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Dismantling a Nuke Boat


Subdeacon Joe

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Sometime in the next couple of years the US Navy will dismantle the biggest nuclear powered ship ever built.

The carrier CVN-65 Enterprise. Some had wanted to have it made in to a museum. But with 8 nuclear reactors it is pretty hard to remove all 8 reactors and leave much intact.

For comparison shopping Nimitz (CVN-68) and later all have 2 nuclear reactors. The difference is the size; the Enterprise's reactors are much smaller.

That also accounts for the Enterprise being longer than the Nimitz.

 

 

The ruskie sub appears to be a double walled sub and thus the exterior rust is not really that dangerous containment wise.

And some of the material on the outside of the sub does not appear to be rust but rather growths.

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That's the same type of view I had when my first sub was decomed USS DANIEL WEBSTER SSBN 626

 

RJ

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Is any of the nuclear process reusable? The reactor, fuel pools, there must be a cost savings there somewhere, otherwise they and we will eventually pay a small fortune in burial and storage fees.

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When a US nuke sub is taken out of service and finally scrapped, the reactor has it's fuel rods removed for reprocessing Idaho Falls. Then everything that can be reused or easily dismantled is pulled out of the hull. The next step it to cut the ship into three or four pieces.The boat is cut in front of and behind the reactor compartment. It has end plates weld on to make it air tight. This compartment has low level residual radiation. I am not sure what else they do inside before sealing it up. Then the whole compartment is transported to a disposal facility like The Naval Reactor Disposal Site at East Hanford Site, Washington. There are also other surface ship reactors there as well.

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Most of the people I talk to are under the impression that submarine and ship reactors are big. This comes from the visuals on TV of land based reactor plants. Most of what is shown are the cooling towers and not the reactor vessels. The S5W reactor unit used in the earlier subs would fit in the back of a full size pickup truck. The core is just a little bigger than a football. The reactor compartment not only has the reactor vessel it has heat exchangers and several pumps.

 

Hanford site B08-022.jpg

 

Sub being dismantled.

B08-017.jpg

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Fascinating. Do they then sit there forever? I don't see why they couldn't gradually recycle the material a bit at a time. I mean, if guys can live basically encapsulated in it, and work on it while dismantling it, what would it hurt to have a tiny bit in your engine block? Or make it into ductile pipe or whatnot.

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The reactor compartment is one section of the boat no one goes in unless there is an emergency.

Access is left to the ship yards.

To get from the front of the boat to the back there is a passageway called the RC tunnel.

It's in upper level and basically is a tunnel through the compartment.

There is an access door to the reactor compartment in the tunnel but is not opened unless something very serious has happened.

In that hatch there is a small glass window. About 4" in diameter to see in to the RC section.

The tunnel was for personnel and other things like wiring and ventilation to pass by the RC.

Other than that, every thing is monitored and operated by instruments back aft in maneuvering.

 

Why they don't recycle it is beyond me.

But I never thought much about it and never looked in to it when I had access.

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This morning I did a little research on prepping the reactor compartments for storage.

To shield the low level radiation in the reactor compartments, lead is used.

Some 392 tons of pure lead per unit.

 

This brings up a question.

How do they put the lead in there?

Do they used lead pellets or sheeting or do they pour melted lead in to the compartment sealing it up?

 

Now, I do know that a Brittish company has the contract to recycle our nuke cores.

They make it in to medical products and other publicly used items.

I read that this company is working on plans to recycle the reactor compartments.

If recycling the complete reactor compartment was part of the overall plan, I would think that the lead placed in the compartments would have to be removable.

So, I think pellets would be the easiest way to shield the low level radiation and in the future remove the shielding.

Think shotgun shot and big vacuum cleaner or something like that.

 

I just don't know anyone who could verify the process.

If I do, they ain't talking.....which is okay by me.

My need to know is just curiosity.

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After the reactor has it's core removed there are parts and liquids that are still radioactive.

They were in direct contact with the radiation.

 

Before all the regulations where put in place, some of these items where sent to and buried in public dumps.

