard, and by late 2024 a field of three parties had emerged. One would have done the work in Virginia. Another, APTIM Federal Services, had previously dismantled a nuclear refueling barge in Mobile but said it would do this job in Brownsville, Texas.
When NorthStar announced its plans to bring the job to Mobile, in partnership with MARS and its subsidiary MARRS ( Modern American Recycling and Radiological Services), the Mobile Chamber soon issued a statement saying its board was opposed. It said that downtown Mobile had many positive developments on the table, including the start of construction of a new Civic Center and a new I-10 River Bridge and Bayway, and that “Bringing a large-scale nuclear dismantlement operation to our downtown waterfront risks undermining these efforts and creating a public perception issue, which could harm our city’s reputation as a vibrant, growing community.”
Chamber President and CEO Bradley Byrne added at the time that the Chamber saw the Enterprise project as being very different from the teardown of the refueling barge: “Everything we have known up until this point was that there was a potential for there to be an aircraft carrier brought in on the east side of the river, lifted completely out of the water, and all the dismantlement would occur on land,” Byrne said. “Now this, this is different. This is on the west side of the river right next to our downtown and they’re not able to take the ship completely out of the water. They have to dismantle it while it’s at least partially still in the water, which means we have a greater likelihood for there to be a mistake.”
NorthStar CEO State responded that “Because the ex-Enterprise aircraft carrier has been completely defueled, the surgical work of dismantlement that the NorthStar/MARS team proposes to take on is consistent with the shipbreaking projects that Mobile’s maritime workforce have safely completed with distinction for decades.”
The Navy has specified that even though the ship’s nuclear fuel has been removed, the hull still contains “legacy radiological and hazardous wastes.” Among other points, State said that “All potential environmental contaminants will be carefully removed from the ship in a fully contained area to eliminate any risk of release to the public or the environment.”
It was November when the Chamber announced its opposition. In January, the Chamber announced that it had welcomed NorthStar and MARRS as members.
On Monday, State said the company was collecting information from the Navy and would release more details in the near future. In the meantime, State said the team “is proud to support the Navy in fulfilling its mission to dismantle the Ex-Enterprise safely, efficiently, cost-effectively, and in an environmentally responsible manner.”
One significant new fact was revealed on Monday: State said that “Actual dismantlement of the ship will not occur in the water, but rather will occur on a concrete dry-dock at the M.A.R.R.S. Mobile facility.”
“Through all of the conversations we had about this project with local leaders in the City of Mobile and Mobile County, it was clear that the community has a long tradition of supporting our armed forces and hosts a highly skilled maritime workforce,” State said. “We look forward to close cooperation with the Navy and local stakeholders to ensure the community is informed and engaged with our team during this project.
“The Navy’s decision recognizes that the NorthStar/M.A.R.R.S. team possesses the right combination of decades’-long experience in nuclear decommissioning and maritime recycling needed for the ex-Enterprise project,” said State. “We stand ready to replicate the exceptional safety and environmental stewardship record we have attained through successful work on other complex nuclear decommissioning and maritime recycling projects.”
Military news site Breaking Defense quoted Naval Sea Systems Command, the entity that issued the contract, as saying: “By leveraging private-sector expertise in commercial nuclear power plant decommissioning, the Navy is achieving an estimated $1 billion in cost savings compared to conducting the effort in public shipyards. This approach enables the Navy to prioritize public yard resources toward fleet readiness and modernization — while upholding its longstanding commitment to environmental stewardship and nuclear safety.”
According to State, a date has not yet been set for the ship’s arrival in Mobile. Work on the project is to be completed by the end of 2029.
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