CHEM INCINERATORS CONKING OUT?

On Saturday, the Associated Press reports, the Army "fired up its first chemical weapons incinerator near a residential area and destroyed a Cold War-era rocket loaded with enough sarin to wipe out a city."
But less than a week into its operation, the incinerator at the Anniston Army Depot in Alabama has run into trouble, according to local press accounts. It's been shut down twice -- once for a hydraulic fluid leak, then for a problem with the machinery that cools the exhaust filters.
About 190 M-55 rockets, filled with nerve agents, are in the facility awaiting processing, says the Anniston Star.
"More than 661,000 munitions containing nerve and blister agent are stored in concrete bunkers at the depot. The Army plans to burn them in the $1 billion incinerator over the next several years."
THERE'S MORE: "The U.S. Army has stopped burning some chemical weapons at its Tooele, Utah, incinerator while it investigates an incomplete burn of M-55 rockets filled with VX nerve gas during test last week," Global Security Newswire reports. And the service has also decided to delay the destruction of VX at the Newport Chemical Depot in Indiana. The facility, expected to be ready in October to dispose of the stuff, now won't be prepared to do so until January, at least.