The three Static Detonation Chamber units at the Pueblo plant will be transported to Alabama and Maryland for reuse after agreements were signed with U.S. Army installations at each location.
“As always, we’re trying to be good stewards of government funds,” said Phil Dunegan, closure liaison and SDC reuse lead, Pueblo Chemical Agent-Destruction Pilot Plant, or PCAPP. “The fact that these three valuable units will be reused is an example of that and definitely is a win-win situation for all involved.”
At the October 2023 Colorado Chemical Demilitarization Citizens’ Advisory Commission meeting, Todd Ailes, project manager, Bechtel Pueblo Team, announced that one SDC unit would go to the U.S. Army Redstone Arsenal in Alabama while the other two would be transferred to the U.S. Army Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland.
“The SDC complex served us well here at PCAPP,” said Walton Levi, site project manager, PCAPP. “We are happy to see that other organizations will benefit from equipment we disposition during closure.”
Dunegan said the units will not be made ready for transport until early 2025, as each SDC unit will be decontaminated, decommissioned and disassembled before being transported. Required decontamination levels are outlined in the SDC closure plan, which is under review by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
The three SDC units—each consisting of a detonation chamber and an off-gas treatment system—augmented the main plant by destroying problematic 4.2-inch mortar rounds during the plant’s operations phase. The SDCs also eliminated overpacked 105mm and 155mm projectiles and energetics deemed unsuitable for processing in the main plant.
The first SDC unit components arrived at PCAPP in August 2019 in a convoy of more than 30 semi-trailer flatbed trucks after being fabricated at the Dynasafe facility in Sweden. The first component was placed on a concrete pad Oct. 31, 2019, marking the start of assembly. Workers completed assembly in July 2020 and SDC operations began in February 2022. The last munition in the stockpile in Colorado was destroyed in an SDC unit in June 2023. The units safely destroyed 50,714 of the 780,089 munitions formerly stored at the U.S. Army Pueblo Chemical Depot.
