The U.S. Defense Department is considering using explosives to destroy some troublesome mustard agent munitions stored in Colorado and Kentucky, which officials say might offer improvements in safety and in the speed with which the chemical weapons are destroyed, the Associated Press reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 8).
Kevin Flamm, manager of the Pentagon's Assembled Chemical Weapons Alternatives program, told a citizen advisory board in Richmond, Ky., yesterday that detonation was being considered instead of chemical neutralization for some weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot in Kentucky and the Pueblo Army Depot in Colorado.
The question is whether to use explosive devices to dispose of mustard agent weapons that cannot be destroyed by neutralization. Blue Grass has 15,000 of those munitions. The Army does not consider the detonation disposal method to be incineration, the system used at most other U.S. chemical disarmament sites.
The Chemical Weapons Convention requires the United States to eliminate its entire stockpile of chemical warfare materials by April 2012, a deadline the Pentagon has acknowledged it cannot meet (see GSN, Dec. 3). Defense officials have been looking for options to meet a congressional deadline of 2017.
Blue Grass and Pueblo are the only two chemical weapons depots that have yet to at least start disposal work. Operations in Kentucky are now set to begin in 2018 and end in 2021, making it the last state to finish off a stockpile.
Flamm is scheduled today to meet with residents in Colorado. He has until next week to give the Defense Department a final recommendation on the matter.
While members of the citizen advisory board briefed by Flamm did not voice many worries about the proposed new method, some said that they were concerned that the disposal system would ultimately be used on other weapons without adequate review.
"We certainly would have appreciated having a little more time to deal with this," said Chemical Weapons Working Group Director Craig Williams.
Flamm said he was not "trying to pull the wool over any body's eyes" on the schedule (Jeffrey McMurray, Associated Press/Chicago Tribune, Dec. 8).
If the new method is adopted, it would mean that all mustard munitions at Blue Grass would be disposed of in small explosive detonation chambers instead of the $2 billion chemical neutralization facility being built at the depot, the Richmond Register reported. Those weapons make up a limited percentage of the site's total stockpile.
Metal corrosion and other complications mean the mustard munitions probably cannot be safely sent through Blue Grass's mass-scale neutralization disposal process. Should a munition become unstable while in the disposal plant, it would have to be taken out physically by workers in a high-risk maneuver. Roughly 60 percent of the mustard weapons could be expected to present these difficulties, Flamm said.
The Pentagon is expected to come to a decision in January on whether to allow munitions disposal by detonation. The detonation method also needs to meet environmental and safety regulations at the state and federal level, Flamm said.
As the munitions would be detonated individually, their disposal could begin before construction of the neutralization facility is finished, enabling the United States to make up ground on its international deadline for total chemical weapons disposal, Flamm said (Bill Robinson, Richmond Register, Dec. 8).
Meanwhile, the state of Oregon has slapped the contractor that runs the chemical weapons incinerator at the Umatilla Chemical Depot with a $111,000 fine, the Washington Tri-City Herald reported yesterday.
URS was fined for violating the depot's hazardous waste and air contaminant discharge permits. The depot's disposal facility ceased incineration of mustard agent munitions 40 days ago while the company deals with the matter.
"They are delaying operations to make sure it doesn't happen again," said Rich Duval, an official with the state Environmental Quality Department.
URS told the state that incineration problems included eight instances in which the facility went over its carbon monoxide emissions limit (Annette Cary, Tri-City Herald, Dec. 8).