Defense Environment Alert

an exclusive biweekly report on defense policies for cleanup, compliance and pollution prevention

Vol. 14, No. 24

November 28, 2006

NAS PANEL BACKS TECHNOLOGIES TO DESTROY BURIED CHEMICAL WEAPONS

A National Academies of Sciences (NAS) panel says the Army should consider using detonation-type technologies now being employed abroad to destroy the military's large caches of buried non-stockpile chemical weapons. The Defense Department has yet to address these large burial sites.

A National Research Council (NRC) panel of the NAS released a report Nov. 16 urging the Army to consider adopting any of three technologies for eliminating whole munitions currently in burial sites. These technologies, currently used in Europe and Japan, are "faster and more efficient" than the technology the Army currently uses for smaller amounts of non-stockpile chemical weapons, NAS says in a Nov. 16 press release.

All of the detonation-type technologies the panel is recommending require no agent neutralization; are "total" solutions that access the agent, destroy it, and decontaminate munition bodies; require secondary treatment of off-gases; have a higher chemical munitions throughput rate than the current technology used in the U.S.; and are safe to operate, the report says.

"If [DOD] decides to expedite the destruction of the large amounts of chemical weapons still buried in many parts of the country, using one of these technologies will be essential," said Richard Ayen, the NRC committee chair, of the report, Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare MateriaL

The recommendations may also have some application to chemical weapons dumped by the military in off-shore areas - an issue Congress has pressed DOD on, asking it to disclose the extent of contamination resulting from dumping that occurred prior to the 1970s and explore potential cleanup options.

While the NRC panel did not look at the offshore dumping sites, "the same technical analysis is applicable for those," a source familiar with the report says.

The Army, which requested the report, is considering its recommendations, a spokeswoman for the Army's Chemical Materials Agency (CMA.) says.

The findings come as DOD has been considering an implementation plan by the Army on ways to coordinate planning and funding for the recovery and destruction of buried chemical weapons materials at active bases and formerly used defense sites (Defense Environment Alert, March 2 1, p 18).

The military is not currently conducting any large-scale recoveries of buried items, although the Army has identified some large burial sites and that mission will eventually be assigned, the CMA spokeswoman says. Years ago, Congress required the Defense Department to develop a plan to address the burial sites. Under an international treaty, once buried chemical munitions are excavated, they must be destroyed. However, the treaty does not mandate destruction if they remain buried.

The source familiar with the report says DOD will eventually have to decide "whether to excavate large trenches" of buried chemical weapons at several sites, including Redstone Arsenal, AL; Deseret Chemical Depot, UT; Rocky Mountain Arsenal, CO; and Aberdeen Proving Ground, NM.

The report lists three technologies the Army should consider for destroying these weapons. The first is the Controlled Detonation Chamber (CDC), which is being used in Europe and detonates explosives around a munition held in a tightly sealed chamber. The second is the Detonation of Ammunition in a Vacuum-Integrated Chamber or DAVINCH, which was developed in Japan and relies on a large detonation chamber to destroy chemical munitions after detonating donor charges around the munitions under a near vacuum. The third is the Dynasafe technology, developed by a Swedish company. It relies on a hot kiln to detonate or bum the munitions explosive fill and destroy agent, NAS says.

The Army's current technology for destroying recovered non-stockpile chemical munitions, a transportable system known as the Explosive Destruction System (EDS), works well but has a slow throughput rate, "is limited in the size of the munitions it can handle, and generates a liquid waste stream that must be disposed of," the report says. As a result, while EDS will continue to be used for small amounts of munitions, it will have limited use for destroying the expected large quantities of buried chemical munitions, the report says. For a large-scale project, EDS would be "extremely time-consuming," the CMA spokeswoman says.

The CDC "appears to be well suited for destroying a range of either chemical or conventional munitions," the report says, noting that its destruction efficiency "appears to be over 99 percent." Further, its throughput will likely be much greater than that for the EDS because it. does not have a "time-consuming neutralization step," the report says.

The DAVINCH technology has a larger capacity to destroy chemical agent items than any current technology used in the United States, the report says. The technology could be used at sites where a temporary facility can be built in order to destroy hundreds to thousands of agent-contaminated or agent-filled items, it says.

And the Dynasafe technology may be a good fit at sites "where fairly large numbers of chemical munitions, such as bomblets, mines, 105-mm projectiles, and 155-mm projectiles, need to be recovered and where effective use could be made of its high throughput," the report says. Its limited explosive containment capacity, however, limits it to destroying items containing up to 5 pounds TNT-equivalent, about the same as" an EDS model.

It remains unclear which entity will oversee this program, the source familiar with the report says. "There is some pressure" not to assign it to CMA, but rather have the Army Corps or Army Environmental Command address it, the source says.