Star Staff Writer
The tests, known as agent trial burns, will collect data for federal and state regulators on the effectiveness of the incinerator’s machinery and process as well as provide the first real information on smokestack emissions of toxic substances.
Incinerator workers have been destroying tons of Cold War-era M-55 rockets filled with deadly GB nerve agent, or sarin, since Aug. 9. To date, more than 9,000 rockets — or about 20 percent of the total GB rocket stockpile — have been punched and drained of their nerve agent and fed into a deactivation furnace. Also, more than 9,400 gallons of bulk agent collected from the rockets has been burned in the facility’s liquid incinerator.
Workers have spent the past two months readying the facility for the agent trial burns in a period known as “shakedown.”
Now, both processes and the work force will be on trial in what one official likened to a semesters-end test.
“We’ve been practicing this during the shakedown,” said Bob Love, the project manager for the incinerator’s contractor, Westinghouse. “You could call this a final exam.”
Love and the Army project manager, Tim Garrett, spent Tuesday briefing local elected officials, emergency response personnel from around Northeast Alabama and members of the media and the general public.
At stake for the Army and Westinghouse is how well their facility meets safety, health and emissions requirements set by various regulators, including the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Environmental Protection Agency, under two separate sets of laws.
Under the Toxic Substances Control Act, or TOSCA, incinerator officials will have to demonstrate that the process meets the requirements for the emission of PCBs, toxins and other byproducts of incineration.
The data collected from TOSCA trial burns will be sent to the EPA, which could shut down the facility and require incinerator officials to do more work to meet the standards based on the data. EPA officials will be looking to see if toxic substances released from the smokestack exceed levels considered safe for the community.
Incinerator officials also must contend with federal regulations under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, or RCRA, which in Alabama is administered by ADEM. RCRA regulates the amount of hazardous waste industrial facilities such as the incinerator can generate and the trials will test for more than 200 different substances.
Officials must also demonstrate that the facility can burn 99.9999 percent of the agent drained from rockets.
In short, the Army will have to prove the incinerator is as efficient, safe and environmentally friendly as they have billed it since the method of destruction was chosen for the Calhoun County community.
Garrett said the facility could process 40 rockets per hour but the agent trial burn would more likely set the figure at somewhere between 34-36 rockets per hour.
“You’re trying to demonstrate your highest capacity for processing rockets,” Garrett said.
Garrett said the facility has made several runs with its deactivation furnace and liquid incinerator near full capacity without incident.
By comparison, the incinerator in Tooele, Utah — a facility closely akin to Anniston’s — processed 33 rockets per hour after its agent trial burn, Garrett said.
As far as burning liquid agent, incinerator workers will try to burn about 1,015 pounds of sarin per hour, a figure reached in Tooele as well. The Anniston incinerator likely will operate at 90 percent of that figure, Garrett said.
The trial burns of equipment will be separated by each set of federal laws, beginning with a test of the deactivation furnace that burns rocket parts after they are punched and drained as it applies to TOSCA and continue with RCRA tests of the processes. A control, natural gas, also will be burned to compare to the other gases. Each trial burn is expected to take six hours.
The trial burns are expected to be completed Nov. 26, but the data analysis won’t be available until early next year. While those assessments are performed, the incinerator will process rockets at a reduced rate, probably 50-75 percent, Garrett said.
After the trial burns, incinerator officials will begin a shakedown period for gelled rockets stored at the depot. Incinerator officials say there may be 13,000 gelled rockets. The agent trial burns for gelled rockets are expected to start in early 2004.
Other trial burns are in the offing as the incinerator starts up other processes, such as the metal parts furnace and for the other two agents — VX and mustard gas — but those are at least months if not years away.
Mike Abrams, an Army spokesman for the incinerator, said the trial burns should not significantly impact the facility’s operations.
“We expect the data to support our claims and we don’t expect any additional limitations to be put on us,” Abrams said. “We cannot dictate to ADEM what they read or decide, but we do have a high level of confidence in the facility and in our ability to meet the standard.”