Future
Nimitz-class carriers were designed to have a 50-year service life. At the end of the service life, ships will be decommissioned. This process will first take place on Nimitz and is estimated to cost from $750 to $900 million. This compares with an estimate of $53 million for a conventionally powered carrier. Most of the difference in cost is attributed to the deactivation of the nuclear power plants and safe removal of radioactive material and other contaminated equipment. A new class of carriers, the Gerald R. Ford class, is being constructed to replace previous vessels after decommissioning. Ten of these are expected, and the first will enter service in 2015 to replace USS Enterprise. The rest of these new carriers are to replace the oldest Nimitz ships as they reach the end of their service life. The new carriers will have a similar design to Bush (using an almost identical hull shape) but will also have further technological and structural improvements.
Read more about this topic: Nimitz-class Aircraft Carrier
Famous quotes containing the word future:
“The future is the worst thing about the present.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“I have often inquired of myself, what great principle or idea it was that kept this Confederacy so long together. It was not the mere matter of the separation of the colonies from the mother land; but something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights should be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“I shall soon be six-and-twenty. Is there anything in the future that can possibly console us for not being always twenty-five?”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)