THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, July 15, 1994 TAG: 9407150576
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Medium: 63 lines
The N.S. Savannah, the only American commercial nuclear ship ever built, was tugged to a watery pasture in the James River Thursday.
The vessel will be moored indefinitely near Fort Eustis as part of the 113-vessel James River Reserve Fleet, said John Swank, a Washington-based spokesman for the U.S. Maritime Administration.
Launched in 1958, the ship was a joint venture between the maritime agency and the former Atomic Energy Commission to show that nuclear ships could be used for non-military purposes, Swank said. It proved too expensive to operate as a cargo and passenger vessel and was retired from service in 1971.
The Savannah was moored at the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum at Charleston, S.C., for nearly 13 years, until museum officials decided they could no longer afford to spend $125,000 to $150,000 annually to maintain the ship, said Henry Chandler, the museum's deputy director.
``We turned it back over'' to the maritime agency, he said. ``We originally planned to build a restaurant on it and hotel accommodations. But for various and sundry reasons, that never came to fruition.''
The Savannah left its South Carolina home in May and spent a month at Bethlehem Steel Co. near Baltimore, where its hull was blasted and repainted, Chandler said.
Swank said he didn't know how much the repairs cost the federal government, but said it would be appropriate for such repairs to be completed on any U.S.-owned vessel - even one headed straight for the ghost fleet.
``It would be inspected to make sure there are no problems and that the hull was in good condition for a long-term layup,'' Swank said.
The ship had to be towed from South Carolina because its nuclear core was removed two decades ago, Chandler said.
The maritime agency sends American military and civilian ships to the James River mooring site if they are not on active duty but are not ready for the scrap heap, Swank said.
Most of the ships in the ghost fleet are classified as part of the agency's ``ready reserve force'' - ships that can be activated in a matter of weeks for military service.
About 80 of those ghost fleet ships were put into action in the Persian Gulf War, Swank said.
Typically it costs the federal government about $15,000 a year to maintain a ship in the James River fleet, said Michael Delpercio, director of the maritime agency's office of ship operations. If scrapped, the 10,000-ton vessel would be worth about $800,000 to $1 million, he said.
But Delpercio said his agency has no immediate plans to scrap the ship, which has been designated as a national historical site by the U.S. Park Service.
When it was moored in South Carolina, the vessel was visited by thousands every year, Chandler said.
But tourists will not have access to the ship in its new berth because it won't be moored near a pier, Delpercio said.
The Savannah was the first nuclear ship in the world to be commissioned for non-military use. West Germany and Japan later experimented with similar nonmilitary nuclear vessels, according to World Book Encyclopedia, but they also proved to be too expensive to operate. by CNB