Client:
United States Army

Construction Duration:
1998–2002

Construction Cost:
$20 million

Parsons Services:
Design, fabrication,
installation, and
start-up services

The Pasco shop is one
of the largest and best-equipped fabrication facilities in the Pacific Northwest with:

• 156,000 square feet of shop floor space

• Dedicated UL-508 shop for control and power panel wiring

• State-of-the-art automated welding machines and plasma arc cutter

• Over 100 engineers, procurement specialists, and union craftsmen on staff

• A fully implemented quality assurance program

• NQA-1 Certified Fabricator

• ISO 9000 certification

• ASME R Stamp

Congress established the Assembled Chemical Weapons Assessment (ACWA) program in 1997 to address public concerns about safe chemical weapons destruction. The program tasked the Department of Defense with identifying and demonstrating alternatives to incineration for the destruction of assembled chemical weapons. These weapons include munitions that contain both chemical agents and energetic materials (rockets, projectiles, and mines).

Pipe spool fabrication

In 1998, the Army selected Parsons to develop alternative technologies for chemical weapons disposal for the ACWA program. In response, Parsons established the Parsons Fabrication Facility (PFF) in Pasco, Washington, to design, fabricate, and test process systems for chemical weapon and bulk agent disposal for ACWA and future chemical demilitarization projects.

The Army considered two alternative technologies: 1) chemical neutralization followed by biological treatment and 2) chemical neutralization followed by supercritical water oxidation. Both approaches use neutralization technology that converts the agent into less hazardous waste that can be treated with industrial chemicals. Parsons implemented a biological treatment process to safely dispose of the remaining waste in accordance with regulatory requirements.

National security considerations since September 11, 2001, prompted the Army to accelerate destruction of our nation's chemical weapons stockpile. The Army asked Parsons to develop and install a process that would accelerate disposal of the VX nerve agent stockpile stored at the Newport Chemical Agent Disposal Facility in Indiana. Parsons' Newport team responded by developing a modified design/construction/operational plan called Project Speedy Neutralization (PSN). By employing standardized and modularized equipment designed and fabricated by PFF, PSN will begin chemical neutralization nearly three years earlier than the originally scheduled completion date of June 2006.

CHATS fabrication

PFF is now fabricating and shop testing—on a fast-track schedule—the major process equipment for Parsons' Newport team to support the accelerated disposal of the VX nerve agent. Parsons personnel in Pasco, Washington, and Newport, Indiana, will work together to install and site test this equipment so that disposal of the neutralized agent can begin three years earlier than planned. The equipment includes chemical agent transfer systems (CHATS), agent reactors, container-handling devices, process modules, the surrounding fire-rated walls, and associated electrical power and controls systems.

The CHATS allow operators to drain chemical agent stored in ton containers into drained agent holding tanks for later injection into stirred reactors to begin neutralization using sodium hydroxide. In addition, the CHATS are used to wash and rinse the drained ton containers.

PFF has also fabricated equipment for chemical agent disposal at the Aberdeen Chemical Demilitarization Facility in Maryland and for retrieval of high-level nuclear waste at the Department of Energy site in Hanford, Washington. Spurred by growing public desire, the Army asked Parsons to help develop chemical weapons disposal alternatives for the stockpile in Pueblo, Colorado. PFF fabricated and tested prototype process equipment at four Army locations in the United States using live chemical agent and explosives to validate the bio-treatment process. Both the citizens of Colorado and the Army have approved Parsons' neutralization-bio-treatment process, and the Army has awarded the Pueblo demilitarization contract to the Parsons team.

Parsons, now the largest equipment supplier for the Army's Chemical Weapon Demilitarization program, offers complete architectural-engineering, fabrication, and testing capabilities for virtually any demilitarization project. PFF has developed and patented process technology for non-incineration decontamination of materials containing hazardous agents and is now actively marketing Parsons' fabrication capabilities throughout the government and commercial business sectors.

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