( CNN ) -- The U.S. Navy 's oldest nuclear aircraft carrier has given a piece of itself to one of the younger carriers in the fleet . Huntington Ingalls Newport News Shipbuilding said this week that its workers had transferred an anchor from the USS Enterprise ( CVN-65 ) , the Navy 's first and oldest nuclear carrier , to the USS Abraham Lincoln ( CVN-72 ) , a Nimitz-class carrier launched in 1988 . The Enterprise , which was launched in 1960 , was inactivated in 2012 and is scheduled to be decommissioned in 2016 . Once its nuclear fuel and reactors are removed , it will be cut up for scrap . It has been at the Virginia shipyard for the de-fueling process . The Lincoln is in the same shipyard for what is called a refueling and complex overhaul . `` During this multi-year process , every inch of the carrier is updated or refurbished , including its two massive anchors , '' the shipyard said in a statement . When it was found that one of the Lincoln 's 30-ton anchors needed to be replaced , crews turned to the Enterprise , which had an exact match that would have been headed to the scrap heap with the rest of the five-decade-old ship . `` With this anchor , both ships will be linked , and Lincoln will carry Enterprise 's spirit as it returns to the fleet , '' Chris Miner , Newport News ' vice president of in-service aircraft carrier programs , said in a statement . That anchor move may assuage some Navy enthusiasts , who have pushed for a new Navy vessel to carry the name Enterprise once the current ship finally leaves the fleet . The carrier now docked in Newport News is the eighth American warship to carry the Enterprise name . The Naval Vessel Register , the service 's official list of ships , shows the Enterprise name assigned to hull number CVN-80 , a proposed aircraft carrier yet to be authorized or funded by Congress . The Lincoln 's overhaul is expected to be complete in 2016 , when the ship is scheduled to head out for sea trials , according to a shipyard statement . Meanwhile , the Enterprise will be towed down the East Coast and all the way around the tip of South America and up the Pacific Coast , with a final destination of Puget Sound , Washington . There its nuclear reactor will be removed and buried at a disposal site on the former Hanford nuclear production complex on the Columbia River .
Aircraft carrier USS Enterprise in shipyard to have nuclear fuel removed . The US Navy has been working on a plan for removing the spent nuclear fuel from its nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and other ships since last year. 30-ton , five-decade-old anchor from Enterprise is installed on the Lincoln .