|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Army Should Ship VX Waste for Disposal, Report Says By Seamus Kraft “Off-site disposal [of nerve agent waste] is preferred at the The neutralized nerve agent solution does not pose a terrorist threat, Lederman said at a briefing on the report. “As a personal or professional matter, I’m not sure that’s the material I’d go after if I wanted to do damage,” he said. Lederman acknowledged, though, that the committee did not consider such a situation. The Army has produced roughly 500,000 gallons of waste during VX nerve agent neutralization at the Newport Chemical Depot since 2005 (see GSN, April 7, 2005). About 1 million more gallons are expected to be produced before neutralization is complete, the report says. The Army was forced to scrap two waste transportation and disposal plans, both of which faced stiff opposition from environmental groups and political leaders, before beginning shipments in April to a Waste incineration is now on hold pending an Lederman said the NRC committee considered the matter prior to the Army’s announcement that it would ship the waste to One activist at yesterday’s briefing questioned the neutrality of the reporting committee, claiming that its investigations did not involve “stakeholders” potentially affected by the hydrolysate transfers. “Why weren’t citizens’ groups notified about this report beforehand?” asked Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group. The committee “did not consider citizens’ involvement” but it did recommend that the wastewater be disposed of in an “environmentally friendly manner,” said Lederman, who faced pointed questions from several audience members at the briefing. The report recommended off-site hydrolysate destruction as a cost- and time-saving measure. The Army could save roughly $300 million and five years by incinerating the wastewater in The report, however, did not consider the option of destroying the wastewater at The Chemical Materials Agency asked the National Research Council in August 2006 to study improved waste disposal procedures as the military operates and ultimately shuts down its five operating chemical weapons disposal sites, Lederman said. The council is an arm of the private, nonprofit National Academies. More than 10 million tons of weapons-related waste would need to be eliminated before the Army’s can close the chemical depots, Lederman said. Secondary waste encompasses anything that could contact a weapons agent, such as worker safety suits, nerve agent artillery shell scrap metal, and wooden pallets used to store chemical agent containers. The 10-million-ton figure does not include waste that would be produced by weapons disposal plants yet to be built at the Blue Grass Army Depot in The NRC report used the weapons disposal on Johnston Atoll, completed in 2000, as a benchmark for its findings. The facility could have closed between 12 and 18 months earlier if it had shipped waste elsewhere to be burned as the material accumulated, Lederman said. The committee therefore recommended that secondary waste products be shipped off-site for destruction “in a ramp-up fashion” concurrent with weapons neutralization and site decommissioning. Commercial incinerators have a much greater capacity than those operated at the weapons depots, Lederman said. While the committee did not do a specific cost analysis of concurrent incineration, savings could be “significant because you would operate the (weapons) incinerators and pay staff for a shorter time,” he added. In a further time-saving recommendation, the report said identical incinerators should be allowed to apply one another’s safety certifications during disposal of like agents. Every incinerator must now undergo a trial burn each time a new agent or material is to be burned to ensure its waste products are safe. The Environmental Protection Agency defines a “safe” trial-burn as one destroying 99.9999 percent of the chemical agent. Only when that point is reached can full-scale incineration begin. The report recommended that identical incinerators be allowed to use another site’s “safe” EPA certification when preparing to burn the same material. Cutting back on the number of trial burns would save money and time, researchers said. “If I wanted to burn VX liquid at one liquid incinerator and my unit was the same as Umatilla’s, I could use data from that other facility,” explained Lederman, referring to Umatilla Chemical Depot in The Chemical Materials Agency is reviewing the NRC recommendations and will take them seriously, Arndt said.
| ||||||||||
Back to top
