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 just as much a condition of the present as is the past. “What shall be and must be is the ground of that which is.””
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“At sixty, I would like to give my future back its vistas of uncertainty.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)