I read in the news that after decommissioning its aircraft carriers, the US Navy sells them to a scrapping company in exchange for $0.01.
How does something that cost over $5 billion to build and contains over 50,000 tons of steel get reduced in value to a mere single cent?
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Having worked on the haz mat side of this, the buyer is going to spend millions and millions before they see a cent of income.
They’re going to have to move this thing, then they’re going to have to pay to store it… for years. There will be expensive plans worked out for how to isolate, remove, transport, and dispose of the hazardous waste. The port, city, county, and state all get to slowly mull over whether the plans are safe enough, while the salvage company pays and pays. There will be samples taken and analyzed, consultants will write reports, there will be meetings. Eventually they will pay through the nose to deal with the haz mat.
Then you get to pay to cut the ship apart, and then you get to sell the steel. The electronics cost a zillion dollars and are not useful to anyone. They’ll be melted down for the copper. Most of the expensive stuff can’t really be scrapped.
Remember that a lot of the ten billion that went into the aircraft carrier isn’t really in the aircraft carrier. A lot of the original cost was planning and designing and meetings and research. None of that makes the steel more valuable when you take it apart.
If someone gave me an aircraft carrier right now and then someone offered to buy it from me for a penny I would take the penny and be very thankful. I might be tempted to ask for a penny plus 1% of whatever they make disassembling the carrier, but if I did there’s a good chance I’d be stuck with a carrier.
Also, graft. What are you going to do…
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