MARADYKOVSKY, Russia - Work
officially began at
Russia's first chemical-destruction plant Friday as engineers inserted
a neutralizing solution into bombs filled with a nerve agent.
The opening of the Maradykovsky plant accelerates Russia's campaign to
eliminate the world’s largest arsenal of the toxins.
The plant, 450 miles northeast of Moscow, holds 6,900 tons of nerve
agents stored in aerial bombs and missile warheads - more than 17
percent of Russia's stockpile.
Dignitaries, townspeople and
journalists gathered Friday for the opening ceremony on a makeshift
stage outside the plant, which is ringed by three barbwire fences.
Several miles away, a sign proclaimed the road to the plant a closed
zone.
"Today's event demonstrates Russia's efforts to strictly
fulfill its international commitments and shows that Russia has the
political will to see through to the end the process of chemical
disarmament," said Viktor Kholstov, deputy head of the Federal Industry
A
The destruction
facility, on the site of one of Russia's seven former chemical weapons
production plants, will become a focal point of the push to meet an
April 2007 target for Russia to destroy 20 percent of its stockpile.
To date, Russia has eliminated 3 percent, compared with the 39 percent
destroyed by the United States, which is home to the second-largest
stockpile.
Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1997, pledging to
eliminate its arsenal within 10 years.
However, it won international agreement to prolong the deadline until
2012 because of a lack of funds.
The United States also has been working to destroy its chemical
weapons stockpile by 2012 - a deadline it will miss by several years.
Facilities in Utah, Alabama, Oregon, Indiana and Arkansas are
incinerating their chemical weapons stockpiles, and facilities in
Kentucky and Colorado are being designed.
Disposal at facilities in Aberdeen, Md., and Honolulu has been
completed.
The U.S. Chemical Materials Agency announced late last month that more
than 1.7 million munitions - or 50 percent - of its original stockpile
of bombs, rockets, mortar shells, projectiles, land mines and spray
tanks filled with nerve and blister agents have been destroyed.
The Pine Bluff Arsenal and other sites, with the possible exception of
the Indiana facility, won’t complete incinerating their stockpiles
until as late as 2016, Army officials have said. Still, officials at
the Pine Bluff Arsenal have said they are optimistic that they can meet
the 2012 deadline.
Besides the Maradykovsky plant, Russia has two
other chemical-weapon destruction facilities, both built with generous
foreign funding.
The Maradykovsky plant is the only one for destroying nerve agents as
opposed to blister agents.
Construction of another plant that was to have been the biggest -
Shchuchye, with chemical weapons stored in millions of artillery shells
- has bogged down in disputes between Russia and the United States, the
main funder.
The delays at that plant have pushed Maradykovsky
onto the front line. It is the sole site to be funded 100 percent by
Russia.
"The Russians a couple of years ago made a critical
decision that if they were to have any chance of meeting Chemical
Weapons Convention deadlines, they had to go to the easier, bulk agent
sites," said Paul Walker, a weapons expert at Global Green USA, the
Washingtonbased affiliate of former Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev's Green Cross International environmental organization.
"I think also from a reason of national pride, they really wanted to do
one site themselves and have it be successful."
Friday's ceremony had a strong dose of patriotism, opening and closing
with an army band playing the national anthem. President Vladimir
Putin's envoy to the Volga River region, Alexander Konovalev, said the
plant "is a demonstration of the growing economic might of the Russian
government."
Disarmament officials gave credit to Switzerland,
which recently announced it is spending some $2 million on an
electricity grid for the plant.
The bombs at Maradykovsky hold
VX, soman and sarin, as well as a less-deadly mixture of lewisite and
mustard gas. Technicians will open each bomb, drain out some agent if
necessary, insert a neutralizing reagent, close up the bomb and let it
sit for 80-110 days to let the chemical processes take place, said
Gennady Bezrukov, chief engineer of the Federal Chemical Weapons
Storage and Destruction Administration.
When it is running at full strength, the plant will be able to
neutralize 96 weapons a day, Bezrukov said.
Green Cross representative Tamara Ashikmina said she was satisfied
that authorities were providing sufficient safety for the population
and the environment.
But residents still have concerns, she said.
"Of course the population is anxious, because guests come and go, but
they have to live here," said Ashikmina, head of the chemistry
department at Vyatka State University in nearby Kirov.
The
closest town to the plant - Mirny, where 3,500 people live - and the
surrounding region of 50,000 have been promised a new apartment
building, a central heating system and electricity and sewage systems
as part of a legal requirement that 10 percent of the cost of the
weapons destruction process go to investments in the local community.
Information for this article was contributed by Judith Ingram of
The
Associated Press and Katherine Marks of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
This story was
published Saturday,
September 09, 2006
