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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsNavy pays a penny to get rid of carrier
By Brad Lendon, CNN
updated 9:13 AM EDT, Fri May 9, 2014
(CNN) -- For the second time in two years, the U.S. Navy is parting with one of its aircraft carriers for a penny.
The Navy announced Thursday it's paying ESCO Marine of Brownsville, Texas, one cent to take the former USS Saratoga off its hands for dismantling and recycling.
See why Navy paid $3 billion for this
The warship was decommissioned in 1994. It is now at Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island and is expected to be towed to Texas in the summer, the Navy said.
Rather than pay to scrap the old ships, why can't the Navy have people bid for the rights to the scrapping?
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)Turning an aircraft carrier into scrap metal is a very, very big job. I don't know the economic details of it, but it's likely that any profit for the recycling company is going to be marginal, at best.
upaloopa
(11,417 posts)Midway in San Diego.
I think the Saratoga is in too bad of shape to restore though.
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)who will make a profit off the scrap.
Bidding wouldn't work because the crony may not win the bid.
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)here. Go look at the website of the company. It doesn't cost millions to build a ship. It costs billions. Getting rid of a ship costs millions. Then, there are all the hazardous materials that have to be dealt with.
You're wrong on this one, I'm afraid.
liberal N proud
(60,334 posts)SORRY!
RKP5637
(67,101 posts)it seems the profit returns are probably marginal.
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)places in the US. In the third world, ship breaking is profitable, due to low labor costs and little concern for worker safety and hazardous materials handling. In the US, it's pretty much a wash in term of profitability. You're correct.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)you tow it, it's yours. Freighters, ore haulers, and other far simpler ships. To dock worn-out ships is expensive, to say nothing of towing costs and costs to scrap. Some private companies would like nothing better than to have Sally Scrapper come take the hulks off their hands.
RKP5637
(67,101 posts)obsolete, and then also at end-of-life for the materials as they migrate to rusted out hulks. And the owners hoping they can get rid of them before they sink at dock as the pumps try to keep them afloat.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)Things like asbestos and lead based paints.
There is a reason why the United States is not a center for shipbreaking and countries like India and Bangladesh are.
The hazardous materials mitigation costs alone are such that I would imagine damned few salvage/scrapyards large enough to handle such a ship are willing to take it on.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)There was a carrier being broken up several years ago, it bankrupted a couple scrapping companies. Besides asbestos, oils, and lead paint, theres also the problem of dismantling and scrapping the reactor, cooling lines, etc, that may have contamination.
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)It's not a nuclear carrier. Still...the issues are large. Built in the early 1950s, there is bound to be a lot of asbestos on it. A nightmare to recycle, I'd think, and the company may be sorry they took the job on by the time it's finished.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Scrapping it was a real mess. It was a non-nuclear WW2 vintage carrier. AFAIK, no nuclear carrier has been scrapped, only decommissioned and moth-balled. I cant even begin to imagine the problems scrapping a nuclear carrier.
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)A messy business.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)Indians swarm the ship and perform the dangerous, polluting task of breaking for pitiful wages. The ex-skipper of the Russian ship leaves by launch.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)hatrack
(59,583 posts)I think they did just that a few years back off the coast of Florida.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)but the prep work on it took almost a year.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Oriskany_(CV-34)
There's a lot involved. It isn't just a simple scuttling. They have to clean it out completely.
hatrack
(59,583 posts)Still, the Oriskany has become pretty popular with our finned friends, per National Geographic.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)joshcryer
(62,269 posts)And the immediate environment.
Scootaloo
(25,699 posts)The danger of asbestos is what happens when its fibers are inhaled into the lungs. It encysts and the cells around it go haywire, triggering cancers like asbestosis and mesothelioma. It's not like radiation or something, it's a straight-u[ hysical reaction to a foreign object in the body.
If scuba divers are inhaling water with asbestos fibers in it.. .well, I honestly think asbestos is the least of their worries. Environmentally, there's not a lot of danger i can think of; asbestos would basically act like silt, which isn't GREAT, but isn't especially harmful, either.
I mean hey, i'm guessing here, i ahve no idea what asbestoes does for certain, if you have it in an underwater environment. I know that even if it COULD cause problems with gills, most of the critters involved simply don't have the lifespan for the cancers to develop.
joshcryer
(62,269 posts)You want the thing stripped down to a metal shell.
HooptieWagon
(17,064 posts)Have to remove all pollutants and toxic materials before scuttling. On the scale of a nuclear carrier, thats really cost prohibitive if the scrap value of the metal cant offset the breaking up costs.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)but she was conventionally powered, not nuclear.
MineralMan
(146,281 posts)with ships like this. Ship breaking is a weird industry. Most is done in the third world, due to the hazardous materials, risks, and high cost of dismantling these ships. The company mentioned in the story is one of just a handful of ship breaking firms in the US, and may be the only one capable of dealing with an aircraft carrier.
Will they make money on the project? Maybe. Maybe not. The scope of the job of dismantling and recycling a ship that size is mind-boggling, really.