Over 400 dumps around the country.

 

So, low level radiation is relative to who ever makes the regulations.

 

General info.....sailors that spend 4 months at sea get less radiation than their first day out in the sun when they return.

Provided there isn't some sort of accidental release.

===================

Story...I was stationed at Mare Island in San Fransisco bay. I was standing mid watch at SubPac offices. The teletype went active about 1 or 2am. The message was from a boat that was outside the Golden Gate and had set on the bottom. They had gotten a hot reading of radiation in one of their compartments. I won't go in to the frantic mess of officers that flooded in to the office including the base commander but after several stressful hours the boat had found the problem and was in the process of fixing it so they could come in to port and have the yards work on it.

 

On the nuke subs the doctor/medical officer does radiation checks of water systems. One of the systems is hot. (slight radiation) After doing the readings this very small amount of water is dumped in a special sink that goes to a containment bottle just for this water. A first timer helping the doctor with the process had dumped the water in to the standard sink. This water went to the grey water holding and this set off the alarms in the compartment. No one hurt accept for their pride and I image a terrific dressing down by the captain. It took a few days for the yards to clean up the boat and get it back in to service. My actions that night in the office earned me a ships buckle from the XO of the boat a week later. It was not a good experience, though. I was the one who had to call all the officers on the command emergency contact list and tell them a boat was down. I made a decision when I started the call list. I didn't follow the list. I called the commander first and then went down the list. There was a couple of officers who were a bit upset that I did not call them in order. But another officer stepped in and told them to step away from me. Then this officer came over, asked me a few question on my process (why did I call the commander first) then told me, I did just find and not to worry.

 

Yea right...me an e-4 in a room full of captains and above including the top man of SubPac and I didn't follow protocol.

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I showed the first picture to GramaPhyllis, and she said "what is that?" I told her they were dismantling a sub and she said without any hesitation " Oh, submarine on the half shell"

 

I thought I waz gonna spew on that one.enjoy, curley

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After the reactor has it's core removed there are parts and liquids that are still radioactive.

They were in direct contact with the radiation.

 

I understand all that, but it just seems that if it was safe enough for that section to be attached to living /working spaces, with people within 100 feet or so of it, encasing it in lead and concrete and burying it under a mountain seems a bit much. Especially after the original radiation source has been removed.

 

I never got to serve on any real ships. I do not miss the navy at all, but I really would like to get a tour of an Ohio and an Arleigh Burke.

 

I'd like to tour a Spru-can too, but that ship has sailed (see what I did there?).

 

Why would the CO not be first on the call list anyway? And wouldn't the duty officer be the guy to make those calls?

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This office was just a teletype station. My job was to read incoming messages and send back the correct response indicated by the code words. If something needed more action there was the call list with various people for various responses. But a boat on the bottom wasn't on the list. This place was about a half mile from the main SubPac office where the duty officer ...ah, he seemed to stay because of big couches and coffee maker.

 

I was the only one in the teletype room except for the roving fire watch that came by every 30 minutes. The duty officer was on the list. I called him second and told him what was coming across the teletype and who I had called. He said he would be along in about 5 minutes. He did show up breathless. Must have ran all the way. The commander had said to continue calling the list in reverse making the call order highest to lowest ranking officer. I was sort of covered but not sure if I would get to explain to the lesser officers when rank started getting toss about.

 

 

At the time it was not pleasant. But later...like months, I could look back and reflex that it all went well. I like to think this is what cause me to get sent to so many specialty schools and assignments.

I have good memories but that would account for and two month of my service time. The rest was pretty boring with just daily fix it jobs in very interesting places.

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That's funny. I enjoyed reading your thoughts about life aboard a nuclear submarine. Just a recommendation, I would edit out all of your comments. Prior to making up stories about the silent service, get your dolphins. I have been in the reactor compartments many times. We had a corpsman, no doctor. He did not sample the water. The nukes took care of that. "Doc"had nothing to do with sampling water in the engine room.

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Hey, Cliff...

