Containers of VX agent destroyed

STOCKTON, Tooele County — The chemical weapons incinerator here has finished destroying bulk containers of VX nerve agent and is preparing to tackle the stockpile of other munitions loaded with the deadly chemical.

About noon on April 24, workers at the Army's Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility — the incinerator — safely destroyed the last of 532 bulk containers that had been filled with VX, said Chuck Sprague, spokesman for Deseret Chemical Depot.

However, another 12 bulk containers filled with VX hydrolysate are awaiting processing, he said. Hydrolysate is a byproduct of chemical neutralization processes tested at the depot's Oquirrh Mountain Facility (formerly called the Chemical Agent Disposal System).

The end of the VX containers is a milestone representing "an outstanding achievement by our workers, and shows the community the progress we're making in the completion of our mission," said Steve Frankiewicz, general manager of EG&G Defense Materials Inc., which manages the plant.

According to Sprague, the disposal facility is now taking aim at VX-filled 155-mm. projectiles and has plans to destroy the remaining VX spray tanks, land mines and a dozen hydrolysate bulk containers.

"Reach," a newsletter of the Army's Chemical Materials Agency, noted that since VX operations began workers at the incinerator have safely disposed of 29 percent of "VX nerve agent contained in . . . rockets, land mines, projectiles and bulk containers."

M23 land mines to be destroyed at the disposal facility were developed during World War I but never used. In fact, the American military has not used chemical agent land mines on the battlefield, the newsletter added.

"The mine consists of a circular body, arming plug, booster, main explosive charge, adapter plate, activator well, burster pellet, burster well and burster charge," the newsletter states. Mines, fuses and activators are stored in 16-gallon drums, each drum containing three fuses, three activators, three mines and packing material.

The explosives, consisting of activators and fuses, are packed separately in the mine drum above the mine bodies.

As a step in the complex demilitarization process, mines are to be punched and drained of VX inside the plant's Explosive Containment Room.

According to Reach, the room is "reinforced with 28-inch-thick walls of concrete and steel rebar as an additional safeguard to contain the effects of any detonation, if such an unlikely event occurs."

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