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Casper, Wyoming |
STOCKTON, Utah (AP) -- The last land mine filled
with VX nerve agent was destroyed Friday by the U.S. Army's largest chemical
weapons depot.
More than 22,600 VX land mines stockpiled by the U.S. Army at the Deseret
Chemical Depot in Utah's west desert have been destroyed.
The depot's Tooele Chemical Agent Disposal Facility has destroyed more than
1 million individual munitions containing more than 7,400 tons of chemical
nerve agents GB, or sarin, and VX since it opened in August 1996. That represents
more than half of the original chemical agent stockpile at the depot.
"This milestone is a great achievement for the workers at DCD, the citizens
of Utah and the United States Army," said Col. Raymond Van Pelt, the depot's
commander. "We completed the VX campaign with safety to our workers, the public
and the environment as our highest priority."
Depot workers will begin processing neutralized
VX agent and a small amount of sarin. The plant will then be decontaminated
and workers will start preparing to process the last of the depot's agent
stockpile, nearly 125,000 mustard agent-filled munitions.
The United States must dispose of all chemical weapons and nerve agents by
2012 in accordance with the international Chemical Weapons Convention treaty,
which bans the production, use or stockpiling of chemical weapons. It was
designed in part to stop rogue nations like Iraq from acquiring chemical
agents, and intended to usher in reborn international policy in the post-Cold
War era.
The Deseret Chemical Depot is one of eight facilities around the country
disposing of the weapons, many of them dating back to the World War II era.
The Pentagon recommended closing Deseret Chemical Depot once its mission
is complete, a decision that still must be approved by the Base Realignment
and Closure committee.