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A good start: In February, Newport
Chemical Depot workers practiced cleaning VX storage containers, a process
that will be done once the nerve agent has been drained and destroyed. One
container was destroyed last week, and two more will be destroyed this week.
-- Sam Riche / The Star 2005 file photo
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"I'm more than ecstatic right about now," said Jeffrey L. Brubaker, project manager at the Newport Chemical Depot in Vermillion County, where more than 250,000 gallons of VX have been stored in about 1,600 1-ton containers for the past 36 years.
Each ton container holds up to 180 gallons of VX, a chemical so deadly that a single pinpoint drop could kill an adult in minutes.
On Friday, the first container was destroyed in two 1,000-gallon reactors. Half of the VX was fed into each reactor, where it was mixed with water and sodium hydroxide and heated to 194 degrees for several hours to break down the agent.
Tests showed that less than 14 parts per billion of VX, a level considered undetectable, remained in the byproduct -- a caustic chemical called hydrolysate that has been compared to drain cleaner -- after about six hours, Brubaker said. The Army's criterion for destruction is 20 parts per billion.
The start of the project was slow and methodical to ensure the process would work, since it had never been tested in full-scale reactors.
But officials from the Army and Parsons, the California-based contractor destroying the agent, eventually want to feed a full container into each reactor, Brubaker said.
Early next week, officials will study data from the first three containers to ensure consistent results before increasing the amount of VX, he said.
That would allow workers to destroy four containers per day and complete the project within about two years, Brubaker said.
The United States is under an international agreement to destroy its chemical weapons stockpile by 2007, although a five-year extension probably will be sought. Chemical weapons, including in VX-loaded weapons, still are stored at seven sites in the United States.
The Newport plant, the only place VX was manufactured, was built in 1962 amid escalating tensions with the Soviet Union. The U.S. never used the agent, and President Richard Nixon ordered the plant shut down in 1969.
For now, the VX byproduct will be stored in special containers in Newport until a final decision is made on where it will go. Army officials want to ship the byproduct to a DuPont Co. plant in New Jersey, where it would be treated and released into the Delaware River, but opposition in New Jersey and Delaware has stalled the plan.
Call Star reporter Tammy Webber at (317) 444-6212.