Baltimore Sun
September 14, 2003

Cleanup delays taken in stride; Technical problems slow mustard agent destruction; APG plant has 'learning curve'; Few complaints as public applauds Army's caution

By Lane Harvey Brown
Sun Staff
Originally published September 14, 2003

Flaws discovered in Aberdeen Proving Ground's chemical agent destruction plant have pushed the project at least six months behind schedule and created work delays costing about $200,000 a day.

Among the problems: false alarms, overheating equipment and a slow pace in cleansing containers that held the mustard agent.

But military officials and the contractors hired for the project remain optimistic about the plant, which is the Army's first to destroy agent without using an incinerator.

And news of the delays has triggered few complaints from area residents and other activists, who remember when the stockpile was to be incinerated.

"People are happy they're doing it the way they're doing it, and they're happy that they are taking their time," said John Nunn, a Kent County resident and member of the Citizens Advisory Committee. The group has followed the issue closely and helped turn the tide from incineration to neutralization in the 1990s.

Of the Army's eight chemical weapons stockpile sites around the United States, Aberdeen is the first to employ neutralization, using hot water rather than burning to break down banned carcinogenic chemicals.

At Aberdeen, the Army has a 1,600-ton stockpile of mustard agent, a blistering substance that looks like molasses and smells garlicky.

Its destruction began in June, and 52 tons of the agent have been eliminated, Army officials said.

But since its opening, the plant's work has been interrupted by a variety of problems. Perhaps the most onerous challenge has been cleaning the containers of hardened agent and aging paint, which is suspected of absorbing the agent.

Work stopped again Aug. 16, and contractors don't expect to resume destruction until next month.

"All plants go through a learning curve," said Joseph Lovrich, site project manager, adding that everyone involved in the project expected the plant to experience a few "hiccups."

Of the Army's seven other stockpiles, Anniston, Ala.; Tooele, Utah; Pine Bluff, Ark.; and Umatilla, Ore., are designated incinerator sites. Newport, Ind.; Blue Grass, Ky.; and Pueblo, Colo., are neutralization sites.

Newport is the only site, besides Aberdeen, with storage of bulk containers of chemical agent. The rest also contain weapons such as mortars, rockets, bombs, mines and artillery projectiles.

Communities surrounding other stockpile sites are watching Aberdeen closely.

But, said Craig Williams of the Kentucky-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, which opposes incineration, most people expected a first-generation plant to experience a few bumps.

"We don't have these pie-in-the-sky expectations that just because a safer and better technology is being deployed that it will be perfect or be without certain technical glitches," he said.

Stopping work to focus on the problems, he said, is "the right way to approach this thing. ... We're not upset at all about this."

A General Accounting Office report issued this month noted that Aberdeen had been processing about two 1-ton containers a day, far short of its goal of 12. But still, the report said, the overall project is on track.

Aberdeen project managers say that even with delays, the agent destruction should be wrapped up in the spring, about 18 months ahead of its original schedule.

Engineers at Aberdeen, Lovrich said, have focused on seals, piping and air monitoring inside the "glove boxes" where the agent is drained, and think they have found the causes of some problems.

For example, air seals for the reactor pumps, where the mustard agent is agitated with hot water and a caustic solution to break it down into treatable hazardous waste, were recently replaced with mechanical ones to cut down on bubbles in the tank, he said.

The bubbles, Lovrich said, increased the release of nonagent vapors into an attached cooling condenser, and some of the nonagent vapors were cooling into solid form and clogging the pipes. That helped overheat a filter system, he said.

But the toughest problem, he said, has been cleaning the mustard-agent canisters to the high standards the Army requires to release them for outside storage.

Testing is under way to determine whether agent vapors are slipping through the glove box, where the agent is drained into an attached monitoring compartment, and causing the difficulties in clearing the containers, Lovrich said.

Workers are also building enclosed annexes behind the glove box and monitoring chambers to stop cross-contamination by the vapors, he said.

The process is complicated, said deputy site manager Brian O'Donnell, but "the encouraging thing is the technology works."

Nunn, of the Citizens Advisory Committee, pointed out that when the Army elected to speed up the destruction timetable at Aberdeen after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, less time was available to thoroughly test design changes.

"The weak link has to do with how they get the agent out of the container," he said, adding that it is perhaps the least-understood part of the process.

When the Army proposed using the glove boxes, a technique used previously on small projects and not as thoroughly tested, Nunn said, the community agreed to go ahead in hopes of getting rid of the mustard agent more quickly.

As workers retool the destruction plant, testing is beginning on the second phase of the project: cleaning and cutting the 1-ton containers. That work will be handled in a fully automated assembly line and is expected to start next month.

Although Lovrich estimated that the delays cost the project $200,000 a day, funding is in place until 2005.

"We have the capacity to do some overlap," Lovrich said of running the neutralization and clean-out processes together so that the end date might stay more on track.

"I think they're going to solve the problems," Nunn said.

"One thing I've learned in this process is, there are not a lot of deadlines they make," Nunn said, adding that although he doesn't want to see the project timetable slip, he also doesn't want to see it proceed at the expense of safety.