News

Alarms detect leaking sarin

02/06/04

A small leak of the deadly nerve gas sarin shut down the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator, probably because of faulty air flow at the complex, officials said late Thursday.

Workers were coming out of a "hot" area contaminated with sarin when alarms began to sound late Wednesday, said Tim Garrett, the Army's project manager at the incinerator.

One alarm sounded in an area where sarin is to be expected, where workers had stepped out after decontamination. But then two more went off in clean areas, where the workers were wearing only cotton coveralls, Garrett said.

Everyone in the area immediately put on masks, he said, although the readings were extremely low. Sarin is deadly at very low levels, and the effects of even lower level exposures are unknown.

Because they didn't know precisely what had happened, supervisors at the incinerator stopped burning weapons. The incinerator is in the process of destroying M55 rockets loaded with gelled or crystallized sarin nerve agent.

The incinerator staff has now concluded that the contamination came from some sort of backdraft or air blowing in the wrong direction, from a contaminated area to a clean one, said Bob Love, project manager for Westinghouse Anniston, the contractor operating the incinerator for the Army.

"It needs to be fixed," Love said. "We'll have to change air flows or open doors slower or something."

The incinerator complex is designed to move air in one direction, from the cleanest rooms to the most contaminated until the air ultimately moves out a filter system. But the flow of air through the furnaces is unrelated, and anti-burn activists have complained that the air flow could become a problem at the juncture where the two air flows collide.

Opponent suspicious:

Craig Williams, executive director of the anti-burn group Chemical Weapons Working Group, said he is suspicious there could be trouble with air circulation at the Anniston Army Depot plant since air flow problems have affected the Army's two incinerators in Utah and Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean.

The Anniston plant started up again at midday Thursday, after officials decided they could keep the staff safe by avoiding sending them in to do further maintenance.

If any problems require workers to make another hot entry, they will delay until they can ensure it can be done safely, Love said.

The incinerator staff did not notify the rest of the depot of the incident for more than three hours. Love and Garrett said that was because they wanted to make sure the corridor was safe before sending in a laboratory worker to test the monitor to be sure it was not a false alarm.

The lab results were not back for 2½ hours.

This is the incinerator's second shut-down in a few weeks. Last month, a cement-like sludge jammed the works. Officials of the Army and Westinghouse say they don't know if that's simply buildup from burning rockets since Aug. 9, or if it's a result of trying to burn weapons that have gelled or crystallized during 40 years of storage at Anniston Army Depot.

The incinerator has burned about 18,000 rockets since Aug. 9, although it is still awaiting results from its pollution tests to allow it to move forward at full speed. Ultimately, Westinghouse intends to destroy more than 660,000 weapons over 10 years.