Army looks to finish weapons incineration

By PAUL FOY

Associated Press writer Monday, August 14, 2006

TOOELE, Utah -- It will take six years of continuous burning for the Army to finish destroying its largest stockpile of chemical weapons.

An Army contractor plans to fire up the incinerator as early as Aug. 17 to burn through 6,208 tons of gooey mustard agent -- time has turned much of it to sludge -- that fill 124,627 shells and bulk storage tanks.

The final campaign for Deseret Chemical Depot, about 45 miles southwest of Salt Lake City, comes after it burned roughly half of the nation's deadly GB and VX nerve agent, which filled more than 1 million munitions and bulk tanks -- an effort that, hobbled by technical problems and shutdowns, took a decade to complete.

The incinerator was shut down for 14 months so it could be scrubbed clean and reconfigured for the Army's single largest chemical destruction campaign, said Ted Ryba, project manager and an Army engineer overseeing the work.

The mustard agent kept here represents about a fifth of the Army's total chemical stockpiles, which are spread out across depots from Indiana to Oregon.

"Everything's in order," said Gary McCloskey, a general manager for EG&G Defense Materials Inc., a division of the engineering design firm URS Corp. "The physical work is done. We're now in the paperwork phase."

The Army contractor has obtained state approvals for the work. "We're anxious to get those weapons out of here," said Dennis Downs, director of the Utah Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste.

Mustard agent, which can produce painful skin blisters, was meant to incapacitate, not kill, enemy troops. Introduced as an aerosol by the German army in World War I, it was used by other countries in conflicts through the 1960s.

More recently, it was part of a chemical cocktail lobbed by the regime of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein on Kurdish towns in 1988.

The U.S. has never fired chemical weapons in anger and signed a 1997 treaty to dispose of its stockpiles.

Until 2003, McCloskey spent 18 years working as an Army engineer at Johnston Atoll in the South Pacific, where the United States started destroying its chemical weapons. There's no easy way to get rid of the stuff, the reason the U.S. and Russia are expected to miss an extended treaty deadline of 2012 to finish destruction of their stockpiles.

So far, the U.S. Army has destroyed 39 percent of its chemical stocks. Russia is further behind: It has destroyed only 3 percent of a larger cache of chemical weapons, embassy spokesman Yevgeniy Khorishko told The Associated Press.

At the Utah depot, remotely operated machine tools will punch holes in munitions and drain or pump the mustard agent into a furnace heated to 2,000 degrees. The munition casings will go to a separate furnace to be sterilized, and the metal sold for scrap.

The bulk containers of mustard agent will be saved for last because, for reasons that aren't clear, some of that agent is contaminated with mercury, which is not destroyed by conventional incineration and would be released into the air. Downs said the Army could add a special filter that can remove mercury.

The Utah campaign started Aug. 22, 1996, when the incinerator began burning 13,616 tons of chemical warfare agents, which represented 42.3 percent of the nation's stockpile of chemical warfare agents.

The heavily guarded incinerator sits in the middle of a desolate base of nearly three square miles, surrounded by barbed-wire and chain-link fences in remote Rush Valley.

In 2002, an intruder spotted at a distance by two armed patrols got away in a case never solved, though there was no evidence of sabotage. Army officials say he didn't get inside security perimeters for the incinerator or chemical storage yards.

McCloskey, who's in charge here for EG&G, said the depot offers a target for terrorists, but he's more worried about failing seals in the aging munitions.

Over the years it became routine for the depot to announce vapor leaks inside sealed ground bunkers, and McCloskey said the problem is getting progressively worse. The depot has had a few safety mishaps but no disasters. In 2002, a pipefitter accidentally exposed to nerve agent residue came down with symptoms of poisoning, yet he recovered and returned to work the next day.

Two years earlier, the incinerator was forced to shut down for a summer after 22 milligrams -- about one drop -- of GB nerve agent escaped the emissions stack. The plant was reopened with a new safety valve on the emissions system.

"This is more safe than any job I've had," said Irvin M. Hillman, who supervises crews that unpack chemical weapons from sealed 10-ton steel containers inside the plant.

Jeffrey Laighton, who takes delivery of the 10-ton containers and guides them onto steel rollers, said crushing injuries are his main concern -- that and the "leakers," or leaking munitions he and his crew may be called to handle inside the steel cylinders.

"You go in with a white suit to open up the leaker," said Laighton, matter-of-factly. Asked how much the danger pays him, he said, "It pays enough."