The Hypnotic Process of Scrapping US Gigantic $4 Billion Nuclear Submarine

Welcome back to the FLUCTUS channel for a discussion about how the U.S. military takes apart its submarines, ships, and planes and where those that don’t get demolished are stored.

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[tinderbox]

Just park it anywhere in East L.A. and it'll be dismantled within a couple of hours guaranteed

[nitemareman]

My Dad and I were on a beach in Subic Bay Phillipines when I was a boy of about 10 or 11. We were goofing off just kicking around and I looked up and was like WHOA!!. There was a HUGE nuclear submarine coming into port maybe 200 yards away from where we were standing. It was so massive it defies explanation. You kind of just have to see it. It was moving past us in absolute silence. I remember my Dad saying something about there being enough nuclear weapons on board to destroy several countries. It was a truly mind bending experience I will never forget. I've been aboard the USS Drum at the Battleship Alabama memorial park but that thing was rinky dink compared to the one we saw. Amazing machines. The pinnacle of human engineering.

[timpratten]

This showed absolutely nothing about dismantling nuclear subs. It had some subs half dismantled but that was as close to it as it got

[UnknownUnknown-ucty]

6:08 Didn't know Morgan Freeman did some shipyard work on the side but glad my man is following all of his passions

[georgehopper]

I did this for 10 years at PSNS including Reactor Compartment Disposal. I became more intimate with Submarines than I thought possible or desirable. PSNS has brought Recycle up to an Art form.

[echohunter]

Proud to be an American and an Infantry Veteran. One thing our Grunts respect from the Navy is the Submariners, that’s not an easy job and deserves respect. And hats off to our incredible ship designers and builders, we’d be nothing without you.

[yayinternets]

One of my friends was a Nuke tech and ended-up getting exposed to Nuclear material during one of these disassemblies and ended-up getting a medical discharge... definitely not an easy or fun job.

[beefchops]

It really is insane the size of the military past and present in the USA…..mind boggling!

[kramler]

This is only to show what is talked about, and not shown. That would be a completely different timetable.
Timecode:
00:00 intro
00:10 short story about submarines
00:57 talking about disposal of submarines
1:38 Talks about Benjamin Franklin type of Submarine
2:03 Process on how to decommission a sub, into the dry dock
2:11 Explaining what a dry dock is
2:32 Explaining how a submarine gets into a dry dock
3:14 Removing valuable items
3:24 Talks about what they do when the boat is taken apart
3:36 Jumps back to taking the sub(s) apart
3:56 Talking about rails in the dry dock
4:19 What they use to take the subs apart
4:34 Chains and pulley systems
4:54 James K Polk submarine Specs
5:09 Talking about safety with submarine teardown
5:38 Heavy duty cranes
6:00 Crane operators sits high up and move heavy stuff
6:40 Introducing a crane operator
6:46 How loads are being secured and hoisted safely
7:18 Crane tracks
7:37 Talks about large military boat dismantling process
7:45 Military air-crafts being disassembled of valuable parts
8:15 C130 Hercules being dismantled
9:06 Plane is being blown up for faster process
9:31 Dismantling US military plane process, and reusing components
9:59 Talks about what parts can be reused
10:16 Where planes go to rest
10:33 309 aerospace maintenance and regeneration group
10:47 Talks about dry conditions and hard surface
11:05 What they use to safe the planes for corroding
11:14 It takes a long time
11:37 Talking about the size of the Bone Yards
11:58 The start of 309 aerospace maintenance and regeneration group, and the collection
12:15 Huge organization for finding parts, for planes
12:30 How the planes are stored by a system
12:49 The last landing
13:09 What kind of bone yard the A-Marc is, and their aircraft preservation process is
13:33 Type-1k planes
13:44 Type-4k planes
14:03 Comparing subs and ships with aeroplanes of disassembly
14:23 Talking about some bone yard's that can be visited by the public
14:48 Outro

[cliffords.]

I've been doing scrapping part time of whatever I come across since the mid 80's, but this is a whole different level especially with nuclear material goes. This video was too short. 😁

[johnmar]

Puget Sound Naval Shipyard is the only Naval Shipyard authorized to scrap U.S. Navy submarines. The reactors are allowed to cool down first. Then all the remaining nuclear fuel is sent to Idaho for reprocessing. The nuclear reactor is encased in steel shielding and sent to Hanford, WA nuclear reservation for disposal. There are some great photos of the nuke reactors graveyard somewhere.
Then all that high quality steel of the hull is cut up into manageable chunks, put on railroad cars and sent to steel mills for recycling.
It’s a good gig. The welders hate working cut ups because there of the chance of injury.
All the 688 (Los Angeles) class submarines that are scheduled to be decommissioned will be scrapped at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. All the early SSBM subs have been cut up. Even the nuclear surface ships, ex USS Long Beach, ex USS Bainbridge, ex USS Truxton, the later CGNs (ex USS Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and Virginia) all cut up at PSNS.
The scrapping business is a big part of the PSNS mission.

[webbtrekker]

I was in the Navy in the mid to late 1960's and was in New Construction at Electric Boat in Groton Connecticut. The Polk was there at the same time I was and I got to know a number of her crew and was aboard her a few times as she was being built. Interesting to see the end fate. My own boat was commissioned about 3 months after the Polk but we were decomm'd in 1992 and scrapped before she was, also at Bremerton Shipyard.

[kevinrobert]

That is one dangerous job right there.Those workers have to be alert every second.

[xmassan]

Even more impressive is getting the sub into the blue, recycle tote curbside.

[markszostak]

As a youngster seeing a couple of Los Angeles submarine launchings in Groton was a bit thrilling. However the Ohio class sub under construction in the dry dock next to it left an impression in my mind to this day with it's immense size. Not to mention the potential destructive power it possesses.

[tommcginn]

Half of the 15-minute video was about planes, I guess "The Hypnotic Process of Scrapping US Gigantic $4 Billion Nuclear Submarine" was not so hypnotic.😁

[tomcline]

That crane operator wasn't Morgan Freeman, it was his little brother Lester Freeman.


Trust me, this is the interwebs, so it's gotta be true!

[Carvin]

Would have been nice if such care was taken with the $90B of equipment abandoned in the "successful" evacuation of Afghanistan to keep all that technology out of enemy hands.

[ejkk]

Tell me that the crane operator did not look like a middle-aged Morgan Freeman.

[RanardCorbeau]

I served on some of these boats and I'd call it Terror-F^cking-fying instead of hypnotic. Seeing Hull fractures and rust up close. Realizing the reality that green water was mere fractions of an inch from blasting into the people tank. Most likely in an inaccessible place. Bonefish had her impulse ram carry away and say a fare how you do as it rifled through the watertight bulkhead from Tubes Forward into the Forward Battery. On her way to killing 4 crew members in 1988. Causing such a powerful explosion it broke her keel. Then the sea water and battery acid produced deadly hydrochloric acid fog. cooking the soft respiratory tissue in seconds. Something I'd never forget seeing up close and personal. The accident was predicted. Darter in her overhaul the same year was found to have the same defect. Bonefish decommissioned herself and I believe was sunk as a target. Darter followed 18 months later. Making her final dive to Davy Jones's Locker in 1992 when Tautog slammed a fish into her starboard side just aft of the sail. You can see the video here on YouTube.