ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608260130
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: SALT LAKE CITY
SOURCE: Associated Press
Destruction of the nation's largest stockpile of chemical weapons was halted three days after it began when traces of nerve gas leaked in a sealed area of the incinerator, a plant official said Sunday.
``There was never any danger to employees, the community or the environment,'' spokesman Jon Pettebone said of Saturday's leak inside the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.
The incinerator was built to destroy 14,000 tons of Army chemical agents stored at a remote Utah desert site about 50 miles southwest of Salt Lake City.
Burning of the nerve gas-bearing M55 rockets began Thursday and was stopped Saturday when the leak was detected in an entryway attached to two charcoal air filter banks. The area is in a sealed portion of the plant where employees do not work, Pettebone said.
While he did not have the exact measurements of the nerve gas leak, Pettebone said it was only trace amounts. ``Even if someone had been in the area at the time of the release, they would have been in no danger,'' he said.
About 30,000 M55 rockets are stored at the Tooele site. Just over 200 had been destroyed before Saturday's shutdown. Pettebone said the plant should resume work by midweek.
``It will be a couple days,'' he said Sunday. ``They're going to check everything out, go nice and slow and make sure there are no problems.''
There are about 31,000 tons of chemical weapons stored at eight sites in the United States. Packed in rockets, land mines, bombs, mortar shells, missiles and canisters, the chemical agents are being destroyed per agreement with other countries.
Construction of disposal plants at Anniston, Ala., Umatilla, Ore., and Pine Bluff, Ark., is scheduled this year.
LENGTH: Short : 44 linesby CNB