What was the cost factor and the allocation of cost in this study? I mean, did they just sit around the room and say, "We don't want to do it at Yucca; it's far better to do it at Pahute Mesa?" Or what was the reasoning? How was it concluded?

Was it concluded by reason of engineers doing this, and a great deal of technical work, or what? They must have known they would run into muck, which is a heavy substance that they would have to get out with a bucket, because they laid out exactly how it would be handled. All I am saying is that you are saying this is a kind of an informal report that you gave to the Army, because they asked you if you would help them in a difficult situation.

I am saying that this is a plan and a program that absolutely presupposes bringing it to a conclusion. Now, do you disagree with me?

Dr. TESCHE. Sir, we were asked by the Army, just as Commander Richter has said, to look into the feasibility of carrying out this project. Now, we have our experts in Nevada and in the laboratory who were accustomed to this sort of a thing. Not destruction of munitions, but geologists, seismologists, and people that understand the operation there. We have extensive knowledge of the geology of Pahute Mesa and Yucca Flats.

Senator Cook. Did you send anybody to Anniston, Ala., and Lexington, Ky. to look at the vaults?

Dr. TESCHE. No, but we had a motion picture showing the casting of the munitions.

Senator Cook. Did you get all of the detailed information from the Army, or how they had been placed in the concrete, whether vertical or what? As a matter of fact, in here you say you had a system by which the shaft would be dropped so that you could put these vaults in proper upright position or quantitative positions in relation to the explosion, and so on and so forth.

Now, really and truly, are you saying to me, both of you, that this report represents no more than a feasibility study?

Commander RICHTER. Yes, sir. Before you can say yes, it is feasible to destroy it, you have to know what we will destroy. You have to know what temperatures you have to reach. You have to know what size nuclear device you will need to reach these temperatures out to the desired distances. You have to know if you can mine the cavity in the geologic media that is present. That the techniques are available to mine a cavity of the required size.

You have to have the material available or the facilities available for lowering a 61⁄2 ton block of concrete into this hole.

Senator Cook. As a matter of fact, you not only have it out there, you spell it out, every piece of that equipment, in this so-called feasibility study. You spell out by letter and numerical number as to type of equipment that it can be done with.

Here is the way you place it; here is the way it is going to be done. This is the manner in which it will be done.

Commander RICHTER. Yes, sir; and in this in the recommendations and within the report it states that while due to the short deadline, we would have to start on this right away if the Army chose this method of disposal and concurrent with this construction process, we would have to still conduct our structural analysis of the coffins or vaults that were built, and to investigate thoroughly the stability. of the propellants of the rockets in these containers.

Senator Cook. All right.

Commander RICHTER. Third, that we had to get additional information on the characteristics of the gas before we could carry the project through to completion.

Senator Cook. I can only say, in conclusion, Mr. Chairman, then I will turn it back to you, that if the AEC thought they were getting out of a bad situation, they may have gotten out of it. I am not sure what the public reaction will be, and this is one of the things that bothered you in the first place, Dr. Tesche. I think there is a great concern in the country about not having disposed of this before, and not knowing what is going to happen now when you place 135,000 pounds of nerve gas at 16,000 feet depth.

If it had been disposed of at Pahute Mesa, at least you would know it was gone.

Senator HOLLINGS. You gentlemen can see the concern we have. One more time, when you get the Department of the Interior over a year ago, in June 1969, recommending a land disposal program, and you get the National Academy of Sciences concurring in, the Kistiakowsky Report recommending the same thing, it should be done this way. And you folks come in and say it can be done, and go into it in a very detailed measure, pointing out the 10-gallon bucket and all that other stuff, you point out hours and days and everything else in this complete report, then through some neglect on the Army's part in not following through with it, and coming through now, saying that it will be dumped into the ocean; this is what concerns the Congress and the public. This is why we have to make it clear that when you come and attest to the report today, whether you are saying it cannot be done from a safety standpoint on land, if it can't, I am willing to learn of it, but you said it could back in September a year ago.

You see the point we are getting at?

