The U.S. Transportation Department would receive the $3 million it requested for fiscal 2018 to continue storing a retired nuclear-powered freighter in Baltimore Harbor as part of a $56.5-billion Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill the House Appropriations Committee approved Monday.
The merchant ship NS Savannah, now moored at Canton Marine Terminal’s Pier 13, was launched in 1959 as part of then-President Dwight Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace program. The ship was taken out of service in 1971, and fuel from its reactor core was sent to the Savannah River Site near Aiken, S.C. Babcock and Wilcox, the forerunner to the current BWX Technologies of Lynchburg, Va., built the ship’s nuclear reactor.
The U.S. Maritime Administration owns and maintains the NS Savannah. The administration, part of the Transportation Department, received $24 million to start decommissioning the ship’s Cold War-era reactor as part of the fiscal 2017 omnibus spending bill that was signed into law on May 5. That was three times what the Barack Obama administration requested for 2017 to begin decommissioning the ship’s reactor. The administration sought no decommissioning funding for 2018, and the committee bill would provide none.
The Maritime Administration estimates it will cost almost $110 million to decommission and decontaminate the reactor, according to a now year-old annual report on the vessel’s decommissioning funding status — the latest such report available. The Maritime Administration’s NRC reactor license is good through 2031 but could be renewed.
The Maritime Administration had not sought information from potential decommissioning contractors at deadline for Weapons Complex Morning Briefing.
