USS Nimitz arrives at its homeport of Bremerton on Naval Base Kitsap, Wash., Dec. 16, 2025, following a nine-month deployment to Asia and the Middle East. The carrier is scheduled to be decommissioned beginning in 2026. (Gary Warner/Stars and Stripes)
A pair of nuclear reactors that have propelled a U.S. Navy supercarrier to hot spots around the world for half a century could end up repurposed to power a data center in Tennessee.
HGP Intelligent Energy, based in Dallas, has proposed to the Department of Energy that the two Westinghouse A4W naval fission pressurized water reactors on the USS Nimitz be sent to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory after they are removed from the carrier during its upcoming decommissioning, deactivation and defueling. Oak Ridge is a key U.S. government center for nuclear energy research.
The reactors could generate up to 520 megawatts of power, which HGP said in a letter to the Department of Energy could be used to boost energy for power-hungry data centers at the heart of the booming artificial intelligence industry.
HGP Intelligent Energy filed a letter with the White House’s Genesis Mission Office, which President Donald Trump created by executive order in November to “leverage artificial intelligence” on a scale and pace equal to the “Manhattan Project,” which produced the first atomic bomb in World War II.
The proposal was first reported by Bloomberg News.
HGP said that reusing and adapting the Nimitz nuclear reactors would cost between $1 million and $4 million per megawatt of generating power. A 2024 study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said a new large reactor built from the ground up would cost between $8 and $10 million per megawatt.
The new Interpretive Center at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee includes exhibits on the area’s role in developing the atomic bombs that ended World War II and scientific research since that time. Oak Ridge is the proposed site for repurposed nuclear aircraft carrier reactors that would power data centers. (Leon Roberts/U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
As part of the plan, HGP said it would cost up to $2.1 billion in private funds to create the system to use the naval reactors. The company stated it plans to apply for a loan guarantee from the Energy Department.
If the Nimitz project succeeds, reactors from future decommissioned aircraft carriers, submarines and other sources could be used for data centers.
The Nimitz arrived at its homeport of Bremerton, Wash., in December at the end of the final deployment of its career. The Navy’s oldest carrier was commissioned in May 1975. The first of the 10 Nimitz-class carriers already has orders to sail soon to Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia to begin its retirement.
Huntington Ingalls Industries has received a $33.5 million contract to continue planning for the carrier’s decommissioning, deactivation and defueling. This process has not been previously done on a ship the size of the Nimitz.
HII’s Newport News Shipbuilding facility in Virginia would be responsible for eventually removing the two reactors.
Marine Insight, a maritime industry publication, said this week that the process is expected to take five phases, with each step requiring up to 10 years, at an eventual price tag of $1 billion.
The Navy currently has a protocol for smaller reactors from Los Angeles-class submarines retired since the late 1990s. The reactors are wrapped in radioactive-shielded containers, sent on a barge from the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, then out to the Pacific Ocean and finally up the Columbia River to a port that transports the containers to a radioactive materials burial trench at the Hanford Nuclear Site in eastern Washington.
The Navy is still working on plans to dispose of or reuse the power plants on Nimitz-class carriers. Each ship has two reactors that generate 140,000 shaft horsepower, with each reactor driving two propeller shafts. The reactors also generate about 100 megawatts of electricity for use on the ship.
USS Nimitz is the first of the supercarrier class named for it to be slated for decommissioning. Earlier plans to also decommission the second-oldest carrier, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, were delayed from 2026 until the early 2030s.
The Navy has said the process for decommissioning and disposing of the Nimitz will serve as the template for future retirements as the Nimitz carriers and their reactors reach their planned half-century service lives. The carriers are to be replaced by the new USS Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.
Naval Base Kitsap in Bremerton, Wash., is undergoing a major shore systems electrical upgrade to eventually homeport USS John F. Kennedy, the second Ford-class carrier, which is scheduled to be commissioned in 2027.
