Anniston Star
September 2, 2003

‘Fine tuning’ underway on liquid system

By Charlotte Tubbs
Star Staff Writer
09-02-2003

The Army finished burning the first round of GB nerve agent early Monday morning, but the burn rate fell short of expectations.

Incinerator operators had anticipated burning all 800 gallons of the deadly agent during the 15-hour burn, but they destroyed only 530 gallons by 5 a.m. Sunday when they stopped the first round of incineration. The operation was the first mass destruction of nerve agent since the incinerator began processing M55 rockets Aug. 9.

The leftover 270 gallons of agent from that first round will stay in a holding tank until more agent is drained from rockets and operators burn another round of agent, said Mike Abrams, Army spokesman.

"It was not a failure or a problem," Abrams said. "The liquid system (of the incinerator) is a complex piece of machinery and takes a lot of fine tuning, and what we found is there is still some fine tuning to be done in order for the liquid incinerator to be working efficiently and by the parameters set by the state."

The operations crews and procedures all worked well, he said.

The Army expected to burn the agent at half the speed of the incinerator’s ability; this burn reached about a quarter of incinerator’s speed instead, Abrams said. Army officials hope eventually to burn 500 pounds per hour at full capacity, he said.

He compared the process to tuning a grand piano.

"You start with one string, adjust one and it affects another," Abrams said. "Once all of the fine tuning is done, it will be working in harmony."

The incinerator, which had processed 900 rockets as of Friday, could resume chopping them and draining them of nerve agent today, Abrams said.

Craig Williams, of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, which opposes incineration, said the incomplete burn is evidence that operations are not moving ahead as planned.

"It appears to me they had some problems, but we don’t know what they are," he said. "What they define as fine tuning is catch-all terminology they seem to use to define any problem they have at the plant."

"We can only speculate on what the level of severity of the problems during the first weeks have been," Williams said, referring to several days the incinerator stopped processing rockets and several false alarms that have been reported at the depot.

Williams said Army promotions of plans for the incinerator promised a virtually problem-free facility, saying Anniston’s plant would be built with the knowledge gained from the first two generations of the incinerators.

"People talked the talk, the facility does not walk the walk," he said.

Still, the process marked a "major accomplishment," Abrams said.

"The community is safer by the completion of destruction (of agent)," he said. "We’re not breaking any speed records, but we are demonstrating safety consciousness."