Tue, Mar. 9, 2004

Army prepares to shift to mobile system for non-stockpile weapons destruction

Friday, Mar 12, 2004

By Alison Vekshin
Stephens Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- U.S. Army officials are drafting documents that would allow them to set up a mobile system to destroy non-stockpile weapons stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal.

Having halted the design of a permanent non-stockpile facility at the arsenal, the Army is revising its environmental permit application to seek approval for the new system to operate there, Jeffrey Lindblad, spokesman for the Non-Stockpile Chemical Materiel Program, said Thursday.

"There is some substantial cost savings since we're using an existing system," Lindblad said, adding he did not have cost estimates on hand.

He said the mobile system would allow the Army to meet an April 29, 2007, deadline to destroy the weapons required under the Chemical Weapons Convention, an international treaty.

The Army in November ordered contractor Shaw Environmental and Infrastructure and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Little Rock to stop work on the permanent facility after completing an analysis that favored the mobile system instead.

The system, known as the Explosive Destruction System, uses a mobile unit consisting of a stainless steel vessel. It employs explosives to detonate the weapon and then injects it with neutralization agents that chemically react with the agents contained inside.

The Army based its decision on a number of factors, including technological advances and cost savings associated with using an existing system over building a new facility.

In addition, it considered the benefits of the chemical neutralization process, which generates less secondary waste than the facility would.

The mobile system has been used successfully in six missions since 2000, neutralizing more than 100 rounds at sites including the Rocky Mountain Arsenal in Colorado and Camp Sibert in Alabama, according to the Army.

Lindblad did not have estimates on when the system would begin operating at the arsenal.

In a report released Monday, the National Research Council recommended using the mobile system over the facility, concluding the system would be simpler, safer, faster, more reliable and less expensive.

The panel had questioned the Army's former plans to build and operate a combination of fixed and mobile systems at the arsenal to destroy the non-stockpile inventory.

The design had called for a 25-acre site housing a 40,000-foot building as the main processing facility to begin operating in 2006.

About 85 percent of the nation's known non-stockpile inventory, or about 1,200 recovered non-stockpile munitions, is stored at the Pine Bluff Arsenal. These munitions consist mainly of 4.2-inch mortar rounds containing sulfur mustard agent and 15-centimeter German Traktor rockets containing a variety of fills.

The non-stockpile weapons are different from the arsenal's stockpiles of chemical agents, explosives and packing material, which will be disposed of starting in April through an incineration process at a newly built facility.

The Army has scheduled a public meeting on April 22 at the arsenal's Creasy Auditorium to display the mobile unit and seek public comment.