TOOELE, Utah (AP) -- Officials have determined that an incorrectly installed washer on a strainer assembly caused the spill of 140 gallons of the deadly nerve agent Sarin at the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility.
The spill occurred Sunday afternoon as the liquid was being poured into the incineration chamber. It wound up in a containment sump designed for just such an accident, said plant spokesman Jon Pettebone.Workers had cleaned, serviced and reassembled the strainer assembly shortly before the accident, the Army said in a press release issued on Wednesday. The agent has since been pumped to a storage tank for processing.
The Tooele facility is the first chemical weapons incinerator in the continental United States, and the spill was the largest reported to date at the plant. Officials have emphasized that because of the plant's safety measures, there was no risk to the plant's workers or the public.
Leaking chemical munitions at the Deseret Chemical Depot, formerly known as the Tooele Army Depot, are nothing new.
There are more than 27 million pounds of nerve and blister agent stored in earthen and concrete bunkers sprinkled throughout the depot, located on a vast reservation 50 miles west of Salt Lake. The stockpile represents nearly 42 percent of the country's chemical arsenal.
Most of the weapons are relics of the Cold War and many date to World War II. Many of them are leaking.
The depot, operated by EG&G Defense Materials Inc. for the Army, routinely reports small leaks detected inside sealed containers which hold the shells, rockets and one-ton bulk containers.
Indeed, leaks became so frequent as the incinerator began destroying Sarin-filled M360 105-millimeter artillery shells that the depot now bundles the reports into a single weekly news release.
The giant $600 million incinerator designed to destroy the weapons was fired up for tests in 1996 and earlier this year was given the go-ahead by state regulators to ramp-up to full capacity by early 2000.