NEWPORT, Ind. — An Army contractor destroyed the first batches of a deadly nerve agent stored in western Indiana after workers fine-tuning the process adjusted the speed at which the liquid was fed into two chemical reactors.

A preliminary analysis showed that 180 gallons of VX nerve agent were successfully neutralized Friday inside the reactors at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, said Col. Jesse Barber, the project manager.

Complete results of Friday’s chemical neutralization runs will be announced Monday at a news conference at the complex about 30 miles north of Terre Haute, he said.

Smaller prototypes of the chemical reactors had been previously tested by the Army, but Friday’s neutralization was the first test using full-scale, 1,000-gallon reactors.

Contractors began feeding 90 gallons into one of the reactors Friday morning, but they had to slow the rate at which the nerve agent was entering the reactor due to “a slight rise in temperature” in the reactor, said Army spokeswoman Terry Arthur. The problem was corrected when the rate of transfer was reduced.

Temperature is important in the neutralization process. As VX is pumped into the reactor, it is mixed with water and sodium hydroxide and heated to about 194 degrees for hours to destroy the nerve agent’s chemical bonds.

Another 90 gallons of VX was then fed into the second reactor and destroyed.

Test results conducted on samples of the mixture processed in the reactors indicate the samples have less than 14 parts per billion of VX in the mixture. That is considered undetectable and poses no danger, Barber said.

“We are non-detect,” he said. “I am ecstatic. I have never been so happy about a team and a set of data.”

The Army’s criteria for the project is 20 parts per billion of VX, or less.
VX is a liquid with the consistency of mineral oil that can kill a healthy adult with a single pinpoint droplet.

More than 250,000 gallons of VX is stored at the depot in 1,600 steel containers filled with VX in the 1960s as a Cold War deterrent against the Soviet Union.

The neutralization process is expected to take more than two years and produce a caustic chemical called hydrolysate that will initially be stored at the depot.

Friday’s initial run of the VX neutralization produced about 2,000 gallons of hydrolysate, which must undergo additional treatment.
The Army wants to transport the hydrolysate — which has been compared to liquid drain cleaner — to a DuPont plant in New Jersey for treatment and disposal in the Delaware River. The plan has sparked opposition in New Jersey and Delaware.

For now, the depot has the capacity to store 340,000 gallons of the caustic waste, Arthur said.