Defense Environment Alert 10/21/03

Defense Environment Alert
October 21, 2003

NRC PANEL URGES INCREASING ROCKET PROCESSING RATES IN ALABAMA

A National Research Council (NRC) panel is urging the Army to seek permission from Alabama regulators to more quickly process chemical agent-filled M55 rockets at its chemical weapons incinerator in Anniston, AL. But the panel, in a new report, says the Army should seek this modified destruction plan "with proactive attention to public input," and recommends the Army increase its monitoring of non-agent emissions from the incinerator.

"The Army should make every effort to obtain regulatory approval of a processing rate for gelled GB M55 rockets that is constrained only by valid requirements for ensuring safety and by equipment capacity limitations," the report says. "This rate should be established by the results of agent trial burns."

A source with the Chemical Weapons Working Group (CWWG), who believes non-incineration technology should be used to destroy the weapons, is pleased with the report's call for additional non-agent stack monitoring and increased public involvement. But this source is dissatisfied with the main thrust of the report urging faster processing of rockets where the agent has gelled because the NRC bases its support for an increased rate on the risk from prolonged storage of weapons. Although there is risk of automatic ignition with the aging munitions, the report says this risk is "much lower" than the estimated risk of ignition from a lightning strike on a storage igloo.

The source is "very disappointed that the NRC would recommend moving forward with a process it previously warned against." In a 1991 report on a chemical weapons destruction method known as cryofracture, the NRC raised concerns about destroying assembled chemical weapons in a common kiln because of the potential for generating undesirable complex gases or solids. Cryofracture involves cooling the munitions in liquid nitrogen and breaking apart the munitions before incineration. Alabama county officials cited this report in a 2001 letter to the NRC, in which the officials raised concerns about Army plans to burn gelled rockets at a rate of 30 to 34 rockets per hour.

In the Oct. 15 report, Assessment of Processing Gelled GB M55 Rockets at Anniston, the NRC panel focuses on technical considerations and related issues in going from a gelled GB M55 rocket processing rate of 1.0 or 1.6 rockets per hour to 9.2 rockets per hour.

When the Army began destroying agent-filled rockets at its first incinerator on Johnston Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, the planned goal was 32 rockets per hour. But the best shift rate it achieved was 27 rockets per hour, with an average of 15.3 rockets per hour during the first destruction campaign and a slightly higher rate of 20.6 rockets per hour during a later campaign.

But the processing rate slowed even more when operations began at the Tooele, UT, incinerator because three lots of GB rockets contained gelled agent that would not drain. These lots amounted to a total of 5,287 GB rockets out of the Tooele stockpile of 28,945 GB rockets.

Instead of being able to drain the rockets and burn the agent in a liquid incinerator, the Army had to burn the gelled rockets in its deactivation furnace system (DFS), used primarily to treat energetics and propellants. Utah regulators authorized a rate of 1.6 gelled rockets per hour, but the NRC panel says the actual rate, considering down time, was approximately 0.6 rockets per hour.

"The Army believes that gelled GB rockets could have been processed through the DFS ... at [Tooele] safely and effectively at a faster rate, but this was not demonstrated," the NRC report says. "The M55 Committee agrees with the Army's judgment and recommends that the Army pursue means to demonstrate the safety of a faster rate."

And another way to speed processing would be "co-processing" or "complementary processing," both of which the Army applied at Tooele, the panel says. Under co-processing, gelled rockets are burned in the DFS at the same time that GB projectiles, reconfigured to remove the energetics, are processed through the liquid incinerator and the metal parts furnace. Complementary processing is a variation where the Army just processes rockets for a few days, and then processes projectiles alone while it performs maintenance on the rocket processing equipment. Although Utah regulators allowed co-processing, they limited the processing rate to 1.0 rockets per hour.

The Anniston stockpile contains 42,738 GB M55 rockets and 24 GB M56 rocket warheads. The Army estimates that about 20 percent of those rockets are gelled. The panel says the Army expects to encounter very few gelled rockets at the two remaining sites using incineration: Pine Bluff, AR, and Umatilla, OR. Therefore, the report says the 1.6 rockets-per- hour rate is sufficient for those sites.

Army consultants have concluded that the DFS kiln could safely process up to 34 gelled rockets per hour, although they recommended that this goal be reached gradually during the GB agent trial burn period. The NRC panel believes this rate is optimistic but "supports the idea of ramping up production gradually, to a higher rate than was employed" at Tooele.

The report goes on to outline the committee's concerns with the 34 rockets- per- hour rate, including the possibility that the maximum rate of heat release at the inlet to the DFS may be higher than assumed in the model. The panel also says that unless processing is properly managed, the instantaneous rate of heat release may lead to temperature spikes and resultant pressure puffs that could release agent into the DFS room and/or the explosion containment room. Finally, agent will probably melt and may then vaporize and undergo thermal decomposition and oxidation in the feed chute, since the chute would be hotter than in the Tooele runs, the report says. This could limit the feed rate, it says.

A surrogate trial burn at Anniston in May 2002 -- in which the weight of combustibles equivalent to 15 gelled rockets were processed in an hour -- "suggests that a larger number of rockets containing gelled agent can be safely processed per hour than were processed at [Tooele]," the panel says.

The Army has developed another target rate for gelled rockets at Anniston, based on having only one rocket in the DFS kiln at one time. This equals 9.2 rockets per hour, a rate the NRC panel says "is probably achievable." But the panel says this rate "should be approached gradually and with a fully instrumented DFS."

Using the 9.2 rocket rate, plus the normal rates for other munitions, the Army estimates it will take 7.2 years to process the entire Anniston stockpile. Complementary processing could reduce this estimate by 10 months, the report says.

"Although the modified plan would thus provide more expeditious elimination of the storage risk from the overall Anniston stockpile, local officials and members of the public have questioned the safety of processing gelled rockets at a rate higher than that used at [Tooele]," the report says.

The panel says unresolved issues between the Army and the Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program, as well as between the Army and regulatory groups, need to be addressed expeditiously. "Further, it is important that the Army improve communications with the local communities, both to promote a better understanding of the risk issues and to address any valid public concerns."