Commander RICHTER. A full safety evaluation was never carried out, because we were never advised that we were to proceed any further. One of the recommendations from the study group was, if they had deteriorated to the point they were hazardous, then we can't handle it.

Senator HOLLINGS. I don't see how the gentleman can say he supports the report, when the report said that this operation can be conducted with no undue or unusual onsite and offsite safety hazard, and you tell me it was feasible.

Commander RICHTER. "If."

Dr. TESCHE. If the safety analysis worked out.

Senator HOLLINGS. If everything went as this report says; we have common sense enough to know that.

Commander RICHTER. But it is just―The next major paragraph goes into the recommendation.

Senator HOLLINGS. And the recommendations on down the line state they have three different sites, and then they come up with a choice of the best one. Do you think the Government got the wrong message in this "for official use only" interdepartmental memo all the way from the Department of State down to the science adviser, and the various Departments, including the White House, that the AEC had reviewed the feasibility study and decided the vault could be destroyed with an underground nuclear explosion, that the AEC would prefer to not divert talent and resources for this purpose, since

it would delay or postpone their regularly assigned test programs, and because of the strong possibility of adverse publicity?

Senator CoоK. That's it.

Senator HOLLINGS. There it is.

Let me ask you if you know this-perhaps you don't, because this is out of the Surgeon General's report, but it refers to the Atomic Energy Commission. This morning the Surgeon General furnished this to the committee.

On August 7, 1969, the Army requested the Atomic Energy Commission to determine the feasibility and desirability-see, they use the term "feasibility"-and desirability of adopting the Gross committee recommendations with respect to nuclear destruction of concrete

vaults.

The Lawrence Radiation Laboratory and the Nevada Operations Office of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission submitted the results of the feasibility study to the Atomic Energy Commission. This study concluded that, as a practical matter, the obsolete chemical munitions could be reliably destroyed by an underground nuclear explosion.

However, additional studies were recommended. In the event the project was to be undertaken, the feasibility study further concluded that a long period of time would be required from project authorization through execution.

Subsequently-and this is my question, Dr. Tesche-subsequently the Army was informed by representatives of the Atomic Energy Commission that nuclear destruction was unsatisfactory.

Are you familiar with that, or was it given orally, or in writing, or just how?

Dr. TESCHE. We never told the Army that nuclear destruction was unsatisfactory. We had been given the August 1 date and as the result of our feasibility study, it became very clear that it would be quite unlikely that we would meet that August 1 date, even if all of the ensuing safety studies could have been made concurrent with the preparations.

Senator HOLLINGS. So, in verifying this, when it stated there that the Army was informed that nuclear destruction was unsatisfactory, informed by the Atomic Energy Commission, the thrust of that unsatisfactory finding really spawns from the target date of August 1, that you couldn't do it within that period of time?

Dr. TESCHE. Yes, sir.

Senator HOLLINGS. Anything else?

Senator Cook. This material is going to be moved through three or four States on a train. Everybody has testified to the fact that it is stable enough to move on a train. As a matter of fact, the Surgeon General stated that it was more stable than many other various deadly chemicals that are carried in tank trucks.

Would that degree of stability be satisfactory for you?

Dr. TESCHE. I couldn't answer that for the people in the Nevada Test Site, or the laboratory. They would want to assess the stability of that explosive themselves to make their own judgment as to whether they think that the vaults could be transported within the Nevada Test Site in view of seismic activity there and so on.

Senator Cook. All right.

Senator HOLLINGS. Thank you, Dr. Tesche. Do you wish to add anything further? Either of you?

Commander RICHTER. No, sir.

Dr. TESCHE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Senator HOLLINGS. We very much appreciate your appearance here this afternoon on such short notice, too.

Our next witness will be General Stone.

STATEMENT OF BRIG. GEN. W. W. STONE, JR., DIRECTOR OF CHEMICAL AND NUCLEAR OPERATIONS, ASSISTANT CHIEF OF STAFF FOR FORCE DEVELOPMENT, DEPARTMENT OF THE ARMY Senator HOLLINGS. General Stone was at the Army when it was decided it was not feasible to dispose of this gas by way of underground nuclear detonation.

