Incinerator workers will destroy leaking rocket

By Nathan Solheim
Assistant Metro Editor
02-25-2004

Workers at the Army’s chemical weapons incinerator will destroy a leaking rocket as early as today, for the first time since operations began there last August. GB nerve agent, or sarin, in levels high enough to cause minor symptoms of exposure to unprotected workers, were discovered inside a container transporting a rocket for incineration Tuesday afternoon. The discovery will cause incinerator officials to start processing leaking rockets before they had planned to. The agent was confined to the container, called an EONC. No GB was released into the facility and no worker was exposed, said Army spokesman Mike Abrams. Leaking rockets are nothing new to the Anniston Army Depot’s chemical weapons stockpile. The Army has for years identified leaking rockets in the stockpile, moved them to new containers, and stored them away for eventual destruction. Tuesday’s incident was the first time a leaking rocket showed up at the incinerator in more than 660 deliveries, Abrams said. The leaker is on a pallet of 14 munitions incinerator workers had hauled to the incinerator as they continued preparing for critical tests of the incinerator’s effectiveness, called agent trial burns. The pallet of rockets was taken into a room near the deactivation furnace, where they will await destruction that could come as early as today. The room is among the most protective in the incineration facility. “Due to the circumstances, it’s a safe assumption that one, possibly another, is guilty of some vapor leak,” Abrams said. “We will prosecute that rocket in the near future.” The leaking rocket was detected in the incinerator’s unpack area, where munitions are removed from their transport containers. Before the rockets were removed, workers took air samples from the containers and detected the agent, Abrams said. Agent levels initially were high enough to be capable of causing minor exposure symptoms, but they dissipated to lower levels by the time workers took more air samples, Abrams said. After agent levels dissipated, workers moved the pallet to the explosion-containment vestibule, close to the deactivation furnace. Workers were told to leave the unpack area and could not return without wearing protective suits, Abrams said. Since 1982, Army officials have found and isolated 778 leaking munitions in the depot’s stockpile, so Tuesday’s incident was not unexpected, said Tim Garrett, the Army’s site project manager. “I want to assure everyone that today’s ANCDF mission involving an M55 ‘leaker’ was something we practiced and we were prepared to safely handle,” Garrett said in a release. “Considering the fact that (Army) employees have had to deal with hundreds of rocket leakers over the years, this is something we anticipated, practiced for and will safely handle.” Leaking agent vapor was not detected inside the igloo where the rockets had been stored, and the leak was possibly caused during the transport of the rocket pallet to the incinerator, Abrams said. Workers in protective clothing will have to take the rockets off the pallet and feed them by hand to the conveyor leading to the deactivation furnace. Abrams said the operation would likely slow down the incinerator’s destruction rate. Earlier Tuesday, Abrams said, the facility processed 13 rockets per hour. Craig Williams of Kentucky, head of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an organization that opposes incineration, said the situation appeared to be unrelated to the incinerator’s technology. “This appears to be a non-technology-specific event,” Williams said. “It could happen in an incinerator or neutralization plant or any type of treatment facility.” Workers at the Anniston Chemical Agent Facility have been destroying tons of Cold War-era M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB nerve agent since August. To date, incinerator workers have destroyed 18,636 GB rockets and 20,799 gallons of agent.

About Nathan Solheim

Assistant Metro Editor Nathan Solheim is Minnesota native and a University of Georgia graduate.