Assistant Metro Editor
The Anniston Chemical Disposal Facility likely will start processing rockets again this weekend after a 10-day shutdown, officials said during a community update on incineration progress Thursday.
The incinerator shut down Jan. 6 after enough ash to fill 20 55-gallon drums had collected in a chute leading to one of the facility’s furnaces. The shutdown was used to perform maintenance and remove the accumulated ash.
Incinerator officials said they also are considering the best way to destroy rockets carrying gelled or crystalline agent.
Since it began operations Aug. 9, the incinerator has destroyed more than 15,000 M-55 rockets and more than 17,000 gallons of deadly GB nerve agent, or sarin, officials said.
To date, 37 percent of the depot’s GB stockpile has been destroyed, said Tim Garrett, the Army’s project manager at the incinerator. Officials are working on final reports for critical tests, called agent trial burns, on M-55 rockets that have not gelled or crystallized.
Garrett spoke about the current status of the incinerator program during the media portion of Thursday’s community update.
He said the fact that ash is accumulating could affect how workers destroy crystalline rockets, because workers haven’t ruled out the possibility the ash came from burning crystalline rockets.
A concrete-like substance formed after decontamination solution was sprayed over the ash, Garrett said.
Over the next few weeks, he said, workers could destroy crystalline rockets by chopping them up and burning them in the deactivation furnace, or drain any agent from the rocket and then burn the munition as a way of determining where the ash came from.
The ultimate decision on how to destroy the crystalline rockets will be based on how much workers in protective suits would need to be exposed to areas where there is chemical agent.
Draining the crystalline rockets potentially could clog a filter where agent is collected before it is burned in the liquid incinerator. A worker would have to change the filter regularly.
Chopping the rockets could require a worker to clean ash generated from burning the crystalline rockets. But Ken Ankrom, the Westinghouse plant manager, said the ash likely came from the 15,000 rockets the incinerator destroyed last year.
“To drain or not to drain, that is the question,” Garrett said.
The Tooele, Utah, incinerator, the predecessor to Anniston’s, didn’t have similar issues because the facility burned crystalline rockets at a slower pace and did not use decontamination solution, Garrett said.
Garrett said the facility has surpassed five million man hours without a lost day.
“That is a wonderful achievement for our work force,” Garrett said. “That means they’re thinking about safety.”