Arsenal aims to get mobile destruction system
BY AUSTIN GELDER ARKANSAS
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE
WHITE HALL — Most of the dangerous chemical
agents stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal are bound for gigantic incinerators,
but a number of Cold War relics will likely meet their end in one of three
mobile explosive destruction systems due to roll into Arkansas next year.
The Army showed off one of the systems Thursday before an hour-long presentation
about how the systems operate and why they’re the best option for getting
rid of rockets and other contaminated materials dug up on the arsenal grounds.
"It’s proven technology. It’s something that works," said John Gieseking,
a group leader with the Army department in charge of getting rid of nonstockpile
materials.
Stockpile weapons are those stored for possible use, while nonstockpile
materials include old rockets, testing kits, former production facilities
and other contaminated items buried long ago. In
Arkansas the stockpile includes the deadly nerve agents sarin and VX along
with nearly 4,000 tons of the blister agent mustard. The agents will be drained
from rockets and other containers and burned in huge furnaces.
Burning was scheduled to begin this month but has been pushed back until
at least July to give workers extra time to train and to test equipment.
Nonstockpile materials will be chemically neutralized inside the explosive
destruction systems if the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality issues
the proper permits.
Arkansas has only 1,200 nonstockpile items to destroy. Most of them are
small mortars or German Traktor Rockets, and all but 3 percent of the nonstockpile
materials were dug up on arsenal grounds.
The application for the explosive destruction system will be submitted within
the next few weeks, and the Army hopes for approval by spring of 2005. If
so, the explosive destruction systems would operate from July 2005 through
April 2007.
Thursday’s meeting was held to meet the requirement of allowing public input
before the application goes to the state, but no one from the public showed
up. The Creasy Auditorium outside the arsenal gates was peopled with only
Army officials, state environmental regulators and the press.
About 20 people came before the meeting to tour the explosive destruction
system set up outside, said David Hoffman, systems operations group leader
for the Army’s Chemical Materials Agency branch in charge of destroying nonstockpile
agents.
The transportable treatment system can be hauled around to detonate chemical
munitions on site.
At the Pine Bluff Arsenal, the pickup-size jumble of gauges, wires and metal
parts will be housed in airtight huts.
Crews will load rockets into a cylindrical vault where the rocket casing
will be cut in two. Chemical compounds will be pumped in to neutralize the
chemical weapons, and the vault will tilt to the left and right like a laundromat
washing machine until samples show the chemical agents have been neutralized.
No one will be in the huts during neutralization, but crews will monitor
the process from trailers 120 feet away.