Chemical Weapons: Lessons Learned Program Generally Effective but Could Be Improved and Expanded
Abstract
The Army has been tasked to destroy about 31,500 tons of highly toxic chemical agents by April 2007, the deadline set by an international treaty for the elimination of all chemical weapon stockpiles. Until they are destroyed, the chemical agents will continue to pose a threat to the thousands of people living and working near the disposal facilities where the agents are being stored. To destroy the weapons, the Department of Defense (DOD) established the Army's Chemical Demilitarization (or Chem-Demil) Program. The Army has destroyed over one-quarter (8,044 tons) of the U.S stockpile as of March 2002. Originally, the Chem-Demil Program consisted only of the Chemical Stockpile Disposal Project, also known as the baseline incineration project, which was initiated in 1988 to incinerate chemical weapons at nine storage sites. Then, in response to public concern about incineration, Congress established the Alternative Technologies and Approaches Project in 1994 to investigate alternatives to the baseline incineration process. In 1997, Congress established the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment Program to identify and test additional technologies as alternatives to incineration. Today, five of the nine storage sites use incineration; three others will use or plan to use alternative technologies. The technology choice for the final site has yet to be determined. The Chemical Stockpile Disposal Project operates a Programmatic Lessons Learned Program whose aim is to enhance safety, reduce or avoid unnecessary costs, and maintain the incineration schedule. A lesson learned is a set of rules or principles that summarizes past experiences to help people better perform future tasks. The projects goal is to capture and share lessons learned from experience so that stakeholders- engineers, contractors, and program managers- working in similar situations on new facilities can apply the knowledge.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 01, 2002
- Accession Number
- AD1177877
Entities
People
- Bonita Oden
- Donald Snyder
- Pamela Valentine
- Raymond J. Decker
- Stefano Petrucci
- Steve Boyles
Organizations
- United States Government Accountability Office