Assistant Metro Editor
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| A red circle shows crystals formed in GB nerve agent. Photo: Special to The Star |
The weapons are safe in storage, but resulting crystals that formed in the agent are slowing down the rate at which officials can destroy the rockets and drawing criticism from anti-incineration groups.
This and other issues will be covered by ANCDF officials in a community update scheduled for 6 p.m. today at the Anniston Community Outreach Office on 10th Street.
Tim Garrett, the Army’s program manager at the incinerator, also is expected to address when the Army will resume destruction of chemical weapons. The incinerator shut down last week for maintenance. Garrett will provide an overall status report on the program.
Officials said last week the shutdown was caused by ash that collected on a chute feeding the facility’s deactivation furnace, which burns empty rocket parts and a small amount of agent.
Garrett said Wednesday he hasn’t determined whether the ash collected there because of processing crystalline agent or because the facility has processed more than 15,000 munitions.
In the early 1960s, the Army added a chemical compound called di-isopropylcarbodi-imide, or di-c-di, to some chemical weapons to keep the agent from degrading from its pure form while in storage.
“The belief is that is the dynamic that’s causing the crystals and gelling,” Garrett said. “It’s acted in the converse and it creates this material.”
The chemical actually changed the agent from liquid to crystals about the size of rock salt used to make ice cream. The crystals are burned in the deactivation furnace alongside chopped metal rocket parts.
The crystals appear to have taken some properties from the rocket’s aluminum housing, but the exact makeup of the crystals will have to be further investigated, Garrett said.
Some rockets do not have the di-c-di because the chemical was added during production, Garrett said. Garrett estimated up to 30 percent of the GB stockpile has gelled agent or crystals.
Though the deactivation furnace was not specifically designed to handle the crystalline rockets, Garrett said the furnace can safely and effectively destroy them because they consist predominantly of chemical agent and because the furnace gets hot enough and burns long enough to destroy them.
So far, no agent monitor in the facility’s smokestack has detected agent readings since the facility started destroying crystalline rockets, Garrett said.
“We knew we had the potential for this and until we started opening these munitions up, we didn’t know how much gelling or crystals we were going to face,” Garrett said.
So far, 749 crystalline rockets have been destroyed.
The Chemical Weapons Working Group, a leading incineration opponent, has raised objections to the Army’s plans for destroying rockets with crystalline or gelled agent.
Craig Williams, who heads the group, said the facility’s deactivation furnace is intended to burn pure liquid agent. Williams likened the Army’s process to an experiment.
“It’s kind of a play-it-as-you-go thing here and that’s a problem,” Williams said.
Garrett said processing crystalline rockets was demonstrated at the incinerator in Tooele, Utah and that the deactivation furnace is up to the task.
Officials have not encountered gelled rockets, or munitions with thickened agent yet.
Garrett said crystalline rockets take longer to destroy because the incinerator is permitted to process up to 14 rockets per hour, which is less than half the rate at which workers can destroy regular rockets.
Workers have destroyed up to 12 rockets per hour during the facility’s shakedown, a time period during which workers address any kinks in the process in order to ready the facility for critical tests called agent trial burns.
Garrett said there is potential for crystals to show up in other parts of the Anniston Army Depot’s chemical weapons stockpile, most likely in some of its projectile caches. Also, sludge has been shown to form in munitions filled with Mustard agent. VX has shown resistance to crystals or gelling, Garrett said.
The Army has been destroying tons of Cold War-era chemical weapons in its incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot since Aug. 9. So far, more than 15,000 M-55 rockets have been destroyed, representing about 3 percent of the overall stockpile. More than 17,000 gallons of liquid agent has been destroyed.