Richmond Register
February 19, 2002

Group will soon support disposal method

by LUKE BRADSHAW
Register News Writer

The Kentucky Demilitarization Citizen's Advisory Commission will soon be faced with reaching a decision on a recommendation to give the Defense Acquisition Board concern-
ing which technology to use to destroy the chemical weapons stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot.

To make this decision, there are many factors for the CAC members to consider. Public sentiment and timeline are two of the many things that will be taken to heart, however public safety is the most paramount factor to take into account.

"The DAB, which is the Pentagon decision making group, will be selecting the technology for Kentucky sometime this year," CAC co-chairman Doug Hindman said. "They have asked the CAC to provide them on the input of what the citizens of Kentucky want. That's obviously not the only thing. If the CAC could reflect that, it could help the citizens come
together. A divided community does not help anybody."

At their monthly meeting Monday night, CAC members viewed two videos covering alternatives to incineration. They pertained to the electro-chemical oxidation process or Silver 11 and the neutralization/super critical water oxidation process.

"For four years, we have been holding meetings that have been open to the community, and they have been giving us ideas," CAC member Pat Greathouse said. "we have left it to private sectors to try and come up with some alternative technologies, because there was a great deal of unrest about the incineration process. Wei have been listening and looking at these alternatives, and the main thing has been the public output."

The Silver II process uses a modified disassembly process. Munitions are punched and drained of the chemical agent. The cavity is steam cleaned. In rockets, such as the M55 rockets stored at the BGAD, the rest of the munition is cut using high pressure jets of water and grit. This aspect of the process differs greatly from incineration because the gelled agent is often left rin the munition and incinerated along with the container.

In the Silver 11 process, agent and slurried energetics are held and fed into separate electrical oxidation units. These units add silver and nitrogen compounds and feed the results into an electric cell, similar in theory to the process conducted by a car battery. The chemical agent is added to the anolyte side of the process.

The electricity creates silver ions that oxidize the material in a process that occurs at a lower temperature than the boiling point of water. The silver and nitrogen are recovered and reused again in the process

"Silver II has been used to destroy PCBs and insecticides in more recent applications," said Chris Harmer, client service manager for Midwest Industries and Utilities Energy. "The work goes back to the '80s and was used primarily in the UK. They used it to get rid of its solubles to purify plutonium and to destroy organic contaminants."

Metal parts and shredded dunnage are heat treated at 1,000 degrees for at least 15 minutes in a gas filled system. Gasses from this process pass through catalytic converters and carbon filters before it is released. Craig Williams, director of the Berea-based Chemical Weapons Working Group, said that this aspect of the process is intrinsically different from incineration because of the fact that no chemical agent is involved at this point.

"Any high pressure or high temperature processes that are involved in any of the alternatives all take place after the agent has been neutralized," Williams said. "One of the criteria that the community constantly resonated was that they would prefer low-temperature, low-pressure technologies for the treatment of agent."

In the neutralization/SCWO process, projectiles are cryofractured, or frozen in liquid nitrogen, then smashed. The SCWO process mineralizes chemicals at temperatures and pressures above the critical point of water, at 705 degrees and 3204 psi. The SCWO process is so destructive that it tends to corrode containers. Kentucky's two neutralization proposals differ in how they deal with the corrosion.

General Atomic's neutralization SCWO option treats corrosion as a maintenance problem. The SCWO reactor is flushed regularly and has a removable liner which is regularly inspected, turned and replaced as it becomes corroded.

Foster Wheeler/Eco Logic's neutralization/GPCR/TW-SCWO proposal uses a transpiring wall. In this unit the reactor wall is porous. Water is forced through the wall protecting it from corrosion.

In both SCWO processes the main result is brine. It is tested and dried before it makes its way to a landfill.