Those who are talking about a "giveaway" to a "crony" have no idea what this work will involve. It might result in money for the company or it might not. It will, however create jobs and keep the recycling process in the US, instead of in India or somewhere in Africa.
Finally, before turning a ship into a reef, everything that is hazardous from the ship must be removed, and that's a huge job to begin with. You can't dump a ship contaminated with stuff into the ocean to serve as an artificial reef, after all.
Eleanors38
(18,318 posts)off FL and TX. Great for fish spawning and scuba diving. No appliances and light vehicles as the sheet metal is crap, and quickly pulls away and washes onto beaches. And Florida is serious about its beaches.
MohRokTah
(15,429 posts)Lowest cost to the government takes on the salvage.
I believe we'll eventually have to pay a lot more than a penny to have this done.
Calista241
(5,586 posts)Newer ships will have less and less toxic material on them. Lead paint, asbestos and other materials were phased out over time. Maybe we'll have more, and less costly, artificial reefs in the future.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)They got somewhere north of 20,000 tons of steel for a penny.
Please explain how and why they could possibly bill the American taxpayer $100,000,000,000 to cover "the loss"
jmowreader
(50,546 posts)It costs more than $400 to remove a ton of steel from a warship.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)They got it for nothing. They paid a damned penny for a 900 foot long ship. They'll make money off it. I don't agree with your assertion. It doesn't cost $400 worth of Oxy/Acetylene and labor to cut two thousands pounds of steel off a ship.
I understand that may be a simplification, but that is neither here nor there.
I am amazed at the number of posts I see on this site that make blatant statements backed up by nothing more than fantasy.
It is a "if it bleeds it leads" type thing.
"To hell with accuracy, I think this stinks for reasons I don't really fathom, therefore something untoward is going on and as a result, the taxpayer will have to spend one hundred billion dollars making someone rich, richer.
AGAIN ::::sigh:::"
It's silly, it's dumb and it makes DU look dopey.
jmowreader
(50,546 posts)Where is the $100 billion figure coming from?
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)yortsed snacilbuper
(7,939 posts)These workers are hauling a 10,000-pound cable to a beached ship at one shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh. The photograph is part of a story at National Geographic on The Shipbreakers, which documents the dangerous working conditions and high profit margins that are business as usual in Bangladeshs maritime demolition industry.
A HERETIC I AM
(24,365 posts)is a combination Iron ore mine and steel mill.
That is Bangladesh's steel industry. They have no other. That is how they get the raw steel to make re-bar for concrete construction projects.
I've been fascinated by this subject for years. Those men, and in many cases boys, are indeed working in one of the most dangerous worksites on the planet, and there are several of them on the Indian Ocean and around the sub-continent.
The last aircraft carrier the UK sent to be scrapped went to Alang, India if memory serves.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)The Indian Supreme Court ruled in Greenpeace's favor for the French one and they haven't accepted any since. It's mostly cargo ships now. I don't think Bangladesh was ever capable of breaking down a carrier to begin with...
sl8
(13,703 posts)Carrier disposal proves a challenge for Navy:
http://www.navytimes.com/article/20120219/NEWS/202190313/Carrier-disposal-proves-challenge-Navy
But that could prove a real challenge, if history is any guide. Breaking up the carriers presents unique industrial and security issues, and estimates of the cost to scrap them ranges from nearly nothing according to the Navy to as much as a half-billion dollars per ship.
The cost will depend on the price of scrap steel; the worst-case scenario for the Navy would be $2 billion to $3 billion to make all the ships go away. But with scrap steel trading at almost historically high levels, the government's disposal costs could be far less.
...
chrisstopher
(152 posts)I could dismantle it with my Leatherman.
CatWoman
(79,294 posts)oneofthe99
(712 posts)Sunlei
(22,651 posts)Recursion
(56,582 posts)They took bids for how much a company would charge to dismantle the carrier. I'm assuming it was a penny rather than free because of some contracting or accounting rule that says you have to pay the company some amount of money to do work.
Ms. Toad
(34,055 posts)they didn't part with it FOR a penny - they parted with it AND a penny.
Earth_First
(14,910 posts)Probably more ship than necessary for their mission...however could you imagine?!
Recursion
(56,582 posts)Simply maintaining one (not operating it) is something like $200 million per year; actually sailing it triples that -- not counting crew salaries.
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)As others mentioned, there is huge cost in just getting the vessel to the scraping site. There is then a huge cost associated with hazmat work. I work for a private company that asked ESCO to bid on scraping one of our ancient boats, and their bid came back asking us to pay 200k to take it off our hands. This was a public bid, and, even knowing there were other bids, they still submitted one where we paid them.
Know of what you speak before committing to outrage.
sarisataka
(18,539 posts)Because I know nothing about the economics of scrapping a ship.
It seemed to me that if there is significant profit from the scrap the navy should benefit rather than pay. As it is a risky venture this seems a good dedeal
Now I know
Godhumor
(6,437 posts)My apologies.
sarisataka
(18,539 posts)Done it myself