When Enterprise was built, she was powered by 8 small nuclear reactors, and a great deal of the superstructure that supported the entire engineering plant was completely inaccessible once she was fueled, and was highly irradiated forever afterwards.
There simply wasn’t any way to even inspect parts of the ship that essentially kept the Reactor department from falling through the bottom of the hull, and there were plenty of people in a position to know, who feared that was exactly what was going to happen some day. Nobody was sure how much corrosion, damage, and deterioration from long term exposure to ionizing radiation there was, which is at least partially why the overhaul expanded so dramatically.
As I recall, she has been operating with a number of her original reactors deactivated, and still has plenty of power to spare, but Newport News and the Navy put off making permanent repairs as long as they could and finally ran out of time. I believe some of the original reactor deactivation activities consisted of filling certain spaces with concrete, which of course does nothing to preserve steel and in fact probably accelerated much of the deterioration, not to mention creating another whole mess of highly radioactive waste material.
I’ve heard talk for years, speculating that it would be cheaper to scrap her than to try and rebuild her, and I think her time has almost come. Enterprize is a one of a kind hull, and I don’t think she will ever end up as a memorial anywhere; she is simply too hazardous to keep around. More than likely, large parts of her will have to be buried as high level nuclear waste for centuries, once she heads to the boneyard for scrapping.
Till then, she’ll keep on shootin’ ‘em and catchin’ ‘em...
I have a petition on my bottom web page to have CVN-79(the new Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier) to be the ninth ship to bear the the name Enterprise. I really encorage people who were veterans of the Enterprise,fans of the aircraft carrier or Star Trek to sign the petition.
Scrapping Enterprise is NOT going to be cheap....
When they scrap a sub, they cut the entire section of the hull containing the reactor plant in one piece, weld it up closed, then store it at Hanford Washington. Fairly simple.
I have no idea how they plan to scrap Enterprise...it will be a massive undertaking....8 reactor plants. Will be fun to watch.