Local News

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Incinerator destroys last M55 rocket

By Ben Cunningham

Assistant Metro Writer

03-09-2006

Workers at Anniston's chemical weapons incinerator have destroyed the last M55 rocket stored here, an act officials say eliminates much of the risk posed by the decades-old weapons stockpile.

"We're out of the rocket business in Anniston!" Mike Abrams, an Army spokesman for the facility in Anniston wrote in an email Thursday evening shortly after the last rocket was destroyed.

With the elimination of the last of Anniston's sarin a year ago and now the destruction of the last M55 rocket, the Army says 97 percent of the risk posed by the chemical weapons stockpile here is gone.

"All the GB and all the rockets accounted for the lion’Äôs share of the risk," Abrams said.

The last rocket was drained at 6:55 p.m., Abrams said. "The prescribed seven cuts were completed two minutes later. The last rocket piece was fed to the Deactivation Furnace at 7 p.m. The demilitarized rocket debris was subsequently discharged from the Deactivation Furnace 15 minutes later."

The Anniston Chemical Demilitarization Facility began processing rockets armed with the nerve agent VX in July. Since then, the facility has destroyed all 35,662 of the weapons.

Prior to the VX-armed rockets, the facility destroyed 42,762 M55 rockets armed with sarin, a different nerve agent, also known as GB.

Abrams said the fuel intended to fly the rockets in combat, along with their relatively thin aluminum shells, made storing, moving and destroying them riskier than the chemical-armed artillery shells and mines stored at the depot.

"All of those things combine to make them a somewhat more fragile weapon," Abrams said of the rockets.

Processing the VX-armed rockets went more smoothly than officials had predicted. Similar rockets had caused accidental fires at destruction sites in Umatilla, Ore., and Pine Bluff, Ark. Tim Garrett, the Army's site manager for the destruction project in Anniston, had expected fires here, as well. They never happened.

Garrett has speculated that Alabama’Äôs higher humidity may have kept nitroglycerin in the rocket fuel from igniting.

"That’Äôs the Garrett theory," he said. "For whatever reason, that wasn't an extra issue we had to address."

Workers now will spend about 90 days decontaminating the Anniston incinerator and installing equipment to handle 155 mm artillery shells armed with VX. Once those are destroyed, they'll turn to VX-armed land mines. All of Anniston's VX is expected to be gone by the end of 2008, Abrams said. Workers then would begin destroying mustard blister agent, expected to take another three years.

Garrett praised the depot workers and the crew of Westinghouse Anniston, under contract to operate the incinerator for the Army. He said the operation has worked nearly 10 million man-hours without stopping because of a worker injury.

"That is absolutely unheard of, especially in the type of business that we’Äôre in," he said.

About Ben Cunningham

Ben Cunningham is business editor and assistant metro editor for The Star.

Contact Ben Cunningham

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256-235-3543 256-241-1991 bcunningham@annistonstar.com