Voice of the
Mid-Columbia
Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Washington
Jammed line stalls destruction of rockets
Published Monday, August 7th, 2006
By Jeannine Koranda,
Herald Oregon bureau
HERMISTON - With 256 sarin-filled rockets
remaining, a jammed conveyor line Saturday has delayed rocket destruction at
the Umatilla Chemical Depot incinerator.
Workers at plant near Hermiston were
unable to dislodge part of a GB sarin M55 rocket stuck in the discharge system
and had to cool the 1,000 degree furnace down before making repairs, said depot
spokesman Bruce Henrickson.
Workers were making the repairs on Sunday
and would then have to reheat the furnace.
The furnace, which burns off any lingering
traces of nerve agent, has a tendency to jam every 5,000 to 7,000 rockets, he
said.
Until the jam, depot officials had hoped
the last of the site's original 91,442 rockets would be destroyed Sunday. Now
they are predicting the last rocket will drop into the furnace this afternoon
at the earliest, Henrickson said.
The depot began destroying the deadly
munitions two years ago. Even as the milestone final rocket has gotten closer,
officials have said they would stop destruction if there was a problem.
The site originally stored the largest
number of M55 rockets in the national stockpile. Packed with GB sarin, which
attacks the central nervous system and can cause seizures and paralysis and in
the most extreme cases death, the rockets were thought to pose the greatest
public risk.
Officials hope to start destroying the
site's 61,652 sarin-filled rockets in October.
When all the projectiles are
destroyed, the facility will go through another changeover and convert to
destroying munitions filled with VX nerve agent.