Navy creates program office to manage nuclear carrier defuelings – By Megan Eckstein (Defense News) / Nov 29, 2023
ARLINGTON, Va. — The U.S. Navy has established a new program office to plan and manage aircraft carrier inactivations, defuelings and dismantlements, as the service readies for that work to become more common.
The Navy still hasn’t fully completed the first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier it decommissioned: the former Enterprise was inactivated and defueled at HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding from 2013 through 2018, but the hull — with contaminated components still inside — remains at an HII pier.
The Navy determined this fall it would send Enterprise to a commercial yard for dismantling and disposal rather than tie up its own public shipyards with the work.
