USS Theodore Roosevelt at Newport News Shipbuilding for RCOH in 2012.
Newport News Shipbuilding is the only shipyard to perform refueling and complex overhaul work on Nimitz-class aircraft carriers. This massive undertaking was described in a 2002 Rand Study as one of the most challenging engineering and industrial tasks undertaken anywhere by an organization.
The nearly four-year project is performed only once during a carrier's 50-year life and includes refueling of the ship's two nuclear reactors, as well as significant repair, upgrade and modernization work. We have completed the refueling and complex overhaul of the first three ships of the Nimitz-class (Nimitz, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Carl Vinson). Today, we are performing this work on the fourth ship in the class, the USS Theodore Roosevelt, while also planning for the fifth ship in the class, USS Abraham Lincoln.