Birmingham News
August 10, 2003

Army burns its first rocket

08/10/03
KATHERINE BOUMA
News staff writer

ANNISTON - Under clear morning skies, the Army on Saturday disabled and burned the first rocket in its arsenal of lethal weapons, ending more than a decade of debate and argument over the fate of the deteriorating stockpile.

The M55 rocket was destroyed slowly, over 36 minutes, and the lethal liquid sarin that dripped out of it will not be burned for weeks. The mangled parts were not completely sanitized by the process, and the refuse must be hauled to a hazardous waste landfill in Emelle.

Still, Army officials were jubilant when they saw the first metal pieces drop into the fire, 13 years after they first requested permission to incinerate nerve gas weapons in Alabama.

"It's a beautiful day," said Army spokesman Mike Abrams. "It's literally the dawn of a new day."

The Army broadcast a live feed from a camera in the incinerator complex as the 61⁄2-foot weapon slowly slid down a conveyer belt, fell to pieces under a giant blade and dropped into the fire.

First, a knife-like device punched holes in the rocket, and sarin drained away into a holding vat. It will be stored there until 600 gallons are gathered to be burned in a separate incinerator in the complex.

Anniston Army Depot is the second of eight sites where the United States is destroying weapons that have been stockpiled since the Cold War. Over the next decade, the Anniston workers expect to destroy 661,529 artillery shells, rockets and mines now stored in earth-covered bunkers.

International inspectors watched the process from their own cameras within the incinerator complex Saturday to ensure that the weapons are disfigured beyond any possible future use, under a treaty signed in 1997.

Engineers from the state's environmental agency also have been at the depot 24 hours a day for two weeks in anticipation of the startup.

However, they are not monitoring the emissions in the incinerator's initial weeks. The Army is testing them only for sarin.

Pollution reports:

Reports on the pollution levels at the incinerator will not be examined until the Army has reached full speed of operations after the 720 hours called the shakedown.

The incinerator has not been tested for its safe destruction of sarin, although it has safely passed tests of other chemicals officials say are even more difficult to destroy.

A second rocket moved through the incinerator Saturday afternoon, and today workers plan to destroy eight more. Abrams said engineers and technicians are spending the intervals between incineration analyzing their performance and the outcome.

He said that is part of the Army and contractor Westinghouse's plan for a deliberate and safe startup.

"We all know we shouldn't go to the mall, buy a pair of running shoes and catch the next plane to the Boston Marathon," he said.

In the four hours Saturday morning that the Army and Westinghouse officials addressed the public on live television and spoke to reporters, they filled the air with such folksy metaphors, comparing the sarin remaining in drained weapons to the last ketchup clinging to the bottle, and the blade chopping the weapons to a child with a butter knife.

Opponents muted:

Opponents of the burn were not as cheerful, but even they were muted this weekend. Only one protester stood at the gates Saturday morning.

After losing a bid to stop the burn in court Friday, Craig Williams, executive director of Chemical Weapons Working Group, e-mailed letters to top officials in Anniston wishing them "luck and God's blessings."

His group promotes neutralization, a method that uses no heat or smokestacks and mixes the chemicals with warm water or other liquids. The group has argued that incineration is unstable and uncontrollable, and has been riddled with mistakes at the pilot site in the Pacific Ocean and an incinerator in Utah. Saturday's display, Williams said, proved nothing.

"You can drive an antique car down the street and the wheels will turn, the brakes will move," he said. "That does not mean it's the safest vehicle to drive down the interstate."