STICKER SHOCK: Cost to dismantle USS Enterprise set to top $1 BILLION if Congress doesn’t take action, warns watchdog agency.

The Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Enterprise was commissioned in 1961, and built at a cost of $3.9 billion, in current dollars.

The Enterprise was the first and only Enterprise-class carrier ever built, and the longest naval vessel ever constructed the world. The carrier sailed more than 1 million miles over 51 years of service.

Since she was decommissioned last year, the Enterprise has been awaiting strip-down and dismantling at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Washington state.

Now, the GAO warns that the ‘unprecedented’ undertaking of dismantling and disposing of the ship could cost between $1 billion and $1.55 billion.

Under the current plan, the work on the ship’s nuclear components, including the eight nuclear reactors that powered the carrier, is to be carried out by Navy workers at the Puget Sound Shipyard, with the non-nuclear components handled by a private contractor.

It’s a shame she can’t be brought back into service to help get the US Navy up to 350 ships, but that’s an old hull with a lot of obsolete electronics — and that one-off, eight-reactor design had to have been a maintenance nightmare.