Godspeed BIG E!
 

The CVN USS Enterprise was officially decommissioned on February 3rd, 2017 after 55 years of service. She will be scrapped as her reactors make her too dangerous to continue to exist as a museum ship (despite several requests). This is truly the end of an Era...

Interesting. Not only was USS Enterprise the first nuclear-powered carrier (originally, of course, the only), now she is the first (and so far only) one to retire, prompting the question how?

It does seem a pity that she cannot be kept somewhere as a utility generator. OTOH, it would seem quite a comedown to see USS Enterprise supplying lighting for Yankee Stadium or anywhere else for that matter...

Uncle Ted

The ship is such old technology that the Department of Energy probably would not let it operate anyway. The way the ship was built the system is unique and cannot be refitted without dismantling the ship anyway. Newer ships are taking an approach. Packing the system and constructing the frame members that at a major multiyear refit the reactor could be removed. Reactors have gotten far smaller and the plan is to emplace reactors with excess outputs greater than 50% of the ships needs to accommodate future systems.

The name will live on in USS Enterprise (CVN-80) which is third carrier in the
Gerald R. Ford-class, she is scheduled to be constructed and in operation by 2027. I could see her being the first us navy ship to carry a UAV Squadron

I'm not sure it will take that long to deploy ZMQ-25A Stingrays. They're supposed to go operational in the "early-to-mid" 2020s, so it's more likely to be either the Ford or the Kennedy that gets the first squadron.