more times the remaining area would correspond to just about the size of a pencil point. Now actually I have put a pencil point on here, but you can't see it from your seat. This means that the quantity of this compound would have decreased by more than a factor of a million in about 10 days.

Mr. FREY. Is it still dangerous there?

Dr. CHEEK. No, sir. When it hydrolyzes it goes into the completely innocuous products like fluoride ion which goes into your drinking water and some other products.

Mr. JONAS. Since you were interrupted, may I just ask you to state for the record whether what you are saying now is based on what you read in books, theory, or has this ever been demonstrated? Did you ever deposit some of this in the bottom of the ocean?

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, this half-life of 10 to 12 hours is based on information that we have about what the conditions are at the bottom of the ocean at the dumping site. In this particular area, the temperature is 214 degrees Centigrade. The half-life at this temperature is based on interpolation of data taken in Dr. Epstein's laboratory. We do know for a fact that we have good information on this.

Mr. JONAS. But you don't have an example, you have never actually demonstrated it.

Mr. CHEEK. Yes; the half-life of this particular material in seawater has been measured at several temperatures. The demonstration that I have given here shows what happens when any kind of decomposition occurs by a first-order process. The most usual example considered is radioactive decay. Half of it disappears in a certain amount of time; in the next equal interval of time half of the remainder disappears. In the very unlikely event that the entire 135,000 pounds of GB were released on the ocean floor at once, after ten days only about 0.135 pound, a little over 2 ounces, would remain.

The point that I haven't addressed here is the fact that in addition to the disappearance by hydrolysis, this material would be subjected to tremendous dilution. Now, when we speak of dilution the point we must consider here is that we are talking about very large quantities of water. For example, one cubic mile of water has a weight of 9.4 trillion pounds. You can verify that for yourself. In a mile there are 5,280 feet. If you cube this number you get 147 billion cubic feet, and each cubic foot weighs 64 pounds.

So one-part-per-million in a cubic mile of sea water corresponds to 9.4 million pounds. If we considered only this 135,000 pounds of GB, and if it were dissolved and uniformly dispersed in one cubic mile of sea water, it would only correspond to about 0.014 parts per million, that is, a little over one-hundredth of a part per million.

Of course, when it is actually put in sea water, this average level of contamination would occur only if all of the agents were released into the water at once, which is very unlikely. Now, on the other hand, if it is released into the water at once it will not be uniformly distributed. At the site of the release it would be more concentrated, but toward the periphery of the cubic mile the concentration would hardly be detectable.

When isolation, hydrolysis, and dilution are considered, I would think that Mr. Riley's argument is very much unfounded.

Mr. ROGERS. Would the gentleman yield for a question?

Mr. JONAS. I will yield.

Mr. ROGERS. At what speed will the coffins at this depth hit the bottom approximately?

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, I would like to qualify before I answer this. I am not an engineer but

Mr. ROGERS. I understand it will be about 70 miles per hour.

Dr. CHEEK. I doubt this. The last figure I heard was about 40 feet per second. This corresponds to about 27 miles per hour and seems more realistic to me.

Mr. ROGERS. I just talked to a scientist who told me that it would approximate 70 miles per hour. We can check that out.

Mr. JONAS. I think we can all agree now that all scientists don't agree. There are differences of opinion among scientists, as well as the public. I expect you will find the scientists will take all sides of the issue.

Mr. ASHLEY. Will you yield for a moment, Mr. Jonas?

Mr. JONAS. Yes.

Mr. ASHLEY. We are talking about a depth of 3 or 4 miles?
Dr. CHEEK. A little over 3 miles.

Mr. ASHLEY. Under the intense pressure at a depth so great what would be expected with respect to the decomposition of the cement and steel caskets?

Dr. CHEEK. It is very difficult for me to determine how rapidly the decomposition would occur, but the pressure itself, so far as the corrosion of steel is concerned, probably does not affect by any greater than a factor of 2 the rate at which the corrosion itself would occur. The main things that determine how rapidly corrosion occurs are the oxygen concentration and temperature. We do have information on the oxygen concentration and temperature. I am talking about rusting from the outside now.

