Scientists Urge New Pine Bluff Disposal Plan to Meet Chemical Weapons Convention Deadline

A scientific committee yesterday backed the U.S. Army’s decision to use a mobile treatment system to destroy “nonstockpile” weapons to meet a Chemical Weapons Convention deadline, Arkansas News reported (see GSN, Oct. 31, 2003).

The term “nonstockpile chemical materiel” refers to a wide variety of chemical munitions and materials that were not part of the active U.S. stockpile in the mid-1980s. Some of these older weapons and materials date back as far as World War I. In 1992, the Army established the Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel Program to dispose of the materiel (Marina Malenic, GSN, Mar. 9).

In a report released Monday, scientists with the National Research Council concluded that an old plan to build a treatment facility at the Pine Bluff Arsenal would not allow the Army to meet the treaty deadline for destruction of the munitions. The mobile treatment system would be less expensive, faster and safer, according to the 12-member panel of scientists.

“This alternative could perform most if not all of the tasks intended for (the facility) as currently envisaged, doing so via a demonstrated technology, with improved safety and simplicity and lower costs,” the report stated.

The Army agreed in November to the mobile plan, known as the Explosive Destructive System, according to Jeffrey Lindblad, spokesman for the Nonstockpile Chemical Materiel Project.

“EDS is something that’s already been proven and successfully used,” he said.

In the EDS system, weapons are detonated inside a stainless steel vessel and an agent is then injected to neutralize the chemical weapons material.

Pine Bluff arsenal has about 1,200 nonstockpile weapons, mostly mortar rounds containing sulfur mustard agent and German Traktor rockets containing a variety of materials. They make up roughly 85 percent of the nonstockpile weapons in the United States (Alison Vekshin, Arkansas News, March 9).

Back to top
About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines © Copyright 2008 by National Journal Group, Inc. The material in this section is produced independently for NTI by National Journal Group, Inc. Any reproduction or retransmission, in whole or in part, is a violation of federal law and is strictly prohibited without the consent of the National Journal Group, Inc. All rights reserved.