CHEMICAL TIME BOMBS

By Jill Smolowe

SENTENCED TO DEATH SINCE 1986, the unrepentant killers idle in hundreds of maximum-security "igloos," scattered strategically across eight states. The igloos are constructed of reinforced concrete, then smothered under 2 ft. of earth. Their double-padlocked steel doors are blocked by 2 1/2-ton concrete blocks and monitored by Army personnel.

When the hour of execution finally arrives, the killers will be transported from their bunkers in airtight, fire-resistant containers. At the death house, they will be loaded onto conveyor belts, stripped by remote-controlled machines, then plunged down a chute into a 2700-degree F inferno. Anything that comes into contact with these untouchables during their final transport--wraps, pallets, gloves--will be incinerated as well. Thus America will bid an unsentimental farewell to 30,600 tons of chemical weapons.

That, at least, is the plan. But in the decade since Congress issued its death warrant, the stockpile has proved more wily a foe than Hannibal Lecter. As technical snafus have caused the deadline to be pushed back from 1994 to 2004, the estimated cost of incinerating 3.3 million chemical weapons has soared from $1.7 billion to $12 billion. At the same time, the risk of not destroying the stockpile grows exponentially as the weapons decay.

Seven years after ground was broken in 1985 to build a prototype incinerator on Johnston Atoll, 750 miles from Hawaii, Congress put the program on hold because of cost and safety concerns. It resumed the incineration program 18 months later, when the independent National Research Council concluded that to pause and explore alternative disposal methods was too risky because the weapons--rockets, artillery shells, bombs and land mines--are deteriorating. There have been some 2,100 reported incidents of leakage inside the igloos. Last summer at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama, 60 workers were evacuated and one was hospitalized after the nerve gas sarin leaked from an M-55 rocket.

Two weeks ago, the Pentagon released the first detailed information about the size, type and location of the weapons caches in eight states and on Johnston Atoll. Major General Robert Orton, who heads the Army's chemical-weapons-destruction project, predicted, "This will help minimize misunderstandings, expedite the environmental permitting processes and save money." But the history of the one operating incinerator is not reassuring. Though the Johnston facility has destroyed 3% of the nation's stockpile since coming on line in 1990, the effort has been plagued by mishaps. Conveyor belts, chutes and gates have jammed; a rocket exploded inside the incinerator; estimates of the incinerator's efficiency have been revised downward as the Army discovered that it can destroy only seven M-55 rockets an hour rather than the anticipated 24.

More distressing, toxins have leaked through clogged hoses and faulty filter gaskets on two occasions. After one such incident, the Environmental Protection Agency fined the Army $91,700 for "releasing a nerve agent above allowable levels." Says Craig Williams of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, a nationwide citizens' coalition: "To allow [all] of these incinerators to operate at the same time is a recipe for disaster."

But the Army seems more haunted by the prospect of leaks from the aging arsenal. The first mainland incinerator was rushed into construction in 1989 with only 60% of the blueprint complete. Located in Tooele, Utah, home of the nation's largest chemical stockpile, the facility was built by EG&G Defense Materials Inc., under contract to the Army. But Utah residents are wary of the military after the atomic-testing scandal of the 1950s. "The firebricks blew up in the kiln at Johnston," says Steve Jones, a safety inspector who was fired by EG&G in 1994, after just three months on the job. "Then they built the kiln in Tooele using the same bricks." The Army contends that Jones was fired for mismanagement; Jones says he was sacked after refusing to sign a document stating that the Tooele incinerator is safe. "I personally found over 2,000 design, industrial and programmatic hazards," he says. A 1994 report by the Army inspector general also found safety problems at Tooele.

Now that the Tooele incinerator is within months of "going hot," the Tooele County Commission, a longtime supporter of the project, is trying to stall. "The county has identified $5 million worth of things that need to be done to move along the emergency-preparedness process," says Myron Lee, spokesman for the county's emergency-management program. The list includes disaster training and sirens that can sound throughout the area.

Meanwhile, two states with stockpiles--Kentucky and Indiana--have effectively banned incineration by requiring proof that it will have no long-term health or environmental consequences. The Federal Government says any such study would take 30 years. And no one is enthusiastic about moving the weapons to distant incineration sites, which poses a different set of risks. "Although we in Alabama are willing to destroy our own stockpile, we are absolutely opposed to other people sending their chemical weapons into our state," says Democratic Representative Glen Browder, whose district is slated to be the site of the nation's third incinerator. "Transporting the weapons would be a hot political issue, and would have a hard time winning approval from Congress," he says.

For all these reasons, there is little chance that the U.S. can meet Congress's goal of destroying the entire weapons cache by 2004. Although the Army continues to explore alternatives to incineration--among them chemical neutralization; biological degradation; and the use of electricity, freezing or molten metal to convert the chemicals into inert waste--those technologies could take years, even decades, to develop on a large scale. And given the looming possibility of accidents that might befall the stockpiles, time is the one thing the Army doesn't have.

--Reported by Anne Palmer Donohoe/Salt Lake City and Mark Thompson/Washington

With reporting by ANNE PALMER DONOHOE/SALT LAKE CITY AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON