Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions

Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1993-02-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 0309049466

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The U.S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program was established with the goal of destroying the nation's stockpile of lethal unitary chemical weapons. Since 1990 the U.S. Army has been testing a baseline incineration technology on Johnston Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Under the planned disposal program, this baseline technology will be imported in the mid to late 1990s to continental United States disposal facilities; construction will include eight stockpile storage sites. In early 1992 the Committee on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies was formed by the National Research Council to investigate potential alternatives to the baseline technology. This book, the result of its investigation, addresses the use of alternative destruction technologies to replace, partly or wholly, or to be used in addition to the baseline technology. The book considers principal technologies that might be applied to the disposal program, strategies that might be used to manage the stockpile, and combinations of technologies that might be employed.

Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions

Alternative Technologies for the Destruction of Chemical Agents and Munitions PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1993-01-01

Total Pages: 342

ISBN-13: 9780309074919

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The U.S. Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program was established with the goal of destroying the nation's stockpile of lethal unitary chemical weapons. Since 1990 the U.S. Army has been testing a baseline incineration technology on Johnston Island in the southern Pacific Ocean. Under the planned disposal program, this baseline technology will be imported in the mid to late 1990s to continental United States disposal facilities; construction will include eight stockpile storage sites. In early 1992 the Committee on Alternative Chemical Demilitarization Technologies was formed by the National Research Council to investigate potential alternatives to the baseline technology. This book, the result of its investigation, addresses the use of alternative destruction technologies to replace, partly or wholly, or to be used in addition to the baseline technology. The book considers principal technologies that might be applied to the disposal program, strategies that might be used to manage the stockpile, and combinations of technologies that might be employed.

Review and Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons

Review and Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1999-11-24

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0309184002

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This report examines seven disposal technologies being considered by the U.S. government as alternative methods to the process of incineration for destroying mortars, rockets, land mines, and other weapons that contain chemical warfare agents, such as mustard gas. These weapons are considered especially dangerous because they contain both chemical warfare agent and explosive materials in an assembled package that must be disassembled for destruction. The study identifies the strengths and weaknesses and advantages and disadvantages of each technology and assesses their potential for full-scale implementation.

Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Disposal of Liquid Wastes from the Explosive Destruction System

Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Disposal of Liquid Wastes from the Explosive Destruction System PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2002-01-20

Total Pages: 76

ISBN-13: 0309082692

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Chemical warfare materiel (CWM) encompasses diverse items that were used during 60 years of efforts by the United States to develop a capability for conducting chemical warfare. Non-Stockpile CWM (NSCWM) is materiel not included in the current U.S. inventory of chemical munitions and includes buried materiel, recovered materiel, components of binary chemical weapons, former production facilities, and miscellaneous materiel. Because NSCWM is stored or buried at many locations, the Army is developing transportable treatment systems that can be moved from site to site as needed. Originally, the Army planned to develop three transportable treatment systems for nonstockpile chemical materiel: the rapid response system (RRS), the munitions management device (MMD), and the explosive destruction system (EDS). This report supplements an earlier report that evaluated eight alternative technologies for destruction of the liquid waste streams from two of the U.S. Army's transportable treatment systems for nonstockpile chemical materiel: the RRS and the MMD. This report evaluates the same technologies for the destruction of liquid waste streams produced by the EDS and discusses the regulatory approval issues and obstacles for the combined use of the EDS and the alternative technologies that treat the EDS secondary waste streams. Although it focuses on the destruction of EDS neutralent, it also takes into consideration the ability of posttreatment technologies to process the more dilute water rinses that are used in the EDS following treatment with a reagent.

Evaluation of Demonstration Test Results of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons

Evaluation of Demonstration Test Results of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2002-01-08

Total Pages: 66

ISBN-13: 030907634X

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By direction of Congress, the U.S. Department of Defense's (DoD's) program manager for the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (PMACWA) asked the National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Review and Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons: Phase II (the ACW II committee) to conduct an independent scientific and technical assessment of three alternative technologies (referred to as Demo II) under consideration for the destruction of assembled chemical weapons at U.S. chemical weapons storage sites. The three technologies are AEA Technologies Corporation's (AEA's) electrochemical oxidation process; the transpiring-wall supercritical water oxidation and gasphase chemical reduction processes of Foster Wheeler/Eco Logic/Kvaerner (FW/EL/K); and Teledyne-Commodore's solvated electron process. Each of these technologies represents an alternative to incineration for the complete destruction of chemical agents and associated energetic materials. The demonstration tests were approved by the PMACWA after an initial assessment of each technology. The results of that initial assessment were reviewed by an earlier NRC committee, the Committee on Review and Evaluation of Alternative Technologies for Demilitarization of Assembled Chemical Weapons (the ACW I committee). For the present review, the committee conducted an indepth examination of each technology provider's data, analyses, and demonstration test results for the critical components tested. This review report supplements the ACW I report and considers the demonstration performance of the Demo II candidate technologies and their readiness for advancement to pilot-scale implementation. Because testing in these areas is ongoing, the committee decided to cut short its fact-finding efforts for input to this report as of March 30, 2001.

Recommendations for the Disposal of Chemical Agents and Munitions

Recommendations for the Disposal of Chemical Agents and Munitions PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1994-02-01

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0309050464

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The U.S. Army's chemical stockpile is aging and gradually deteriorating. Its elimination has public, political, and environmental ramifications. The U.S. Department of Defense has designated the Department of the Army as the executive agent responsible for the safe, timely, and effective elimination of the chemical stockpile. This book provides recommendations on the direction the Army should take in pursuing and completing its Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program.

Review and Evaluation of Alternative Chemical Disposal Technologies

Review and Evaluation of Alternative Chemical Disposal Technologies PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 1996-11-15

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 030917550X

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In 1994 the National Research Council published Recommendations for the Disposal of Chemical Agents and Munitions, which assessed the status of various alternative destruction technologies in comparison to the Army's baseline incineration system. The volume's main finding was that no alternative technology was preferable to incineration but that work should continue on the neutralization technologies under Army consideration. In light of the fact that alternative technologies have evolved since the 1994 study, this new volume evaluates five Army-chosen alternatives to the baseline incineration system for the disposal of the bulk nerve and mustard agent stored in ton containers at Army sites located in Newport, Indiana, and Aberdeen, Maryland, respectively. The committee assessed each technology by conducting site visits to the locations of the technology proponent companies and by meeting with state regulators and citizens of the affected areas. This volume makes recommendations to the Army on which, if any, of the five technologies has reached a level of maturity appropriate for consideration for pilot-scale testing at the two affected sites.

Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel

Review of International Technologies for Destruction of Recovered Chemical Warfare Materiel PDF

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2006-11-02

Total Pages: 128

ISBN-13: 0309180511

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The Chemical Weapons Convention requires, among other things, that the signatories to the conventionâ€"which includes the United Statesâ€"destroy by April 29, 2007, or as soon possible thereafter, any chemical warfare materiel that has been recovered from sites where it has been buried once discovered. For several years the United States and several other countries have been developing and using technologies to dispose of this non-stockpile materiel. To determine whether international efforts have resulted in technologies that would benefit the U.S. program, the U.S. Army asked the NRC to evaluate and compare such technologies to those now used by the United States. This book presents a discussion of factors used in the evaluations, summaries of evaluations of several promising international technologies for processing munitions and for agent-only processing, and summaries of other technologies that are less likely to be of benefit to the U.S. program at this time.