You, too, might be able to own a 596-foot-long, nuclear-powered floating time capsule that has been visited by a million and a half people, features a ballroom, bar and swimming pool, and once was a star attraction on Johnny Carson’s “Tonight” show.

The Nuclear Ship (N.S.) Savannah — the first nuclear-powered ship ever built explicitly for peacetime purposes — has been moored in a quiet corner of the Canton Marine Terminal in Baltimore since 2008.

Constructed at the height of the Cold War as part of a government program aimed at demonstrating the nondestructive uses of nuclear power, the sleek 21,800-ton vessel achieved just that for nearly a decade, logging nearly half a million nautical miles and visiting 45 countries.

But the Savannah’s life in Baltimore could soon be coming to an end. The agency that owns and operates it — the U.S. Maritime Administration, or MARAD, a division of the federal transportation department — is nearing the end of the lengthy and complicated process of nuclear decommissioning, or removing enough vestiges of its nuclear capabilities to satisfy the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

That means it will at some point in the fairly near future it will be open for “conveyance,” in federal parlance — transfer of ownership to another entity — to be used in whatever fashion and for whatever purpose that entity decides, so long as it entails preservation of the ship.

Erhard W. Koehler, senior technical adviser for the Savannah, says that doesn’t mean some otherwise bored billionaire can write a check and have it towed home for his or her own amusement.

But it does mean MARAD has made it known that it’s willing to donate the formerly nuclear-driven merchant ship to a science or history museum as a potential educational enterprise, to a state or municipality as a historic attraction, or to another entity for commercial or other use.

MARAD could also lease the Savannah for similar use or even convey ownership to an organization that mainly wants to keep its signature elements intact, Koehler said, whether it be the tall, narrow chamber that housed its 74-megawatt nuclear reactor, its open bar and 75-seat dining room with their space-age, “Jetsons”-like decor, or its kitchen that contains an early, water-cooled incarnation of a microwave oven.

Those who have spoken with MARAD on the subject so far include officials from Hudson County, New Jersey, and from the seaport cities of Savannah, Georgia, and Wilmington, North Carolina.

“I feel good about the prospects,” said Koehler, who has directed operations on the Savannah since 1993 and has been touting the ship’s virtues at meetings around the country for months. “I feel that there’s enough interest out there, enough of a recognition that the ship is really in a turnkey condition — including interest in one of its most attractive features, the preserved components of the nuclear power plant — that I have confidence that someone out there will take it.”

The Savannah is probably less well known to the general public than many of its sister ships in and around Baltimore, whether it be the USS Constellation and the LV 116 Chesapeake, which are moored in the Inner Harbor and host regular visitors’ hours, or the S.S. John Brown, the Liberty ship berthed beside the Savannah that can be chartered for excursions.

But those who have have taken any of the monthly Saturday tours of the Savannah, or even one of the occasional joint tours of the Savannah and the John Brown sponsored by the American Nuclear Society, can attest to its special appeal to nuclear-power aficionados and maritime history buffs as well as civilians with a taste for the sleek, simple lines of midcentury interior design.

Approach it from the docks and you’ll see its yacht-like white hull, one side marked with an image of electrons zipping around a nucleus. Head up a set of steel steps, go across a walkway, and enter the reception area, and you’ll spot a flag of the old Atomic Energy Commission, an orange Naugahyde sofa that might have looked at home in the flying saucer on “Lost in Space,” and a placard announcing that the ship “demonstrates the intent of the United States to use Atomic Energy for Peaceful Purposes.”

The notice is signed by Lyndon Johnson, though that’s only because Johnson was president when the sign was made. It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower who in 1955 developed and promoted the idea as part of Atoms for Peace, the initiative he spearheaded in part to quell public fears about nuclear armament in the wake of the horrors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan and the nuclear tests of the early 1950s. The ship, which took four years to build and test, went into service in 1962. (The total cost — about $47 million, or more than $473 million in today’s dollars — included $2.3 million for the reactor alone.)

With cabins for 60 travelers and seven water-tight cargo holds, the Savannah — named for a historic steamship of the same name and the port city they shared — “offered unparalleled speed and endurance” with a “nuclear propulsion system [that] allowed it to cover extensive distances without refueling,” thus “showcasing the potential use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes,” according a website for the NS Savannah Association, a nonprofit that “promotes, protect and preserve the world’s first nuclear powered merchant ship.”

The ship spent the next three years as a passenger-cargo liner, ferrying its charges up and down the American East Coast, throughout the Gulf states, and to Germany, Holland and the British Isles. It sometimes docked for days, serving as an exhibition space for informational programs. (Carson’s show featured it as part of a “Nuclear Week in New York” extravaganza in 1969.) It operated as a cargo-only carrier through the late 1960s and was removed from service to save money in 1971.

Those who know the Savannah say that legacy gives it a one-of-a-kind profile.

“The Savannah represents a unique moment and artifact relating to the Cold War, in which the concept of atomic power for peace directly conflicted with atoms for war,” Paul F. Johnston, the curator of maritime history at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of History in Washington, said in an email to The Baltimore Sun. “It was a symbol of our nation’s wealth, power and peaceful global aspirations during times of conflict.”

The ship was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982 and named a National Historic Landmark in 1991. It was granted the latter honor even though it was less than the normally required age of 50 thanks to its “exceptional national significance,” according to a National Park Service study.

Since its days of active use, the Savannah has been owned by and berthed in the city of Savannah, acquired by the federal government, and been moored in places ranging from Galveston, Texas, to Newport News, Virginia. MARAD moved it to Baltimore, where it has been anchored in Canton under a long-term contract with the Vane Bros. maritime services company since 2008.

Seeing the vessel through to a new era is a slow and complicated undertaking, one that requires “safely taking the facility out of service, removing the fuel, and then ultimately, in a very careful and controlled process, dismantling and remediating the [nuclear] structures and components, disposing of the resultant waste in licensed facilities, and restoring the site to a condition where its [nuclear] license can be terminated and the residual radioactivity does not pose any threat to the environment or to the public or future residents” Koehler says.

MARAD officials have already achieved most of that. The reactor was removed and taken to a nuclear disposal site in Utah in 2022, leaving enough of its “signature components” in place to keep it compliant with National Historic Preservation Act, the document that covers its standing as a federal historic landmark.

Once Nuclear Regulatory Commission surveyors formally approve its condition, MARAD will be able to apply for termination of the ship’s nuclear license, a ruling that would free the agency to “button the ship up and get it ready to go wherever it’s going to go,” in Koehler’s words.

If the bureaucratic dominoes fall into place, Koehler says termination should happen in October of next year, freeing the Savannah for conveyance by March 2026.

Whoever acquires it will have a unique facility. Even now, guests can view its massive engine room, peek into the cylinder that once held the nuclear reactor, step into the carpeted multi-purpose room that houses speeches and seminars. and visit a dining room that boasts such treasures as a floor-to-ceiling curved wall sculpture, “Fission,” created by the French artist Pierre Bourdelle. And Johnston, who visits often, says the multi-colored electroluminescent wall sculpture behind the bar and the mosaic swimming pool just outside the window have a special draw.

Such details will make it hard for some to let go of the ship, should it end up somewhere else. Dundalk native Robert Adams first discovered it in 2009, became a tour guide in 2017, and spent so much time aboard learning its its history and technological profile that he eventually became president of the association, a role he still holds.

It will be heartbreaking, he said, should the vessel be moved elsewhere, but all he really wants is the best for the facility his wife jokingly refers to as “the other woman.”

“If someone takes her and is doing a good job with her, we may be able to mark our job as finished,” he said. “I’ll do everything I can for her.”