Defense Environment Alert
June 17, 2003

ARMY AWARDS KENTUCKY NEUTRALIZATION CONTRACT TO BECHTEL CORP.

The Army last week announced it was awarding the contract for the neutralization of 524 tons of chemical weapons stored at a Kentucky site to the San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp. Bechtel already holds the contract to neutralize bulk chemical agent stored in Maryland and is teamed, for the Kentucky operation, with Parsons, Inc., which has the contract for neutralizing bulk agent in Indiana.

"We are pleased that this step in Kentucky's disposal program has been taken in a timely manner," Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, said in a June 13 statement. "We look forward to working with the Bechtel/Parsons team to help maintain the program transparency model used so effectively within" the assembled chemical weapons alternative technology program, he said.

Bechtel/Parsons will use a warm water process to neutralize mustard agent and use a warm water and caustic solution process to neutralize the agents sarin and GB. The resulting hydrolysate will then be treated with super critical water oxidation (SCWO); General Atomics will lead the SCWO team.