General STONE. Sir, from the level at which I operated within the Army, which is at the Army staff level, rather than the Army Secretariat, there were several points about the AEC report which concerned

us.

First of all, sir, we did accept the AEC's statement at the bottom of page 3 that to take one of the holes at Yucca Flats imposes an unacceptable interference with the AEC's program. This meant it would require about 15 months from the time the project authorization was given, the program funded and the full go-ahead given, through the event's execution.

Recognizing that we received this report at the end of September or early October, this then would take us to approximately January 1, 1971 for project execution.

We have fully accepted the findings of the Gross committee. The Gross committee, as you will recall, had reviewed very carefully what was known about the double-based propellant that was in the rockets in the concrete.

They felt the environment to which this propellant had been subjected for a year and a half to 2 years within these vaults had possibly made it sensitive. They concluded that beyond the point of August 1, 1970, they simply did not know enough about the propellant within that environment to be able to guarantee whether it was becoming more or less stable.

Assuming the worst possibility, that it was becoming more sensitive, in other words, less stable, they recommended that disposal be done by that date, which we accepted.

There is one aspect of the AEC's report which has given me considerable difficulty for a period of time. On page 10 of the updated version, the July 10, version, at the top of the second paragraph, middle of the page, it says:

Assuming that further calculations and discussions with the Hercules-Radford personnel do not indicate decomposition characteristics of the double-based propellant that would significantly increase its sensitivity, it would appear the vaults can be handled safely consistent with the engineering plan.

This statement is directly contrary to a basic finding of the Gross committee which was based on their knowledge of the chemistry of this propellant that one simply could not, by virtue of study, calculation or experiments at that point in time, which was last summer

the time of their first report-determine whether this material was safe beyond the period of August 1970 or not. And they had to, in fact, assume the worst.

Here the AEC's planners, who had written the feasibility study, were assuming that by calculation, study and testing they could make this determination in sufficient time to permit disposition of these items by an underground nuclear explosion.

Senator HOLLINGS. One of the witnesses earlier this monring, I understand, may have left an impression that all of the M-34 clusters would have been dumped in the original Operation CHASE in 1969. You want to make a clarifying statement about that? Tell us what Chase is.

General STONE. Operation CHASE, sir, is an operation which has been conducted repeatedly. It is an acronym for the words "cut holes and sink them." As we have stated, this has been the standard means for a number of years for the disposition of ammunition of all types, including chemical ammunition.

Senator HOLLINGS. That sounds like something the Vice President would use.

General, having directed that question, let us get to the August 1 date. The August 1, 1970 date, what tests were made in order to determine the August 1 date?

General STONE. Very few tests, sir. The problem is, of course, that although we have samples of the propellants which were manufactured in the same time frame, which was 1962 to 1966, and have them under various types of surveillance, which is the standard procedure for propellants and explosives of all types, they have not been subjected to the same environment as those in the vaults.

These rockets have been encased in concrete since early 1968 and possibly subjected to considerable pressure. The double-based propellants have the characteristic of very slow deterioration over a period of time. Part of this deterioration is the giving off of gases. Having been confined within concrete, this gas cannot escape, which is the case in normal storage in the open or in igloos, our conventional means for storage of these items.

Confining this gas within the concrete could significantly increase the pressure upon this propellant, causing it to deteriorate still further. Many of the modes of deterioration of these propellants are such as to increase the sensitivity to shock wherein they would actually go off.

Senator HOLLINGS. So the judgment was made really from experience, but no actual testing?

General STONE. That is correct, because we do not have any longterm surveillance of this type of propellant where it has been held under pressure, confining the gases which do come off slowly. Our problem with the AEC proposal here is that we simply could not duplicate the 2-year period in which this material has already been confined.

Senator HOLLINGS. And nobody wanted to have their name on record as saying it was safe after August 1?

General STONE. Exactly right, sir.

Senator HOLLINGS. That was a conservative estimate.

Back to the AEC report. Am I to understand that that 15 months made it impractical-I am looking at these schedules within the report.