Huntington Ingalls Inc. has received an $18.4 million contract from U.S. Naval Sea Systems Command to handle preliminary planning to deactivate the nuclear power plants on the Nimitz, the first step toward decommissioning and eventual disposal.

The contract calls for a deactivation plan to be submitted to the Navy by November 2024. The Nimitz is still on active duty, homeported at Naval Base Kitsap in Washington state, with deactivation planned for 2026 and to be completed in 2027.

The contract for the Nimitz was included in an Aug. 28 roundup of projects approved by the Defense Department. Naval Sea Systems Command will oversee the project.

The Nimitz completed a six-month maintenance at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in June and shares a portion of Naval Base Kitsap with the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

After the Ronald Reagan completes its six-month overhaul, the ship is scheduled to take up the Nimitz’s role as the Navy carrier homeported in the Pacific Northwest.

The Navy’s plan for the Nimitz calls for it to transit down the West Coast of the United States and South America, around Cape Horn, and proceed to Newport News, Va., where the deactivation work would begin, according to the contract.

The Nimitz is the first of the class of 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers based on the same design. It’s named after former five-star admiral Chester Nimitz, a Navy leader in World War II. All Nimitz-class carriers were built between 1968 and 2006 at Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia.

The Nimitz was the second nuclear-powered aircraft carrier to join the Navy, following the USS Enterprise, a design used for only one ship. The Navy’s newest carrier is the USS John F. Kennedy of the Gerald R. Ford-class. It was commissioned in June 2017.

The John F. Kennedy was planned to replace the Nimitz in the fleet next year, but its delivery date was pushed back by the Pentagon to 2025. Two more Gerald Ford-class ships are under construction — a new USS Enterprise and the USS Doris Miller, which is named after the black sailor who received the Navy Cross for heroism at Pearl Harbor.

The Navy had announced in 2023 that the Nimitz would be retired in 2025, with the second-oldest carrier of the class, the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, scheduled to retire in 2026.

But the Nimitz deactivation date was pushed back to May 2026 amid delays in the construction of the new Gerald Ford-class carriers.

The deactivation of the Nimitz is also awaiting deconstruction techniques that will be used to take apart the nuclear reactors on the original USS Enterprise, which was deactivated in 2012 and decommissioned in 2017 but has not undergone major demolition work yet.

The Navy has said it also delayed the retirement of the Nimitz and Eisenhower out of heightened demand for carrier strike groups to respond to crises around the globe, including recent tensions in the Red Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

The Navy confirmed earlier this year that it would move ahead with the retirement of the Nimitz, but it now expects Eisenhower to continue in service until at least 2030.

The contract for Huntington Ingalls is earmarked for advanced planning of defueling the Nimitz’s two separate nuclear reactors, which heat water using nuclear fission to crate steam that passes through four turbines. The power plants generate up to 260,000 horsepower, turning four 25-foot diameter bronze propellors, each weighing 66,000 pounds. The Nimitz has a top speed of slightly more than 30 knots.

President Gerald Ford commissioned the Nimitz at Naval Station Norfolk, Va., on May 3, 1975, three days after the fall of Saigon marked the end of the Vietnam War.

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Instead, Franco says, she experienced a two-year nightmare; she was twice raped by fellow soldiers – once while in Virginia Beach and again at Fort Hood, Texas.

An 11-month investigation by The Orange County Register shows that despite what the Pentagon says are great strides in recent years, rape remains a frequent reality on U.S. military bases.

More than 400 women a year report they have been raped on military installations, statistics provided by the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines show.

The Army alone has identified 2,116 cases between 1986 and 1991 in which soldiers were suspects in rapes on and off Army posts. The other branches said they did not have statistics on off-base rapes.

Those aren’t the only statistics the Pentagon says it doesn’t have. The Defense Department says it doesn’t have a system to compile records on reported rapes, arrests, convictions and jail terms involving military personnel or occurring on military installations.

”The problem is that everybody reports things a different way, and there is no money to change the system,” said Lt. Col. Jim Vance, a Marine spokesman in Washington.

The Pentagon says it takes the rape issue very seriously. Every branch of the service includes gender-sensitivity instruction in its basic and advanced training, and top officials have gone on record saying there is ”zero tolerance” of sexual assault and harassment.

”Each military department handles military justice under their own department,” said Lt. Col. Doug Hart, a Pentagon spokesman.

Separate and not compatible records from each branch of the service show that over three years, 1,592 women reported that they had been raped on U.S. military installations around the world.

Most of these reported rapes – 832 cases – occurred on Army bases. That’s reason enough for investigation by the Army’s Criminal Investigative Command.

Carolyn Becraft, an ex-Army captain who does consulting work for the Pentagon and the Ford Foundation, cited reasons the Army tops the reported-rape list, besides being the largest service.

Air Force personnel are by comparison older, better educated and likely to live off base, she said. Navy personnel are assigned at sea where there are few females or to small urban bases where they are more likely to live off base.

Rape and sexual harassment in the military have come forward because of the Tailhook naval aviators’ convention September.

After the convention, 26 women alleged they were assaulted by male officers at the Las Vegas Hilton.

That led to the resignation of Navy Secretary Lawrence Garrett III and the institution of strict policies on sexual harassment.

Becraft said the problem is the military’s policies on rape, sexual harassment and sexism are often paper tigers in which the message is lost amid a male-dominated culture that sends different signals.

”The official message is: `We have this nice policy statement – no harassment – see our policy statement,”’ she said. ”But somewhere that message is getting lost. Tailhook shows there is this `open city’ or `Animal House’ mentality that can take over.”