Voice of the
Mid-Columbia
Kennewick, Pasco and Richland, Washington
Destruction of deadly
munitions begins
Published Friday,
September 29th, 2006
By Jeannine
Koranda,
Herald Oregon bureau
HERMISTON -- The Umatilla
Chemical Depot incinerator started destroying the last of its GB sarin
cache Thursday.
Crews started processing
8-inch artillery projectiles at about 8:15 a.m., depot spokesman Bruce
Henrickson said. The day crew processed 10 projectiles on one of two
lines and began processing another 10 on the second line. "It's going well in the
very early stages," he said.
The processing rate will
increase over time, Henrickson said.
"We want to be sure
everything is working properly and safely," said Doug Hamrick, project
general manager for Washington Group International. The company is
contracted to run the plant.
Each of the almost
3-foot-long munitions weighs about 203 pounds and holds about 14 1/2
pounds of sarin nerve agent. The agent attacks the central nervous
system and can cause seizures, paralysis and even deaths in the most
extreme cases.
The start of projectile
processing had been on hold since Tuesday due to a glitch in the
emergency sirens surrounding the Umatilla Chemical Depot. Workers found
a problem with the signal that activates the siren alert system.
Chris Brown, Oregon
Chemical
Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program manager, had asked depot
officials to delay burning the new munition type.
Crews rerouted the
activation
signal to the same microwave system that runs Umatilla and Morrow
counties' 450 megahertz tactical radio system.
Brown said crews got the
automatic activation system working Thursday morning through the
Pendleton and Hermiston Emergency Operations Centers. He felt it was
safe to start burning the weapons with two centers online. Crews will
continue working to reconnect the operation centers in Heppner and at
the depot.
The incinerator destroyed
the
last of 91,442 M55 rockets filled with GB sarin in August. Since then,
crews have been modifying the facility to destroy the depot's cache of
61,652 projectiles.
"The changeover team did a
good job, and preparations for projectile disposal went well," said Don
Barclay, depot site project manager.
Depot officials expect to
be
processing the 8-inch projectiles until December or January, and after
some modifications to the plant, switch over to 155 mm projectiles. By
late spring 2007 the facility could start processing VX nerve agent.