 

I don't recall if I asked you before, but... did you ever make it to the Horse and Cow~? :)

 

1312247177_H_C_Logo.jpg

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I didn't mention anything earlier but Cliff might have understated the size of a S5W reactor. More like the reactor would ruin a full size pickup. I have been in the reactor compartment of S5G prototype that is similar in output as S5W and its core would be bigger than a football. I have also been in the reactor compartment of theUSS Nimitz (It has 2 reactors)

That has an output above 500 Megawatts about 4 times that of S5W. The movies do show cooling towersat civilian reactors all the time and they are the same for coal fired plants and harmless.

Navy reactors are smaller than civilian because of fuel enrichment. I was stationed on the Nimitz from 1976 to 1980 it was commisioned in 1975 and went into the yards for its first refueling in 2002.

The people handling the hot samples on the ships are called ELTs Engineering Lab Techs. They handle the primary and secondary water chemistry. As well as radiation control and testing.

Dustin

ex Navy Nuke

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Nuc reactors in navy are highly enriched compared to civilian reactors. They run for years before refueling , where power plants re-refuel every 18 months. You can go onto to the NRC website and find info, if your interested, on fuel and were it goes. Would take way more time and most would be bored to tears before I could explain it all. I'm a Retired senior nuclear operator and I would get bored sometimes in training.

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Interesting article!

All submarines have double hulls as it were; a pressure hull where the crew and equipment spaces are and an outer hull which is mainly spaces for ballast tanks, fuel/water tanks of one sort or another and other...stuff. Some such as the Russian Typhoon class have a true double hull which supposedly enhances safety though I am told, any little old hole in a sub will sink her but what do I know, I was in the army!

 

That growth on the outer hull is indicative of how long that sub sat in the water beside some pier. Hmmm. I am told that like us, the Russians are demilling their old subs/ships and using the scrap. The reactor cores can be reprocessed but since they are like ours, the core material is different than what is used in commercial power stations. Likewise the missiles; each for that typhoon above had ten warheads, twenty SS-N-20 to a Typhoon. Our Ohio class carries 24 and the new Borei class Russian sub carries sixteen. I'm sure the old missiles are demilled according to specs and then the cores are repurposed. I am safe and secure in the knowledge that governments all over the world truly care for my safety and would never lose one of them or let it fall into the wrong hands. I am likewise sure I won't have to worry about irrradiated steel being used to make my next car. Steel and stuff in close contact with high radiation does become radioactive itself or at least that's what the Army instructor guy told me. He was also the guy who said the yellow and black triangley sign thingie was only a suggestion to go the other way.

 

In NBC school we were politely told, when issued protective gear and associated test kits that the items in the test kit were a weakened but still very live versions of the real stuff, Tabun, Sarin, Mustard gas and the like. It included radioactive materials to use with the geiger counters we were issued so we would know what 'the real thing' looked/sounded like when testing for same. Later after the Army, 'they' decided I should go to another NBC monitoring class the guy, whom was about eighty and I think lived in that Kennedy-era bunker he taught the class in complete with Kennedy-era civil defense supplies, had a nice lead lined bucket with samples of different isotopes we got to 'play' with so we would know what the real thing looked/sounded like on our nice little Kennedy-era geiger counters. If you've seen the movie Blast from the Past with Christopher Walken who was the dad who built a bomb shelter under his house, THAT'S the guy who taught that class! When I worked the Court building downtown not all that long ago, at least my test kit included a geiger counter made in THIS century!

 

I learned a lot; mainly, when someone mentions Nuclear, Biological or Chemical...run the OTHER way. My old instructor told me if I got any of that radio-stuff on me all my kids would be born with pink eyes and a purple goatee...and I believe him!

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I saw the post and had to dispute the OP. I've been working nuclear power for too many years to let horror stories that just can't be true be spread without debate. This is an example of how people get the incorrect view of something. The world has put a bad spin on one of the best and most reliable power sources we have.

 

Dustin, to bad you didn't get to go to the S5G ship. She was a lot of fun. If we ever get lucky enough to shoot together, I'll share some stories.

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