Associated Press 11/02/06

An Army contractor destroying a deadly nerve agent stored in western Indiana has neutralized nearly a third of the stockpile -- most of it after modifications to key pumps that help destroy the Cold War-era weapon, an Army official said Wednesday.

Other changes in the works might allow the project to wrap up before the current target of spring 2008, said Jeff Brubaker, the Army's on site manager at the Newport Chemical Depot.

As of Wednesday, more than 30 percent of Newport's original stockpile of about 250,000 gallons of VX nerve agent had been chemically neutralized, producing about 462,000 gallons of a caustic wastewater byproduct called hydrolysate.

That substance is being stored on site in tanks as the Army awaits word on whether it can ship it to a DuPont Inc. plant in New Jersey for final treatment and disposal.

Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc. began neutralizing Newport's VX -- a single droplet of which can kill a human in minutes -- in May 2005. But the project's early stages were plagued by leaks that halted operations for days or weeks.

Brubaker said the lessons learned from those incidents enabled engineers to fine-tune the disposal site's chemical reactors to speed along VX destruction.

In particular, pumps and piping that circulate heated water and sodium hydroxide used to destroy the VX were altered to make them less prone to damage and easier to maintain.

"It's a simpler configuration, easier to access in protective clothing and it requires only one-third of the time to repair," Brubaker said. "It's a significant improvement."

Since the changes, there has been only one spill, which was in March, and Brubaker said that was caused by human error.

Since the upgrades were implemented in late 2005 and early this year, Parsons workers have destroyed more than a quarter of the VX stockpile, he said. In contrast, by the end of 2005 only about 4 percent of the VX had been destroyed.

Parsons engineers are currently weighing two other approaches that could speed up the VX destruction -- one to reduce how long it takes to neutralize each batch of VX. The other would cut the reactors' "idle-time" when they are ready to process VX but held up for some reason.

The Army, which produced its entire supply of VX at Newport in the 1960s, is required by a 1997 international treaty to destroy the chemical weapon by 2012.

Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, said he's heartened that the Newport project is making progress.

"They're working the bugs out and it's certainly good news for the community because as the amount of agent decreases, so does the risk," he said.

Last month, a military spending bill President Bush signed into law included a provision that requires the Government Accountability Office to complete an independent cost-benefit analysis before any hydrolysate can be shipped to a DuPont plant in New Jersey for disposal.

That requirement likely delays any such shipments until at least March, and likely longer, Williams said, because the Army still needs permits from regulators in New Jersey, where opposition to the plans is strong.

Brubaker said the VX destruction is expected to produce between 1.7 million gallons and 2 million gallons of hydrolysate, which is being stored on site in tanks as it is produced.

Newport spokeswoman Terry Arthur said the Army has obtained permits from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management to store up to 2 million gallons of hydrolysate on site.

If those changes succeed, they could bring the stockpile's destruction to a quicker end, Brubaker said. The project is currently expected to reach 50 percent destruction by next spring, with all of the VX gone by spring 2008.