Environmental and ethical aspects of destruction of ammunition

Abstract: Many decision-making situations today affect the safety of individuals and the environment,for instance hazardous waste management. In practice, many of these decisions are madewithout an overall view and with the focus on either the environment or safety. Now and then the areas of regulation are in conflict, i.e. the best alternative according to environmental considerations is not always the safest way and vice versa.A tool for taking an overall view within the areas of safety and environment would simplify matters and provide authorities and industry with a better basis for their work. This thesis forms part of a project which aims to develop a framework tool giving this overall view and supporting decision-making in which the issues (areas) of environment, safety, ethics and costs are all integrated. By developing a framework tool, different areas of interest could be taken into consideration more easily when a decision is to be made and could also help develop legislation and policy locally (at an industry or company), nationally and internationally. The project also aims to provide knowledge about different destruction/decommission methods, their good and bad points and their consequences, in order to provide different actors with a better basis for decision-making. This thesis focuses on development of the framework. The scope of the studies was restricted to environment, ethics and personnel safety due to the extent of the work and time limitations. In the next part of the project, the areas of costs and evaluation will be studied and a first draft of the framework tool will be presented. In order to develop the framework tool, two case studies were carried out here: an environmental analysis involving a life cycle assessment and an ethical analysis. With the help of these analyses, three different methods of destruction of ammunition were compared: Open detonation, modelled both with and without recovery and recycling of metals; incineration in a static kiln with air pollution control combined with recycling of metals, modelled with two different levels of air emissions; and a combination of incineration with air pollution control, open burning, recovery of some energetic material and recycling of metals, giving a total of five options. Every method of destruction of energetic material, i.e. explosive waste or ammunition, results in environmental impacts in both the short and long term. These environmental impacts have direct or indirect impacts on safety, quality of life, the economy, etc., now and in the future, locally and globally. Life cycle assessment revealed two factors of importance for reducing the environmental impacts: Recycling the metals and air pollution control. As a consequence of controlling these potential negative environmental impacts, safety problems might also be controlled. Ethical analysis revealed that future generations and people in foreign countries will be affected by the destruction of ammunition. When choosing a method for destruction of ammunition, this group (the general public) should thus be given special attention.