The former US Navy aircraft carrier USS Enterprise departed Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia under tow on the morning (local time) of Monday, November 2, bound for Mobile, Alabama, where she will be dismantled.
NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services is responsible for towing the hull to Mobile.
Under a US$418.5 million firm-fixed-price contract awarded by Naval Sea Systems Command on July 15, the company will dismantle, recycle and dispose of the entire ship, including her defuelled reactor plants.
Completion of the dismantling is expected by September 2030.
Enterprise carried eight reactors. Under the contract, waste with low levels of radioactivity and other hazardous materials will be packaged and transported to authorised licensed disposal sites, while other materials will be recycled or disposed of.
The July award followed a rerun of the competition. NorthStar originally received a disposal contract worth around US$537 million in 2025, with completion then expected in November 2029.
Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) challenged that procurement after technical difficulties prevented timely submission of its final proposal, and in February 2026, the US Court of Federal Claims ordered the competition reopened.
HII dropped its challenge to the new award in October, USNI News reported.
The navy selected commercial dismantlement in September 2023.
The navy estimated the work would take about five years and cost roughly half as much as the other options assessed, which would take 15 years or more.
The navy said the selected approach would allow scarce resources at public shipyards to remain focused on priority fleet maintenance.
The navy's CVN Inactivation and Disposal Program Office (PMS 368) has said lessons from Enterprise will inform disposal options for the ten Nimitz-class carriers as they retire. Each Nimitz-class carrier has two reactors.
"The United States is the only country in the world that builds nuclear-powered, large-deck carriers, and for the first time, we're creating a blueprint for the navy on how to dispose of them," said Captain William B. Cleveland, who was selected to lead PMS 368, at the office's establishment.
Built by Newport News Shipbuilding and commissioned in 1961, Enterprise was the world's first aircraft carrier powered by nuclear energy. She was inactivated in December 2012.
Reactor defuelling was completed in 2017, and the ship was formally decommissioned on February 3, 2017, marking the first decommissioning of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
