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COMMITTEE ON REVIEW AND EVALUATION OF THE ARMY CHEMICAL STOCKPILE DISPOSAL PROGRAM
RICHARD S. MAGEE (chair),
New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark
ELISABETH M. DRAKE (vice chair),
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge
DENNIS C. BLEY,
Buttonwood Consulting, Inc., Oakton, Virginia
GENE H. DYER, consultant,
San Rafael, California
VINCENT E. FALTER,
U.S. Army (retired), Springfield, Virginia
J. ROBERT GIBSON,
DuPont Agricultural Products, Wilmington, Delaware
MICHAEL R. GREENBERG,
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Piscataway
CHARLES E. KOLB,
Aerodyne Research, Inc., Billerica, Massachusetts
DAVID S. KOSSON,
Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, Piscataway
WALTER G. MAY,
University of Illinois, Urbana
ALVIN H. MUSHKATEL,
Arizona State University, Tempe
PETER J. NIEMIEC,
Greenberg, Glusker, Fields, Claman & Machtinger LLP, Los Angeles, California
GEORGE W. PARSHALL,
DuPont Company (retired), Wilmington, Delaware
WILLIAM TUMAS,
Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico
JYA-SYIN WU,
Hughes Information Technology Systems, Fullerton, California
Board on Army Science and Technology Liaison
ROBERT A. BEAUDET,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
Staff
DONALD L. SIEBENALER, Study Director
HARRISON T. PANNELLA, Consultant
SHIREL R. SMITH, Senior Project Assistant
BOARD ON ARMY SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
GENERAL GLENN K. OTIS (chair),
U.S. Army (retired), Newport News, Virginia
CHRISTOPHER C. GREEN (vice chair)
General Motors Corporation, Warren, Michigan
ROBERT A. BEAUDET,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles
GARY L. BARMAN,
University of Wisconsin, Madison
LAWRENCE J. DELANEY,
BDM Europe, Berlin, Germany
WILLIAM H. FORSTER,
Northrop Grumman Corporation, Baltimore, Maryland
ROBERT J. HEASTON,
Guidance and Control Information Analysis Center (retired), Naperville, Illinois
KATHRYN V. LOGAN,
Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
THOMAS MCNAUGHER,
RAND, Washington, D.C.
NORMAN F. PARKER,
Varian Associates (retired), Cardiff by the Sea, California
STEWART D. PERSONICK,
Bell Communications Research, Inc., Morristown, New Jersey
MILLARD "FRANK" ROSE,
Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
HARVEY W. SCHADLER,
General Electric, Schenectady, New York
CLARENCE G. THORNTON,
Army Research Laboratories (retired), Colts Neck, New Jersey
JOHN D. VENABLES,
Martin Marietta Laboratories (retired), Towson, Maryland
ALLEN C. WARD,
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Staff
BRUCE A. BRAUN, Director
MICHAEL A. CLARKE, Senior Program Officer
ROBERT J. LOVE, Senior Program Officer
DONALD L. SIEBENALER, Study Director
MARGO L. FRANCESCO, Staff Associate
ALVERA GIRCYS, Financial Assistant
JACQUELINE CAMPBELL-JOHNSON, Senior Project Assistant
CECELIA RAY, Senior Project Assistant
SHIREL R. SMITH, Senior Project Assistant
Preface
In 1985, Congress directed the U.S. Army to begin destroying the U.S. chemical agent and munitions stock-pile. In 1987, the Committee on Review and Evaluation of the Army Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program (Stockpile Committee) was formed. Since that time, the committee has monitored the progress of the Army's Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program (CSDP). Throughout the development of the CSDP, the Stockpile Committee has provided oversight, review, and comment on relevant issues, including the engineering, verification (or systemization), and operations, at both a prototype facility at Johnston Atoll, in the Pacific Ocean, and the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (TOCDF), in Utah, the first full-scale chemical agent disposal facility in the continental United States.
Minimizing the risk to workers, the public, and the environment from the continued existence of the stock-pile and selecting safe and efficient means of disposal have been, and continue to be, the central themes of the Stockpile Committee's oversight role. Any attempt to minimize risk implies having confidence in the process used to assign values to various sources of risk (risk factors) and the methods used to analyze, compare, and use these factors in decision making. A comprehensive understanding of the full spectrum of risks is fundamental to sound risk management practices. With this in mind, the Stockpile Committee produced a letter report in 1993 calling on the Army to develop site-specific risk assessments as a way of refining the methodology and results of an earlier probabilistic risk assessment that supported the Army's Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement issued in 1988.
As the CSDP has progressed, the Stockpile Committee has advised the Army on the need for up-to-date, state-of-the-art, site-specific risk assessments. The recent focus of this advice has centered on the Deseret Chemical Depot (formerly Tooele Army Depot, South), where about 45 percent of the U.S. chemical agent and munitions stockpile is stored, and on the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility, the associated disposal facility. The remainder of the stock-pile is distributed among seven continental U.S. storage sites and Johnston Atoll.
The consensus of the Stockpile Committee is that a clear picture of various risk assessment and risk management activities for Deseret Chemical Depot and the Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (DCD/TOCDF) has emerged and warrants comment on both the quality of the technical risk analyses and on the Army's integration of these assessments into a comprehensive risk management plan for the site.
