Neutralization or Demilitarization

Neutralization or Demilitarization Hazardous items may be neutralized by detonation in place, or they may be removed to a demilitarization facility located on, or at some distance from, the site undergoing remediation. Detonation in place, which is often the only safe method for neutralization of explosive items, carries with it concerns for blast, noise, and vapor containment. Blast containment coverings tend to be heavy, bulky, and difficult to position. Sand tamping for noise control is labor intensive and time consuming, and it creates problems with dust. Reliable mathematical models for predicting the noise impact on neighboring communities do not appear to be available, although their development should not be particularly difficult. 

Demilitarization of removed explosive items is typically performed using incinerators or furnaces. Because of the necessity of preventing potentially harmful vapors from entering the atmosphere from these systems, air scrubbers are required. These items are expensive, often costing in excess of a million dollars. A need exists for rapid, inexpensive, and environmentally benign methods for demilitarization of recovered munitions. 

A problem is also associated with abandoned open bum/open detonation areas at which neutralization and demilitarization were carried out in the past without stringent environmental controls. The debris remaining in these areas can pose both explosive and toxic chemical threats. A need exists for the adaptation of present methods of soil cleaning (which are typically applied to the removal of hydrocarbon or heavy-metal contamination from soil) and development of new approaches to address the problem of removing specific explosive and toxic compounds from soils. Such approaches could be applied both to the remediation of abandoned open burn/open detonation sites and to that of other areas (including 

Base hydrolysis and other potential destruction techniques are discussed in Chapter 14. 

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Locations of contamination must be precisely marked and mapped so they can be relocated easily. Efficiency in survey and remediation operations is best served through the division of labor, i.e., when the detection and location task is performed separately from access and recovery, which is itself separate from the neutralization or demilitarization of the recovered items. In practice, therefore, an optimal capability would be to quickly mark and later relocate a detection "hit" with an accuracy of a few tens of centimeters, both horizontally and vertically, in a large (thousands of acres) area of reasonably rough terrain. The requisite horizontal resolution might be obtainable with a differential Global Positioning System the vertical resolution is presently not reachable with most detection instruments. 

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