The destruction of chemical weapons on Johnston Island in the Pacific Ocean is complete, according to the Army.
The incinerator on the island, located 825 miles southwest of Hawaii and known as the Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System, was the prototype for the Army's $1 billion incinerator near Stockton, Tooele County. JACADS began operating in 1990, while the Utah incinerator began its work in 1996.
Both are part of a massive project to destroy the country's store of chemical warfare munitions.
The JACADS project ended on Nov. 29, when it finished burning the last of more than 13,000 land mines that were filled with nerve agent VX.
"Completion of the VX land mine campaign, the last of the Johnston Island chemical weapons stockpile, paves the way for the Army to close its doors at JACADS," said James Bacon, the Army's program manager for chemical demilitarization.
"JACADS is a model of safe and successful operation of the Army's eight other disposal sites as well as for other countries that are looking to safely destroy their stockpiles of chemical weapons," he added, according to a written press release.
Over the past decade, JACADS safely destroyed more than 400,000 rockets, projectiles, bombs, mortars, ton containers and land mines, according to the plant's project manager, Gary McCloskey.
"JACADS also has destroyed more than 2,000 tons of chemical agent in the form of nerve agent . . . and blister agent." The island held 6 percent of the U.S. total chemical warfare stockpile.
As of Nov. 12, the Utah incinerator — technically called the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility — had destroyed 636,108 munitions and bulk containers, or 55.8 percent of the original stockpile stored at Deseret Chemical Depot. So far, the plant has destroyed weapons containing GB nerve agent, commonly called sarin.
By types, those destroyed were:
600,275 105-mm. projectiles
4,912 ton containers
4,463 MC1 (750 pound) bombs
26,458 M55 rockets and M56 rocket warheads
Clint Warby of the Tooele Chemical Stockpile Outreach Office, Tooele, said the munitions destroyed amount to 79.8 percent of the quantity of GB originally stored at the depot. "The significance of this is that GB has the greatest risk to the public if ever an earthquake or other major event were to occur," he said.
Because so much GB nerve agent was stored in Tooele County, the amount destroyed at the Utah incinerator amounts to 54 percent of the country's stockpile.
Warby said the Utah plant is scheduled to complete its project around the end of 2003 or early 2004.
E-mail: bau@desnews.com