Mr. ASHLEY. My curiosity goes to the question of whether this is a totally solid mass and therefore the pressure would not affect it to cause collapse as happens with submarines and other things that are not solid. But cement is not solid. So would not the pressure tend to cause the collapse of the very casing that is meant for protection against simultaneous release?

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, my understanding is that this concrete that is in the containers has a compressive strength of the order of 7,000 pounds per square inch, which happens to be about the pressure to which it will be subjected down in the water.

With this geometry and additional encasement in quarter-inch steel it seems to me unlikely that they would break under just the pressure. It is possible but in my opinion it would not be very likely. They would stand a good chance of reaching the bottom intact in spite of the voids that are within the interior.

Mr. ASHLEY. I come from a place that does a lot of steel fabricating. When we talk about the welded joints of the steel coffins I can't help but wonder the extent to which those weldments would hold up under such pressure.

Dr. CHEEK. I think there is no question that if there is compression, the side of the container would be dished to some extent. It would be bowed in. The most likely place where a failure would occur, would be at one of the weldments. Fortunately, when this would occur the

water would go in because of the pressure difference, so a considerable amount of reaction would occur within the containers before any of the agent which was not destroyed inside would begin to issue out. Mr. ASHLEY. I suppose my only remaining point, if you would be so good, would be that granted the release in the ocean, and I am not sure how important it is based on your previous response, your premise that the release will be gradual release strikes me as being somewhat hypothetical.

It seems to me that the weapons themselves would certainly be subject to collapse at 15,000 feet just as the steel coffin would be subject to collapse and the whole coffin might very well not reach the bottom in the state in which it was dispatched into the surface waters.

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, the weapons themselves can only be subject to the pressure if the coffin collapses. They are at essentially atmospheric pressure, whatever pressure they were sealed at, unless there is some internal decomposition. They are not subject to pressure unless the coffin would collapse.

Mr. ASHLEY. What we are saying is that there is a possibility that the coffins would collapse. They are going down in one vessel as I understand it, by barge or whatever the means of transport is, and there is some possibility at least that the entire amount of the liquid would be introduced into the ocean depth simultaneously.

Mr. JONAS. Will you permit me to interrupt you? That is the very next question I was going to ask him, whether any consideration had been given to the advisability of dispersal of these coffins rather than submerging them all in the hull of a ship where, as you say, they will all be subject to the same pressures and might all collapse at the same time. It just occurred to me that it might be worth considering at least to have some dispersal of these coffins instead of putting them all down at one time.

Dr. CHEEK. The understanding I get on that one, sir, is that it was considered desirable not to put these materials in any large number of locations so that there would not be any difficulty, hopefully, of keeping track of them in the first place and

Mr. JONAS. I understand that. I don't mean dispersed all over the world, I mention submerged not in one container as a ship's hold. If there is any danger of the thing happening that Mr. Ashley has questioned you could find that out by lowering one of these coffins at a time. Would it not sink of its own weight? Why do you have to put it in a ship? You are concentrating your problem when you put 418 of these coffins in one ship. If they all break open at one time you will have this problem suddenly thrust upon the world.

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, their proximity to one another in the ship would contribute very little danger in our view on the basis of some experiments that have been done on land. It is extremely unlikely that there will be a large enough detonation of the explosives that are contained therein to cause any kind of catastrophic thing like that.

Mr. BEAL. Assuming the worst case, that they all do explode at the same time, you have simultaneous release of 60 to 70 tons of agent at this depth. As I understand it, 1 cubic mile of sea water would be temporarily contaminated, but the nerve agent would rapidly hydrolyze, and the contaminated area would rapidly diminish. I do not know what the time element is. Perhaps you can talk to that, Dr. Cheek.

Mr. JONAS. What if the worst does happen and you have an explosion that sets off all those rockets at one time and all of this gas escapes simultaneously, how long in the space of time, days or half days, will it take under your theory to disintegrate?

Dr. CHEEK. In 20 half lives, or about 10 days, less than one-millionth of the nerve agent would remain.

Mr. FREY. Are you assuming that this hits the depths we are talking about, 3 to 4 miles?

Dr. CHEEK. If it is released at any shallower depth it will react even faster because the temperature is higher.

Mr. FREY. In other words, under your theory, why don't we explode this higher?

