Just one deadly weapon to go at Umatilla

by The Oregonian editorial board
Wednesday June 17, 2009, 6:12 PM

First they got rid of the GB, a deadly nerve agent also known as sarin -- more than 1,000 tons of it in bombs, rockets and other ghastly containers. Then came the VX, another lethal agent -- 363 tons of it in more than 62,000 munitions, now blessedly gone from the face of the earth. That leaves mustard blistering agent as the last Cold War-era chemical weapons still stockpiled at the Umatilla Chemical Depot in northeastern Oregon.


Associated Press
An unidentified worker inspects missiles
containing sarin nerve agent in a bunker at the
Umatilla Chemical Depot in Hermiston, Ore., in
this undated file photo.

When workers began the dangerous job of disposing of it last week, the undertaking put the U.S. Army operation well on its way to meeting terms of an international treaty calling for destruction of chemical weapons by 2012.

The mustard gas will be destroyed in the same way as the sarin and VX agents were, by incineration in a huge complex built at the depot just for that purpose. The work, expected to take one to two years, will require continued vigilance by a nine-member Oregon Department of Environmental Quality crew assigned to monitor the disposal.

Some residents of the Hermiston area, apparently a small minority, have protested the incinerator operation as a potential threat to the environment and human health. So far, however, those concerns have been adequately addressed by strict safety standards at the depot and development of an elaborate emergency response system in surrounding communities.

Most residents appear to understand that not destroying the stockpile isn't an option. Besides the pressure of the international treaty, there's the fact that many of the decades-old weapons were deteriorating dangerously in their earthen bunkers.

The nerve agents, now gone, were the most leakage-prone weapons in the Umatilla stockpile, but the mustard agent poses challenges of its own. It's less lethal than the nerve agents but difficult to handle because it's much heavier and stored in 2,635 one-ton containers.

The Umatilla complex finished destroying the sarin two years ago and the VX agent last November. Crews at the depot have been retooling the incinerator since then to prepare for handling the mustard agent.

It will be drained from the bulky containers and burned at 2,700 degrees. The containers will be decontaminated for hours in furnaces at 1,600 degrees.

If this work sounds tricky, that's because it is indeed. But Army and state officials say the incineration, which began in 2004, has been achieved without exposing workers or surrounding communities to harm from the deadly chemicals.

That's a safety record that must be preserved as the depot finishes destroying what was once one of the world's largest stockpiles of deadly chemical weapons.