|
For once, the Army is hitting its target for destroying
chemical weapons.
After years of deadline extensions, Tooele Chemical
Disposal
Facility and three other chemical weapon disposal sites in the country
are on schedule to destroy 2,230 tons of mustard agent by the end of
the year, said Greg Mahall, spokesman for the U.S. Army Chemical
Materials Agency.
The Chemical Weapons Convention, a 10-year agreement
which went into
effect in April 1997, required the United States to destroy all of its
chemical weapons stockpile by April 2007. However, each April since
1997 the Army has asked for an extension. The Department of Defense
restructured the program in 2003. Since then, the program has destroyed
more than 1,500 tons of chemical agents per year, according to a DOD
budget report published last February.
The new deadline for 45 percent of all chemical agent
weapons in eight different locations to be destroyed is Dec. 31, 2007.
The Tooele site, along with sites in Indiana, Oregon,
Arkansas, and
Alabama, had destroyed 43 percent of the weapons as of last Wednesday
with only 2 percent more to go by the end of the year.
Chemical weapons destroyed at former disposal sites at
Johnston
Atoll in the South Pacific and at Aberdeen, Md., which finished
operations and closed on Monday, also count toward the end goal.
Two more chemical disposal plants are slated to be built
in Colorado
and Kentucky. According to the DOD budget report, the Pueblo Chemical
Agent Destruction Pilot Plant will reach final design completion this
spring. The Blue Grass Chemical Agent Destruction Pilot Plant will
reach final design completion this fall.
With the addition of these two plants, the deadline of
April 2012
for 100 percent of the agent stockpile to be eliminated should be met.
"We are making good progress," Mahall said of all of all
the sites, not just Tooele.
According to Mahall, the process for destroying chemical
agents is
to drain the metal containers of liquid and process them through a
furnace/pollution abatement system while the liquid agent is burned in
a separate liquid incinerator. The agent is incinerated at 2,000
degrees Fahrenheit or higher. The metal casings, depending on what
material they are made of, go in to the incinerator on a tray like an
egg carton and are burned at 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit.
A third incinerator destroys ash and trash left over
from the
process, Mahall said. The resulting air discharge runs through about 20
carbon filters to ensure it is purified.
Trial burns that concluded in January allowed one-ton
containers to
be processed. Prior to the trial burn, the maximum set amount of agent
that could be destroyed at a time was 632 pounds. A lot was learned
about the burning process during the trial, such as the discovery of
mercury in the agent.
The presence of mercury, Mahall said, was like finding
egg shells in cake batter when the recipe didn't call for eggs.
"The agent was clear water. What we got was all sorts of
cross-contamination," he said. "Mercury was not supposed to be there
because it creates more complications such as air emissions.
The technology for destroying chemical agents has not
changed much
in the past 10 years, Mahall said. The agents that are being destroyed
in other locations include nerve agents, or VX agents, which are more
dangerous than the mustard gas burned at the Tooele facility. The
Tooele plant completed processing VX agents and residual products by
October 2005. By August 2006 the machinery had been converted to
process munitions and ton containers, which hold mustard gas.
Some of the agents predate World War I. More
sophisticated nerve
agents were developed during the Cold War. The last time the U.S.
manufactured chemical agents on a mass scale was in 1968.
sashe@tooeletranscript.com
|
