Within the next few months, before it's proved out before state and federal regulators, Anniston's chemical weapons incinerator will undergo a period of shakedown testing on rockets loaded with sarin nerve agent.Now scheduled to begin on Oct. 11, a date that's subject to change, the 720-hour shakedown period will mark the first time that weapons from the Anniston Army Depot's lethal cache will be fed into the incinerator's complex of furnaces.
The idea behind the test period, the Army and regulators agree, is to ease into high rates of processing the rockets, while testing the equipment and breaking in the incinerator's personnel.
Following the shakedown, during which time the Army expects to destroy 25 percent of the rocket stockpile, the facility will undergo agent trial burns before the Alabama Department of Environmental Management.
An ADEM official said the department will not allow the shakedown period to be an opportunity to get rid of the lion's share of the rocket stores.
"There's no doubt they'll make a dent in the stockpile," said Jim Grassiano, chief of ADEM's governmental facilities section. "But (getting rid of all the rockets) is not the intent, and ADEM will be there for oversight."
The department recently denied the Army's request for an additional 720 hours of shakedown testing - the equivalent of 30 days of continuous operations. The Army can apply for additional testing time, but, Grassiano said, it will have to justify any such request.
"We really don't know what it's going to take, and we're going into it with an open mind."
The shakedown period will have a dual focus. The first will be on ordinary rockets that can successfully be drained of agent before they are chopped and dropped into the furnace. The second will be on rockets from which the agent can't be drained because it has transformed from liquid to a gelled or crystallized substance.
The Army and Westinghouse staff will attempt to demonstrate to ADEM that the facility can destroy 40 drained rockets an hour. But before they can do that the facility will operate for several weeks at one-third and two-thirds of that rate.
During shakedown, the Army will begin burning gelled rockets at the rate of two to three per hour, then ramp up to four, five or six per hour.
"We will consider going beyond six to nine per hour," said Army project manager Tim Garrett, adding that furnace parameters, the ease of processing, and safety evaluations will determine the top rate the facility hits.
"There's a chance we can't do but three to four per hour," he said.
Garrett says it's possible the incinerator will not reach the rate of 34 undrained rockets per hour, the figure he says is the capacity of the deactivation furnace system. This number, more than 20 times faster than gelled rockets were burned at the Anniston incinerator's predecessor in Utah, has drawn fire from incinerator opponents and Gov. Don Siegelman.
Before shakedown testing can begin, agent-monitoring devices, both real-time and confirmation, in the facility smokestack and the furnace duct, must be operational and certified by the Department of Health and Human Services.
During the agent trial burns, but not during shakedown, samples will be taken to be tested for emissions of volatile organic compounds, such as acetone and chloroform. This is not real-time monitoring, but samples that must be analyzed in a laboratory.
Garrett said real-time monitoring technology for emissions is not yet up to snuff.
"There is nothing real-time out there that's been proven to work," he said.
The Army's agent trial burn plan will soon enter a 60-day public comment period, a requirement before shakedown testing can begin.
