Nevada Plant Operators Blame Blasts on Leaking Gas Main

HENDERSON, Nev. — Operators of a plant that processed a rocket fuel component for the U.S. space shuttle and nuclear missile programs on Thursday blamed a leaking natural gas line for explosions last week that killed two people and caused $74 million in damage.

The announcement by Pacific Engineering & Production Co. came only hours after the nation’s only other processor of the solid fuel component, Kerr-McGee Corp., temporarily halted production until an independent safety inspection demonstrates that the plant is safe.

The Kerr-McGee facility occupies the same industrial park as Pacific Engineering’s demolished plant. Pacific Engineering Chairman Fred Gibson said a large natural gas main passing under the plant had leaked for at least 30 minutes before the first fire broke out May 4 in a room where chemicals are mixed into a volatile oxidizing substance called ammonium perchlorate. The gas line, buried two to five feet deep, passes within 12 feet of the so-called batch house.

“The massive gas leak is believed to have saturated the earth below the paved surfaces of the (Pacific Engineering) plant and to have ignited at the point of origin as a result of circumstances unrelated to (plant) operations,” Gibson said. “All of the subsequent destructive events were caused by the gas leak, the gas fire and the gas explosion.”

Officials of Southwest Gas Corp., owner of the 16-inch gas main that runs fuel under high pressure between Las Vegas and Boulder City, denied the accusation, saying the line ruptured only after the initial explosions. “As far as we’re concerned, our facilities are a victim of the explosion and not the cause,” Southwest spokesman Dennis Hetherington said.

Fire Chief Roy Parrish said Wednesday that his department will withhold judgment until it completes its own investigation. Fire investigators cannot search for cause at the facility until the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency cleans up dangerous residual chemicals.

Union officials have said previously that, should the natural gas line be found at fault in the deadly explosion, Pacific Engineering’s managers should not be exonerated because they allowed the dangerous mixing process to be conducted near the line. The gas main pre-dated the Pacific Engineering facility by nearly a decade, and fire officials have said they were unaware of the proximity of the line to the batch house.

The same gas main also cuts under the Kerr-McGee plant, although officials of the Oklahoma-based firm have said it runs a safe distance from where they process ammonium perchlorate.

In its announcement Thursday, Kerr-McGee gave no timetable for the production halt, but a company official said he hoped the plant could resume manufacture of the critical rocket fuel oxidizer within a few days. The suspension marked a reversal from an earlier decision to resume production, a move that had caused an uproar by still frazzled residents of this city and their political leaders.

Kerr-McGee spokesman Paul Gaines said the company, which will continue to manufacture other chemicals at the Henderson plant, has already contracted with an unnamed safety consultant to study the plant’s operation. He said the inspection could begin by Monday. “Our preference was to keep the plant operating,” Gaines said. “We’ve got 35 years of good experience here. There’s not a thing wrong with our plant operation.”

Military officials have expressed concern about the loss of the Pacific Engineering plant and its impact on national defense. The oxidizer made at the facility enables solid fuel to burn even in the thin to non-existent oxygen levels of space. In addition to space shuttle boosters, the oxidizer is used in the fuel that propels MX intercontinental ballistic missiles and the Titan 4 and Titan 34D heavy-lift space boosters.