The World's First Nuclear Carrier Is Being Cut Apart After 55 Years

The world's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier is on its final voyage — not under its own power, but under tow. The former USS Enterprise (CVN-65) left Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia on the morning of 2 November 2026, bound for Mobile, Alabama, where it will be dismantled and recycled.

A ship that changed naval warfare

Commissioned in 1961, Enterprise was the first aircraft carrier powered by nuclear energy, carrying eight reactors. It served for more than 50 years — through the Cold War, the Vietnam War and the post-9/11 conflicts, including Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom — before it was inactivated in December 2012. The Navy formally decommissioned it on 3 February 2017, the first decommissioning of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, after its reactor fuel had been removed that same year.

According to Baird Maritime, the ship was the eighth US naval vessel to bear the name Enterprise, and it was built by the same Newport News yard that is now seeing it off. At inactivation it was the third-oldest commissioned vessel in the US Navy, behind only the wooden frigate USS Constitution and USS Pueblo.

Why dismantling takes until 2030

NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services will dismantle, recycle and dispose of the entire ship, including its eight defuelled reactor plants, under a $418.5 million firm-fixed-price contract awarded by Naval Sea Systems Command on 15 July 2026. Completion is expected by September 2030.

The long timeline is not about size alone. The reactor compartments are too large to remove as a single section, so workers must dismantle parts of the hull to reach them, and low-level radioactive waste and other hazardous materials must go to licensed disposal facilities. The government retains control of the radioactive parts, while the contractor handles the remainder of the vessel. The Navy has said lessons from Enterprise will inform disposal options for the ten Nimitz-class carriers as they retire — which is why this first nuclear-carrier dismantling matters beyond one ship.

What happens to the name

The name will not retire with the hull. As Seapower Magazine reports, citing the Navy, the future Gerald R. Ford-class carrier Enterprise (CVN-80) will become the ninth US Navy ship to carry the name. It is being built at the same Newport News yard, though its delivery has slipped — earlier reports put the new handover in March 2031 rather than March 2028.

There is a quiet symmetry in the timing: Enterprise is expected to arrive in Mobile around 13 November, at about the same time as the former ocean liner SS United States leaves the same yard area to be sunk as an artificial reef off Florida. One era's great ship becomes scrap; another becomes a reef. For CVN-65, the orders now are simpler: tow south, tie up, and begin cutting.