Mr. BEAL. We would prefer to have the nerve agent leak slowly rather than all ecape simultaneously, which is the worst case I just described.

Dr. CHEEK. It would seem to me that we are inviting greater danger if we purposely add more explosives to this vessel. I think it is probably best not to put any more explosives with it.

Mr. FREY. AS I understand, there is a possibility of exploding on the way down. If something happens and it does not get all the way down, it explodes at 500 feet or 700 feet, I thought you were also going to answer Mr. Jonas' question on that point of the danger, if there is any.

Dr. CHEEK. Again, we don't think there is great likelihood that there will be an explosion. In fact, there is very small chance that there will be an explosion. Maybe General Stone will tell you about some experiments that were done with these vaults.

Mr. BEAL. Perhaps if we take the worst case, what happens if the vaults get to the bottom and all of them containing 60 to 70 tons of nerve agent explode? In your opinion, how long would that cubic mile or so of water remain contaminated?

Dr. CHEEK. From the information I have given you about how much weight a cubic mile will accommodate at one part per million and about the rate at which the hydrolysis occurs, we feel that 1 cubic mile is a very good estimate of the amount of water that would be significantly contaminated. The contamination would be decreased by a factor of a million in 10 days. After 15 days it is down by a factor of a billion, and after 20 days, a factor of a trillion, less than we could detect even if we tried to do

So.

Mr. ROGERS. It is my understanding that at this depth the Fish and Wildlife people don't really know what is there. Secondly, I understood from the Secretary's testimony that you don't know what other nations have dumped there.

Suppose there are explosives on the bottom and that these coffins come down with rather considerable impact, and I might refer you to hearings that were held earlier where Dr. Raney from the Navy Department, talking about a sinking ship, which is what I understand you will do, sink a ship or barge, he says, yes, talking about the ship going down, the acceleration to a terminal velocity within about the first minute, I believe, and the terminal velocity depends to a certain extent on the hull form of the ship, but speeds in the order of 90 to 100 miles an hour as the terminal sinking velocity, or in the expected range. Now, this is expert testimony, too.

The expert I talked to said about 70. If you have these coffins going down in this area, we don't know what is there, I think it is quite possible you might have some kind of explosion. Isn't it possible?

Dr. CHEEK. Sir, a conventional explosion 3 miles below the ocean's surface is not going to be very consequential it seems to me.

Mr. ROGERS. It depends on what is down there, I would think. Let me ask the General this just to clear this up, if I may encroach for just 1 minute.

It is my understanding that the ad hoc committee has told us that there were 2,664 of these weapons encased in cement, or coffins as such. Now you have disposed of 1,706, I understand. You are now disposing or proposing to dispose of 418, which leaves unaccounted 540. Could you tell us where these are stored, or what has happened to them?

General STONE. Sir, we will have to clear up the record because these 418 vaults are the total number existing anywhere.

Mr. ROGERS. What happened to the 500 after the 1,700 were disposed of?

General STONE. Sir, I have not seen the testimony. I don't know the origin of those numbers.

The information follows:)

There is no record indicating the existence of 2664 vaults containing rockets. The only reference to the number 2664 and vaults or coffins is contained in a prepared statement by Mr. Charles L. Poor, Acting Assistant Secretary of the Army (R&D) on 13 May 1969 before the Subcommittee on International Organizations and Movements of the Committee on Foreign Affairs House of Representatives. Hearings before this subcommittee covered the International Implications of Dumping Poisonous Gas and Waste into Oceans.

Mr. Poor's prepared statement included the following Table (page 23 of the record of the Hearing):

1 These items cannot be demilitarized. The identification of 1,944 and 720 is the total weight 2,664 short tons and does not refer to numbers of vaults or coffins.

Mr. ROGERS. Did you testify before the ad hoc committee on the National Academy of Sciences?

General STONE. No, sir.

Mr. ROGERS. Is there anyone here who gave that testimony,

Mr. Secretary?

Mr. ROGERS. I understand that was the testimony. Thank you. General STONE. May I address one point that Dr. Cheek was talking to, and you were talking to, sir. This question of an explosion, if in fact they all did go, was exactly the situation that Dr. Cheek was describing. The effects would be concentrated within about 1 cubic mile and persist only for a very few days.