A citizens group called this week for some
chemical weapons to be "neutralized" rather than burned and has asked
the U.S. Army to determine whether the method is safer and quicker than
incineration.
But Army officials and the citizens group's own
report say it's impossible to gauge the costs of the technique or how
much further it would delay incineration efforts at the Pine Bluff
Arsenal and four other sites in the country.
An Army spokesman said the costs could be "astronomical."
Neutralization involves immersing contaminated containers in water and
using highpressure hoses to wash out any solid parts.
"There are a significant number of outstanding questions," Craig
Williams, director of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working
Group, said during a conference call with the media Thursday.
Essentially, he said, the group wants the Army to determine whether
neutralization "would be safer, cheaper, faster."
The United States has been working to destroy its chemical weapons
stockpile by 2012 - a deadline it will miss by several years - to
comply with an international treaty.
Williams said the report
took two years to compile and that the Army didn’Äôt supply enough
information for the group "to make a solid finding."
The report
points out that the Army "has actually had more experience neutralizing
mustard agent than burning it." More than 1,800 tons of mustard gas at
the Army's Aberdeen, Md., facility were neutralized.
Greg Mahall,
a spokesman for the U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency, said that
while the method has been used, it doesn't follow that it is the best
way to destroy the remainder of the stockpile.
The working
group's report also says that a significant amount of mustard agent at
incineration sites has been found to have unanticipated levels of
mercury.
Mercury can't be destroyed through burning.
"They’Äôve been aware of this mercury problem for at least four years,"
Williams said.
Mahall said neutralization has been discussed for almost a decade and
that the Army has used the method successfully in Maryland and Indiana.
Typically it works better for larger items, like bulk shipping
containers, rather than for rockets, which have more nooks and crannies
for the water to penetrate.
"Their contention that it's safer is something that’Äôs their opinion,"
Mahall said.
In Kentucky and Colorado, neutralization sites "are still in the design
stage," he said.
Facilities in Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Indiana and Arkansas are
incinerating their chemical weapons stockpiles.
Disposal at facilities in Aberdeen and Honolulu has been completed.
In 2002, officials in Oregon rejected efforts to build a
neutralization facility at the Umatilla Chemical Depot near Hermiston.
Among their worries: The process would have created millions of
gallons of hazardous liquid waste that would have to be shipped
elsewhere for treatment. They also worried that it would use too much
water.
The U.S. Chemical Materials Agency announced this week
that more than 1.7 million munitions - or 50 percent - of its original
stockpile of bombs, rockets, mortar shells, projectiles, land mines and
spray tanks filled with nerve and blister agents have been destroyed.
Pine Bluff and other sites, with the possible exception of the Indiana
facility, won't complete incinerating their stockpiles until as late as
2016, Mahall said.
Raini Wright, a spokesman for the arsenal,
said Thursday that officials still are optimistic that they can meet
the 2012 deadline.
Since incineration began in March 2005 with
the draining of two rockets filled with the nerve agent GB, the arsenal
has destroyed 51,518 GB rockets, about 57 percent of its GB rocket
stock, and 535,650 pounds of the GB nerve agent, or 7 percent of its
total stock.
The arsenal opened in 1941 to manufacture blister
agents and to assemble munitions. Production of chemical weapons ended
in 1969.
Since the 1970s, the arsenal has produced chemical
agents, tested chemical defense equipment and manufactured such
munitions as white phosphorus.
This story was
published Friday,
September 01, 2006