The risk management plan is the Army's framework for including considerations of risk in both site-specific and programmatic decisions. The committee's report is intended to facilitate understanding and to encourage public dialogue concerning the DCD/TOCDF and the Army's broader risk management program. In this report, the Stockpile Committee analyzes the chosen risk quantification methodologies and the plan by which the resultant risks are to be managed at the depot and in the disposal facility. Suggestions for improving the risk assessment/risk management process that may be applicable to other chemical storage sites and to the overall disposal program are also made.
The committee greatly appreciates the support and assistance of National Research Council staff members Donald L. Siebenaler, Shirel R. Smith, and Carol R. Arenberg, as well as NRC consultant Harrison T. Pannella, in the production of this report.
RICHARD S. MAGEE, CHAIR
ELISABETH M. DRAKE, VICE CHAIR
COMMITTEE ON REVIEW AND EVALUATION OF THE ARMY CHEMICAL STOCKPILE DISPOSAL PROGRAM
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Contents
List of Figures, Tables, and Boxes
Figures
ES-1 |
Schematic illustration of TOCDF risk elements, |
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ES-2 |
Contributors to the average public fatality risk from continued storage at DCD, |
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ES-3 |
Contributors to the average public fatality risk from processing at DCD and TOCDF, |
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ES-4 |
Comparison of public risks during processing at DCD and TOCDF, |
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ES-5 |
Contributors to the average risk of fatality to disposal-related workers at DCD and TOCDF, |
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1-1 |
Location and size (percentage of remaining stockpile) of eight continental U.S. storage sites, |
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2-1 |
Schematic illustration of risk elements at the TOCDF, |
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2-2 |
Overview of QRA process, |
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2-3 |
Rocket handling system fault trees for agent spilled during shear operation, |
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2-4 |
Contributors to the average public fatality risk from continued storage at DCD, |
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2-5 |
Public acute fatality risk of DCD stockpile storage over 7.1 years of disposal processing, |
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2-6 |
Radial polar grid of surrounding population, |
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2-7 |
Mean public acute fatality complementary cumulative distribution function for munition storage during the 7.1 years of disposal processing, by distance from DCD, |
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2-8 |
Comparison of public risks during processing at DCD and TOCDF, |
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2-9 |
Comparison of public risks during processing at DCD and TOCDF (logarithmic scale), |
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2-10 |
Contributors to the average public fatality risk from processing at DCD and TOCDF, |
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2-11 |
Contributors to the average risk of fatality to disposal-related workers at DCD and TOCDF, |
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2-12 |
Summary of mean public risk from storage and processing at DCD and TOCDF, |
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2-13 |
Public societal acute fatalities for all campaigns (TOCDF disposal processing), |
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2-14 |
Mean public acute fatality risk by distance from TOCDF during disposal processing, |
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2-15 |
Acute fatalities for other on-site workers at TOCDF from accidents during disposal processing, |
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3-1 |
PMCD's organizational elements directly related to risk management, |
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3-2 |
The change process, |
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A-1 |
Form of the results: scenario probability, |
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A-2 |
Aleatory and epistemic uncertainty, |
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A-3 |
Risk profiles with the same expected risk, |
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A-4 |
Risk curve, |
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A-5 |
Form of the results: risk profiles, |
Tables
2-1 |
Summary of the Human Health Risk—Overall Risk of Cancer for Combined TOCDF and CAMDS Disposal Operations, |
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2-2 |
Risks for an Individual Living 2 to 5 Kilometers from the TOCDF, |
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2-3 |
Expected Number of Fatalities (Societal Risk), |
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3-1 |
Issues and Factors in Assessing the Value of Change Options, |
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3-2 |
Activities by Risk Management Function, |
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3-3 |
PMCD Risk Management through Its Organizations and Functions, |
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A-1 |
Scenario List with Cumulative Probability, |
Box
2-1 |
Individual Risk at DCD and the TOCDF in Perspective, |
Acronyms
APET
accident progression event tree
CAC
Citizens Advisory Commission
CAMDS
Chemical Agent Munitions Disposal System
CSDP
Chemical Stockpile Disposal Program
CSEPP
Chemical Stockpile Emergency Preparedness Program
CWC
Chemical Weapons Convention
DCD
Deseret Chemical Depot
DSHW
Division of Solid and Hazardous Waste (Utah)
EG&G
Edgerton, Germerhausen and Grier, Incorporated
EPA
Environmental Protection Agency
FPEIS
Final Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement
GA
nerve agent (Tabun)
GB
nerve agent (Sarin)
H, HD, HT
blister or mustard agents
HRA
health risk assessment
JACADS
Johnston Atoll Chemical Agent Disposal System
LPG
liquid propane gas
MPF
metal parts furnace
NRC
National Research Council
OSHA
Occupational Safety and Health Administration
OVT
operational verification testing
PAS
pollution abatement system
PFS
PAS filter system
PMCD
Program Manager for Chemical Demilitarization
POD
process operational diagram
QRA
quantitative risk assessment
RCRA
Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
SAIC
Science Applications International Corporation
TOCDF
Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility
VX
nerve agent