News

PB ARSENAL'S INCINERATION REACHES 9 TONS

By Amy Riggins/OF THE COMMERCIAL STAFF
Wednesday, May 4, 2005 10:03 AM CDT

Updated figures released Tuesday showed that 2,440 rockets and 18,001 pounds of the nerve agent sarin have been destroyed at the Pine Bluff Arsenal since chemical weapons disposal began March 29.

That translates into 9 tons of chemical agent that has been incinerated so far.

"We emptied our first igloo of M55 rockets on the 21st of April," said Raini Wright, public affairs officer for the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.

"(The operation) has been pretty uneventful," Wright said.

Wright also provided recent daily destruction totals:

April 26 -- 158 rockets and 837 pounds of chemical agent

April 27 -- 125 rockets and 4,054 pounds of chemical agent

April 28 -- 205 rockets, 1,752 pounds of chemical agent

April 29 -- 259 rockets, 4,631 pounds of chemical agent

Sunday -- 162 rockets, no chemical agent

Monday -- 144 rockets, no chemical agent

No rockets or agent was processed on Saturday, she said.

In the last week, the facility has disposed of 1,053 rockets and 11,274 pounds of sarin.

The Arsenal houses 12 percent of the nation's chemical weapons stockpile. The 3,850 tons of agent originally declared there represents the second largest store in the country.

The first campaign of munitions being destroyed consists of M55 rockets filled with the nerve agent sarin. The Arsenal is charged with disposing of about 90,000 of those rockets, the largest number stored at any of the eight stockpile sites in the U.S.

The next munitions to be destroyed will be rockets filled with nerve agent VX, VX land mines and then ton containers of mustard agent.

The $1.7 billion project is expected to be completed by 2010.