Local
Posted on Sat, Dec. 08, 2007
Sarin disposal set for spring
By Ashlee Clark
ACLARK@HERALD-LEADER.COM
RICHMOND -- Officials outlined plans yesterday to dispose of 157 gallons of chemical agent involved in the biggest liquid leak in the history of Blue Grass Army Depot.
GB, a nerve agent commonly known as sarin, is scheduled to be drained, neutralized and removed from the depot by May. The project will cost about $1.7 million and will take 80 days to complete, said Kevin Flamm, program manager for Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives, the agency responsible for the destruction of the depot's chemical weapons stockpile.
The three one-ton steel containers that hold GB have been deteriorating because of the corrosive nature of the chemical and the decontaminants it is mixed with. A leak was detected in one of the containers Aug. 27.
Flamm and Lt. Col. Tom Closs, commander of Blue Grass Chemical Activity, presented the plans at a meeting of a citizens advisory board yesterday.
Officials will use a chemical-agent transfer system brought in from Maryland to take the GB from its containers to a 20-gallon reactor, where it will be neutralized.
Forklifts will move the one-ton containers to sealed glove boxes that personnel will use to transfer the GB to the reactor, Flamm said.
About 2,900 gallons of waste will be produced from the neutralization. It will be shipped to a facility designed to store industrial waste.
The biggest concern about the process is the risk that comes when transporting the containers of GB from its storage igloo to the boxes, which will be about 50 feet away, Flamm said. He said officials will evaluate potential hazards.
Flamm and Closs agreed that is it important to start the destruction process to prevent GB leaks like the one that happened in August.
"It's not fine wine," Flamm said. "It doesn't get better with age."
GB is an odorless and tasteless liquid with a consistency similar to water. The substance readily evaporates when it is released from munition, creating a vapor hazard, according to Blue Grass Chemical Activity, the chemical weapons operation at the depot.
The GB, which has been at the depot for decades, originally was stored in a one-ton container. Because the corrosive material was eating away at the bolts on the container, some GB was transferred into two other containers in 2004.
Craig Williams, co-chair of Chemical Destruction Community Advisory Board, said he agrees that something needs to be done quickly about the containers.
"We don't want to be faced in the future with the repetitive problems that we saw in the August leak," said Williams, who is also executive director of the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group.
The issue of the deteriorating containers has been magnified this week as details were made public about the extent of the GB leak.
During a weekly check on Aug. 27, workers detected a leak in the storage igloo that holds the GB containers. It was not clear how many days earlier the leak had begun.
Two days later, they determined that a gallon of GB had escaped from one of the bolts at the end of the container and dripped into a catch pan below. Before the leak was detected, vents that release humidity in the igloo were open, according to documents from the Kentucky Department of Environmental Protection.
The depot sent out a news release the day the leak was detected, telling the public that the event had occurred and that the incident posed no danger to the community.
"We gave what we knew when we knew it," Closs said.
But details about the size and severity of the leak were not included in that release or subsequent releases.
"There wasn't anything to indicate that this leak wasn't as minuscule as others," said Doug Hindman, chairman of the Kentucky Chemical Demilitarization Citizens' Advisory Commission.
Closs said personnel didn't know how bad the leak was until they entered the igloo Aug. 29 after the air had been filtered.
"We need to look forward and not back on how we could've done things better," Closs said.
CDCAB members decided to draft a letter calling for more information to be disclosed in news releases about depot leaks.
In addition to the containers, the depot stores more than 51,700 M55 rockets loaded with GB and nearly 4,000 8-inch projectiles. The nerve agent VX, mustard agent and a much larger supply of conventional munitions are also stored there.
Reach Ashlee Clark in the Richmond bureau at (859) 626-5878.