Navy plans to sink hull of aircraft carrier barred by Turkey

Under protests from Minister Marina Silva (Environment), the Navy plans to sink the hull of the aircraft carrier São Paulo in the Brazilian sea.

The so-called controlled sinking will be carried out by a series of explosions to open holes in the hull, which would also take the more than nine tons of asbestos present in the vessel to the ocean.

The decision has not yet been formalized, according to reports made to the Sheet. But members of the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) claim that it is a viable alternative given the advanced degree of degradation of the 266-meter-long vessel.

On January 13, when it underwent a technical inspection, the aircraft carrier was sailing, under tow, 20 nautical miles from the Port of Suape, in Pernambuco.

The inspection found a new tear in the vessel, an increase in the level of flooding and corrosion compared to the inspection carried out four months earlier.

“A critical increase in the degradation of the safety of the hull can be seen, whether due to the loss of buoyancy conditions, or the irreversible loss of the minimum stability in damage for navigation in the open sea, in addition to the increase in the extent of the damage to the hull”, alert.

Military personnel involved in the case claim that there are not many options for disposing of the aircraft carrier, abandoned by the company responsible, and the sinking is the only alternative to end a controversy of international proportions that has been going on since August.

The sinking proposal made discussions about the aircraft carrier reach the top levels of the government. Along with her, Marina Silva has expressed concern about environmental damage.

The main problem, according to the minister’s assistants, is the presence of asbestos, a toxic product that causes cancer and other serious diseases. The inventory made before the ship’s departure, in 2022, accounted for the material on board.

Marina even sought out the Minister of Defense, José Múcio Monteiro, to express this concern.

But the decision rests exclusively with the Navy. And the government would not be willing to open a new focus of tension with the Armed Forces in the midst of the investigations of those responsible for the invasions of the headquarters of the Three Powers, which took place on January 8th.

In the 1990s, according to the Navy, 55 tons of asbestos were removed from the vessel. But the product is still present on the walls of the aircraft carrier — the substance was used as thermal and acoustic insulation, to prevent the crew from living with the noise of aircraft takeoffs.

The government is in a hurry to make a decision. The second report to which Sheet had access, in September 2022 a degradation of navigation safety conditions was already observed.

In January, however, “a change in the trim [alinhamento da embarcação em relação ao espelho d’água] and a band to port, which could increase the risk of a decrease in the ship’s buoyancy reserve”. four weeks.

According to expertise, from August 2022 until now, 2,787 liters of water have entered. The limit for safe navigation is 3,530.7 liters.

“It is possible to say that the safety of navigation can be guaranteed until the established limit of shipment of more than 743 m³ of water is reached, foreseen to happen, in the best hypotheses, in a maximum of four weeks”, he warns.

The expertise also points out that, in October, ten compartments were compromised by some type of flooding. Today, there are 23. The document, finally, concludes “the impossibility of saving the hull in this situation”.

The aircraft carrier São Paulo was the largest Brazilian warship, with 31,000 tons and capacity for up to 40 aircraft. Its armament consisted of three double missile launchers and large-caliber machine guns.

Unused for decades, the ship was dismantled in France. The hull returned to Brazil and was offered for sale by the Brazilian Navy for a green recycling process.

The aircraft carrier was sold by the Navy to the Turkish shipyard Sök Denizcilik and Ticaret Limited, specialized in dismantling ships. The vehicle left Brazil on August 4, on a trip that generated protests around the world and was monitored in real time by Greenpeace.

The Navy says that, after the decision to demobilize the aircraft carrier, it opted to sell the hull for “green dismantling”, a safe recycling process for which the Turkish shipyard Sök is accredited and certified.

But, in the face of complaints about the illegal export of asbestos, the Turkish government revoked authorization for the vessel to enter on August 26, when the ship was approaching the Strait of Gilbraltar, on a trip made with the help of a tugboat.

The decision responded to complaints from organizations such as Greenpeace and the NGO Shipbreaking Platform, which were protesting against receiving the vessel.

Analyzes carried out by the NGO Shipbreaking on a twin aircraft carrier to the São Paulo identified 760 tons of asbestos on the vessel. In view of this, the organization began to question whether, in fact, the hull sent by Brazil would have the 10 tons of toxic substance as foreseen in the inventory.

Ibama (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) suspended the export license and ordered the ship to return to Brazil.

Zilan Costa e Silva, a lawyer for MSK (a company allied with the Turkish company in the purchase of the vessel), told Sheet last Saturday (21) that the buyers decided to renounce the property in favor of the Union, claiming that they no longer have the financial conditions to support the ship, which left Brazil on August 4, 2022 for a 30-day journey that drags on until today.

“We live in an unpredictable situation,” he said. “The company took every precaution, hired the largest tugboat in the world, planned a 30-day trip… And the tugboat stayed connected to the ship all this time.”

He complains that the company did not obtain authorization either to take the ship to another country or to dock in Brazil. “This is a death sentence”, he compares, saying that the financial losses in this process are still being calculated.

Since September, with the return of the aircraft carrier, several ports on the Brazilian coast have obtained judicial decisions to prevent the hull from being anchored in their vicinity.

The justification given was that the vessel has enormous dimensions and could make the port routine unfeasible. For more than four months, the hull was towed by Turkish ships looking for a destination, moving from the coast of Rio de Janeiro to Pernambuco, without success.

The Brazilian government plans to file a lawsuit against the shipyard, alleging damage to Brazil’s image abroad.