The Eastern Progress

Chemical destruction board seeks Eastern students

CDCAB looks for staffers for project at the depot

Laura Kersey

Issue date: 2/15/07 Section: News

Eastern students may play a key role in the future destruction of chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot.

Madison County's Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board will be looking to several departments within Eastern for students willing to develop the skills needed for the extensive chemical project.

The CDCAB, consisting of community leaders, formed to help represent the views of the local community on issues regarding the disposal program.

"The CDCAB almost from the beginning saw that there was going to be a need for technical skills to operate in the plant," said Blue Grass Army Depot spokesman Dave Easter. "They wanted to at least identify what the skills were going to be and determine if the skills were in the area and see if there would be a need to develop that."

A contract was awarded to Bechtel National, Inc., and Parsons Infrastructure and Technology Group, Inc., in June 2003 to develop a design plan for the construction, operation and closure of the chemical weapons disposal facility.

The depot has stored approximately 2 percent of the nations original chemical weapons since 1944. The chemical stockpile consists of blister agents and nerve agents found in projectiles and rockets. The U.S. Department of Defense chose neutralization followed by supercritical water oxidation as the method to destroy the chemicals.

The Bechtel Parsons Blue Grass Web site said the destruction process involves removing the chemical agents from the projectiles, neutralizing the agents, destroying the agents with high temperatures and pressure, and treating the secondary wastes.

Ron Hawley, general manager for the Blue Grass Operations section of Bechtel Parsons, expects the plant to employ 800 to 900 staff members total. The majority of the depot work staff would be divided into three core categories- maintenance, operations and laboratory.

Hawley said the core maintenance group is standard at any industrial facility.

"It typically breaks into three skill crafts- mechanics, electricians and instrumentation techs to do calibrations and maintain the instruments we have," Hawley said.

Operations, Hawley says, is primarily responsible for the movement of the munitions and controlling the equipment used to control the destruction process. Examples include training in explosive safety and basic forklift training. An outside utility operator, for example, would use these skills to ensure equipment is running properly.

"The highest skill set (in the operations group) is control room operators," Hawley said. "We would be looking for anyone with that has had a background in operations’Ķand uses a lot of diagnostic skills."

The laboratory group includes jobs ranging from entry-level technical jobs, used to monitor the chemical processes, to analytical lab chemists, conducting sample analysis and verifying waste is clear of residuals.

Many professional skills will also be needed in business management, finance and accounting.

Hawley says the skills students will learn for jobs at the destruction plant will benefit students in other industries.

"There is some unique aspects like dealing with explosives and chemical agents, but’Ķ I think we've found from other experiences’Ķif you're an analytical chemist in this laboratory its transferable to other laboratories," Hawley said. "Often this can lead this to work at nuclear facilities and petrochemical hazardous waste units."

Eastern provides students with many majors that could teach the skills needed to fulfill many jobs, including safety management, environmental health, information technology and chemistry.

"Chemistry is obviously a big one," Hawley said. "With a lot of analytical labs, I definitely think this would give them and opportunity to work in a sophisticated lab set-up. I think for (students) in those fields, it will give them good exposure to an environment."

Sandra Plant, Bechtel Parsons Outreach Office Manager, assures that the new facility will be looking to hiring local people first to fulfill these jobs.

"We are committed to hiring as many people from the local area as possible, including local graduates," said Plant.

The Bechtel Parsons multi-phase project is estimated to cost about $2 billion spanning over a decade. Plans are in progress to build the Blue Grass Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant by 2010.