The award moves the Navy into the final phase of one of its most closely watched nuclear ship disposal projects. It also gives the service a working model for how it may later retire the Nimitz-class carrier fleet, beginning with USS Nimitz.
NorthStar Maritime Dismantlement Services is based in Vermont and specialises in dismantling and disposing of retired nuclear-powered vessels, including U.S. Navy ships. The company is a subsidiary of NorthStar Group Services, which works in nuclear facility decommissioning, decontamination and energy infrastructure disposal.
The contract covers the full dismantling of Enterprise’s remaining structure and separation of materials for recycling or regulated disposal. Steel and non-hazardous components will move into standard recycling, while hazardous materials, including low-level radioactive waste from the propulsion section, will be packed in containers meeting Nuclear Regulatory Commission requirements and shipped to licensed disposal sites.
The work is due to be completed by September 2030. Before the award, HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding spent six years removing fuel rods from the carrier’s reactors and securing propulsion system components exposed to ionising radiation.
Enterprise’s nuclear propulsion system was unusually complex. The ship had four separate propulsion compartments containing eight second-generation Westinghouse A2W pressurised-water reactors.
The Navy selected its final disposal approach in September 2023 under Alternative 3, which places the full dismantling process in the hands of a commercial civilian contractor. The service rejected Alternatives 1 and 2, which involved more complex approaches and a longer schedule.
The commercial route was expected to save about $600 million and shorten the work cycle to roughly five years. That compared with an estimated 15-year timeline if the job had been carried out by Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, Washington.
The procurement process was reopened after NorthStar first won the work in June 2025 with a $536.7 million offer and a planned completion date of November 2029. A rival bidder challenged that award, arguing that a failure in the government’s procurement platform prevented it from submitting its offer on time.
The U.S. Court of Federal Claims sided with the protester in February 2026 and ordered the Navy to reopen the competition. NorthStar won again in the new process, this time with a bid about 22% lower than its original offer, producing more than $118 million in savings.
The new contract uses a firm-fixed-price structure, the common Pentagon model that requires the contractor to complete the work for an agreed amount regardless of actual costs. That structure shifts financial risk from the government to the civilian contractor.
The Navy is funding the award from fiscal 2025 operations and maintenance accounts. Of the total, $415,497,668 was obligated immediately when the contract was signed.
The reopened procurement again used the Procurement Integrated Enterprise Environment system, the same platform whose failure led to the original protest. The award now gives the Navy a path to dispose of Enterprise while testing a commercial model for nuclear carrier retirement.
The service has described the Enterprise project as a case study for the future dismantling of the 10 Nimitz-class carriers. Those ships will require a similar process after retirement, making CVN-65 a precedent for a much larger disposal challenge.
