AP New Jersey
Contractor ramps
up pace of VX destruction
May 28, 2005, 7:12 PM EDT
NEWPORT, Ind. (AP) _ Army contractors have doubled the pace of destruction
of a deadly nerve agent less than a month after beginning the process.
Workers at the Newport Chemical Agent Destruction Facility have successfully
neutralized 1,440 gallons of VX since startup on May 5, Jeff Brubaker, the
Army's site manager, said Friday.
Brubaker said the process by which the VX _ a single drop of which can cause
death _ is neutralized has been working smoothly. About a dozen one-ton containers
of VX have so far been drained into the site's two 1,000 gallon chemical reactors,
he said.
Army contractor Parsons Technology Inc. began neutralizing the chemical using
8 percent of VX per volume and has since increased that loading percentage
to 16 percent.
All the processed chemical met the Army's criteria of 20 parts per billion,
or less, of VX, Brubaker said, adding that the startup was going "better
than I envisioned."
More than 250,000 gallons of the Cold War-era chemical weapon are stored
at the depot about 30 miles north of Terre Haute in western Indiana.
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. Brubaker said there are enough containers on site to hold the waste
that will be produced through February.
"We are talking to the (Indiana) Department of Environmental Management pertaining
to the possibility of needing additional storage," Brubaker said.
The Army wants to transport the hydrolysate _ which has been compared to
liquid drain cleaner _ to a DuPont plant in Deepwater, N.J. for treatment
and disposal in the Delaware River. But that plan has sparked opposition
in New Jersey and Delaware.
Brubaker said the Army and DuPont were working with the Centers for Disease
Control and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to resolve those concerns.