The decommissioning site of a barge used for more than 50 years to service nuclear-powered Navy ships appears safe for unrestricted release, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission said in documents posted online Tuesday.
The Surface Ship Support Barge’s decommissioning site in Mobile, Ala., is not an NRC-licensed site, but if it were, it “would have met the requirements for termination” of its license, commission wrote in the documents, dated Sept. 26 and uploaded to NRC’s public records database on Tuesday.
NRC staff therefore recommended that the barge’s owner, Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), release the vessel for unrestricted use. Under NRC regulations, sites are cleared for unrestricted use if they would expose a visitor to no more than 25 millirem of radiation a year: about one-quarter of the agency’s maximum recommended annual dose for the public.
NRC based its recommendation on its review this summer of 29 documents from NAVSEA’s decommissioning contractor Aptim Federal Services, Alexandria, Va., the government contracting branch of Baton Rouge, La.-based Aptim. Aptim got its NAVSEA decommissioning contract in 2020, according to a company press release.
NRC provided NAVSEA with technical support services for the barge dismantling under an interagency agreement signed in 2019, the commission said.
The Surface Ship Support Barge was carved from the mid-section of the former SS Cantigny and used for the nuclear navy since 1964, the NRC wrote in a technical report appended to a letter to Jerry Low, a Navy contracting officer. The barge’s last job was to help defuel the former USS Enterprise in 2016, NRC said.
