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Local
News
Firebrick
spacing error blamed for furnace collapse
By Ben Cunningham
Assistant Metro Editor
06-30-2006
Army officials and contractors
believe they now know why a furnace at the Anniston Chemical Agent Disposal
Facility broke in two during a test run in May. They plan to have the facility
running again by the end of July.
Workers were testing the
deactivation furnace May 8, after destroying the last of the sarin nerve agent
stored at the Anniston Army Depot in March. At about 10 p.m. that night, 72
carbon-steel bolts, which held the 7-foot-diameter, cylindrical steel furnace
suspended above the ground, broke. The lower portion of the furnace fell away
and became wedged 10 to 15 feet above the ground in a steel-beam frame around
the furnace.
Officials from the Army and
Westinghouse Anniston, which operates the chemical weapons incinerator for the
government, said Thursday they believe the bolts broke because a lining of
insulating bricks inside of the steel cylinder was replaced incorrectly after
the last of the sarin was destroyed.
The bricks, which expand in
the furnace's intense, 2,100-degree heat, were installed by contractors with
gaps that were too small between sections of the brick, said Bob Love, project
manager for Westinghouse Anniston.
"The expansion without
the proper gaps caused the bolts to shear," Love said.
Tim Garrett, the Army's
project site manager for the incinerator, said the bricks were installed using
an older design developed for the furnace's original construction. Engineers
had decided to update the design, allowing more room for expansion of the bricks,
but drawings provided to bricklayers did not contain updated instructions.
"They installed it by
the instructions," Garrett said. "We're talking about portions of an
inch here, but a half an inch or an inch makes a heck of a difference to
us."
Insulating bricks in the
facility's liquid incinerator also were installed incorrectly and are being
replaced, the officials said. Furnaces at other chemical weapons destruction
sites are being reviewed to determine if repairs are needed, Garrett said.
Garrett said workers could
turn on the deactivation furnace again by Tuesday. The facility could be ready
to begin destroying rockets containing the nerve agent VX by the end of July,
he said.
Westinghouse officials are
completing an investigation of the incident. Three groups of outside
experts--mostly other contractors--on the refractory brick involved in the
accident have reviewed the data and will review the report when it is finished.
Love said the report
contains 18 recommended corrective actions, seven of which must be implemented
before workers can resume destroying weapons.
The Anniston
Army Depot has since the 1960s stored weapons armed with the nerve agents sarin
and VX and mustard blister agent. Required by treaties with the former Soviet
Union to destroy the Cold War-era weapons, the Army built an incinerator to
destroy the stockpile at Anniston. Facilities at sites around the country are
destroying other chemical stockpiles.
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