Corroding munitions filled with mustard blister agent could take longer than anticipated to incinerate at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, though they are not expected to affect the site's ability to meet a April 2012 chemical-weapon destruction deadline, the Anniston Star reported Friday (see GSN, Oct. 22).
Army officials were not surprised when some of the 4.2-inch mortars proved difficult to drain prior to being destroyed. Personnel discovered "gunk and goo" within some HD mustard rounds during a recent trial run of 24 mustard munitions. Some of the 10 to 100 millimeter munitions bubbled, Army project site manager Tim Garrett said.
"They're harder to process because of their age and condition," Garrett said. This difficulty has been experienced at multiple incineration facilities across the United States, he said.
Normally, an emptied 4.2-inch round is in the incinerator's furnace for 80 minutes. Mustard rounds that cannot be drained must be kept in the in the furnace for more than two and a half hours, said Army spokesman Michael Abrams.
"Those 24 (mortars) are not indicative of several thousand, but we're probably leaning toward not draining the HD-filled mortars," Garrett said.
More than 69,000 pounds of mustard agent had been eliminated at Anniston as of last week. Mustard agent is the last chemical warfare material to be destroyed at the site.
The Chemical Weapons Convention requires that all U.S. chemical warfare materials be destroyed by April 29, 2012 (Rebecca Walker, Anniston Star/Chemical Weapons Working Group, Dec. 11).
Meanwhile, destruction operations at the Umatilla Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Oregon remain suspended while the state's Environmental Quality Department examines an altered incineration program, the Hermiston Herald reported Saturday (see GSN, Dec. 9).
The department must receive a trial burn plan before Dec. 24 after which it has a month to approve or disapprove of the plan. This would delay trial burns until the end of January or the beginning of February. The disposal site must assess the destruction equipment by carrying out a test run with substances comparable to HD mustard agent.
Disposal operations were halted on Oct. 27 after the environmental agency said it was worried by carbon-monoxide leakage from the furnace used to destroy the metal components of the stockpile. There have been eight boilovers of bulk mustard containers leading to sharp increases in carbon monoxide releases at the incinerator since last June.
Contractor URS, which operates the incinerator, was fined $111,000 for the carbon monoxide leaks and for waste management violations.
Company spokesman Hal McCune said the last mustard ton container is expected to be eliminated in late 2011.
"We still expect to meet the [Chemical Weapons Convention] deadline," he said (Karen Hutchinson-Talaski, Hermiston Herald, Dec. 12).