To cut costs, Navy plans to sink - not scrap - ships

[cec]

July 31, 2006

To cut costs, Navy plans to sink - not scrap - ships

By Christopher P. Cavas
Staff writer

Visitors to Barrancas Beach near Pensacola, Fla., get an unexpectedly close look at the decommissioned carrier Oriskany on May 15, which was under tow to an offshore site where she was sunk May 17 to create a large artificial reef. — Art Giberson / AP Photo
Old warships have long ended their days as recycled scrap: razor blades, rebar rods for construction, sheet metal for cheap automobiles and appliances. But today’s decommissioned vessel is as likely to go out with a bang as with the hiss of an acetylene torch.
A spectacular example took place May 17, when the Navy sank the decommissioned aircraft carrier Oriskany in the Gulf of Mexico to act as an artificial reef. As dozens of spectator craft bore witness, the World War II-era ship settled to the bottom in 212 feet of water, destined to be a home to sea life and a recreational destination for thousands of scuba divers.
The Oriskany, the first ship purposely sunk by the Navy as an artificial reef, could become the service’s model for disposal of its old carriers, the largest warships ever built.
Regulations that went into effect in 1996 limited the number of ships the Navy could sink to eight per year because of concerns about polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, said Glen Clark of Naval Sea Systems Command’s Inactive Ships Program Office. Five ships were sunk in 1998 and three in 1999.
The Navy began sinking more old vessels in tests and target practice. After the eight-ship restriction was lifted, a dozen hit the ocean floor in 2001, and 16 ships have been sunk in three of the last four years. At least six were sunk between January and June, with more scheduled to go down.
The rise in ship sinkings is a direct result of the Navy’s work to satisfy environmental concerns, Clark said. Working with the Environmental Protection Agency, the service has established guidelines and procedures to identify, remove and dispose of hazardous substances in its ships.
Two-thirds of the Navy’s 31 Spruance-class destroyers have met their fate in target practice: 19 have been sunk since the first “Sprucans” were decommissioned in 1998, including two June 7 off the Atlantic coast. Only five have been scrapped or are currently destined for that end. Three are on hold for potential transfer to foreign navies and one is being held as a potential museum ship. Another unit was converted for experimental work, and the fates of the remaining two are still to be decided.
But all manner of former Navy ships are finding their explosive way to Davy Jones’ locker.
The ammunition ship Butte was sunk June 27 off the Atlantic coast, the target of an advanced capability torpedo fired by the submarine San Juan. The amphibious assault ship Belleau Wood was one of several ships used as targets during the Rim of the Pacific international naval exercise in July. Weighing nearly 40,000 tons and measuring more than 800 feet, the Belleau Wood — decommissioned last October — is one of the largest targets ever to be sunk.
The successful Oriskany project was seen as a test case for dealing with the Navy’s surplus aircraft carriers, and according to Clark, the sinking of the next ship is already being planned. No date has been set for that ship, the Forrestal, Clark said. Unlike the Oriskany, it will not be accessible to commercial divers. The Forrestal design led directly to aircraft carriers in service today, Clark noted, and certain design details remain classified. To prevent unauthorized eyes from prying into the ship’s secrets, Forrestal and all other aircraft carriers will be sunk in deep water at classified locations.
But cost advantages, rather than secrecy concerns, are driving the Navy’s decision to sink its old flattops, Clark said. In 2004, the Navy estimated it would need $65 million to pay a scrapper to break up a ship the size of the Forrestal, which displaces about 50,000 tons when empty. The Oriskany cost $20 million to dispose of, and, although Clark declined to offer a cost estimate to sink the Forrestal, he observed that “in the future, we’ll be able to create a more streamlined process that will result in a lower cost.”
It’s cheaper to sink ships than scrap them, Clark said, but costs for scrapping have dropped as well. Since 1999 — when, after a series of political and economic problems, the Navy reversed its long-standing policy of selling ships for scrap and began paying to have them broken up — the service has seen the cost per ton to scrap a ship drop from a high of about $1,600 to a few hundred dollars. Fluctuations in scrap metal prices affect the costs, he said, but virtually all of the five companies involved in Navy shipbreaking have reduced costs and become more efficient.
The Navy’s efforts to reduce its post-Cold War inactive fleet inventory have paid off dramatically.
“At the peak in 1997, we had about 200 ships,” Clark said. “Currently, we have 65.”
The nuclear option
The service also has made great progress in reducing its inventory of decommissioned nuclear ships. As of this summer, 116 nuclear-powered submarines and nine nuclear cruisers have been decommissioned, according to the Navy. Of those, 102 submarines and six cruisers have been reduced to scrap metal.
All nuclear ships are disposed of at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, Wash., where the reactor compartments are cut out before being transported to the government’s nuclear storage facility at Hanford, Wash.
The cost to recycle and scrap a nuclear submarine is about $35 million, according to the Naval Sea Systems Command, while a cruiser costs about twice that.
No nuclear-powered aircraft carriers have yet been decommissioned, and the Navy plans to keep the oldest nuclear carrier, the Enterprise, in service until about 2013. The Navy recently estimated the cost to dispose of the Enterprise at about $1.1 billion.
Overseas disposal
The rise in environmental concerns about ship disposal has also affected navies outside the U.S. Perhaps the most public display of the difficulties of disposal involved the retired French aircraft carrier Clemenceau. In 2003, the ship made international headlines during an aborted attempt to tow it across the Mediterranean Sea and have it scrapped in Turkey.
After several months, the ship was returned to France, where, the following year, the government agreed to remove onboard asbestos before it would be scrapped at Alang, India. But after the ship left Toulon under tow in early January this year, environmental groups, led by Greenpeace, provoked a series of legal rulings in India and in Egypt, where the ship would pass through the Suez Canal. The ship eventually passed through the canal only to be refused entry to India.
With much international embarrassment, the French government had the ship towed around Africa to return ignominiously to France on May 17 — ironically, the same day the Navy successfully sank the Oriskany. The Clemenceau is still awaiting the French government’s decision on its fate.
France has been one of several nations to ask for disposal advice from the Navy or examine its disposal programs. A French delegation was scheduled to visit the United States in July, said Capt. David Tungett, NavSea’s program manager for ship transfers and inactive ships.
“We’re going to talk to them about how we prepare ships,” he said in June. “Sink preparations, storage preps, environmental preps.”
The group will be shown the Navy’s inactive fleet storage area in Philadelphia, Tungett said, and then will visit shipbreaking yards in Brownsville, Texas, where three contractors are at work scrapping Navy ships.
The Navy also has hosted delegations from Russia and the United Kingdom at Puget Sound, according to NavSea, where they were shown nuclear disposal procedures. The service also works closely with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Russian navy to dispose of former Soviet nuclear-powered ships.
Britain, which used to sell its former warships overseas for scrap, has not done so since 2001. Only one ship, the frigate Scylla, has been sunk as an artificial reef. The Ministry of Defence is working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to come up with a ship disposal strategy.
But the United Kingdom has yet to decide what to do with its 11 decommissioned nuclear submarines. The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management is carrying out a study “to identify technical options for a national long-term radioactive waste management solution,” said the U.K. government, and a report is set to be submitted this year.



http://www.navytimes.com/story.php?f...25-1991033.php

[bdidieu]

why cant we just sell them? I know we use to sell some of our ships to alli countries.

[Woodmonkey]

How does sinking them save money? Don't they sell what they took off of scrapped vessels?

[Anth]

And I bet they've totally forgotten about them "ghost ships" sat in Hartlepool waiting for someone to decide if they can actually start taking them to bits