Retrofit of Blast Chambers for Explosives Causing Chemical or Biological Hazards

Recent national and international terrorist events have created a need for disposing of munitions or devices that present a chemical or biological hazard. Handling of terrorist type bombs encountered in public locations requires a disposal unit that is fairly small and mobile. The disposal of chemical andor biological hazards requires that the disposal unit remain sealed throughout the explosion event, cleaning, and purging. NABCO, Inc. is currently building a 42-inch blast chamber. This blast chamber is designed to contain and transport conventional explosive devices, such as terrorist bombs up to 10-lb of TNT equivalent explosives. This chamber is not designed to contain all the gas and by-products from an internal explosion. This paper describes the new design to retrofit the existing 42-inch chamber with a new exterior door, a sealed penetration for the detonation wires, sealed penetrations for flooding and purging the system after the event, and hinge systems to rapidly open and close the chamber. This design will modify the chamber to remain sealed following an explosion event. The modifications are easy to retrofit and they will not interfere with the current application of the chamber. The closing system is simple and minimizes the amount of time an operator must spend in front of an open chamber. Finally, the modifications that seal the chamber from leaking gas products have redundancy to insure a safe detonation of a biologicalchemical explosive device.