Chemical Weapons: Killing the Killer

08/11/2007

The trip was organized by the Chemical Disarmament (Khimicheskoye razoruzheniye) online journal, which is published by the Federal Industry Agency (Rosprom), the Federal Administration for Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons, and the ARMS TASS news agency. Until now reporters were only allowed to watch the CW weapons destruction process in "a demonstration mode," in which operators "go through the motions" with unarmed, empty shells.

Safety First

"Maradykovo is a very important facility," Lt. Gen. Valery Kapashin, head of the Federal Agency, said. "This is where Russia started the destruction of organophosphorus chemical agents, including the Vx gas, a neurotoxic chemical warfare agent, the most toxic type of CW weapons in storage. So we used extreme caution and care in building the plant and providing it with the essential equipment.

Priority was given to the fundamental provision of the Chemical Weapons Convention [Convention on the Prohi­bition of the Development, Pro­duction, Stockpiling and Use of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction - Ed.]: ‘Each State Party, during transportation, sampling, storage and destruction of chemical weapons, shall assign the highest priority to ensuring the safety of people and to protecting the environment.

Each State Party shall transport, sample, store and destroy chemical weapons in accordance with its national standards for safety and emissions.' So when the Maradykovo plant was launched in September 2006, the Vx destruction process was organized in full compliance with technological standards. Meanwhile, international watchdog organizations admit that our technology is the safest of the 50 known methods of chemical weapon destruction."

In all fairness, that statement produced an encouraging yet disturbing effect. That especially applied to MN's photo correspondent Dmitry Khrupov, who was to face the "No. 1 chemical killer" at the plant's "holiest of holies," and take pictures of the process of dismantling and decontamination of large air bombs. Dmitry was apparently calm during a mandatory medical checkup until he was asked to step on a scale for a weigh in. "What for?" he asked. "You will understand when you return," the doctor said. That put Dmitry on his guard, and he started carefully inspecting the protective clothing that he was about to put on, feeling each item and element of a multi-layered suit with his fingers. First, special underwear, then some carbonaceous fabric garment, and then a rubber coated CBR outfit with a gas mask. It took him about 20 minutes to put that on.

"Perhaps people who work here have gotten accustomed to all that gear and equipment, but at one point I thought that I was suffocating and generally felt funny, especially when I walked down a long corridor leading to the entrance. I felt as though I was descending to the Underworld," Dmitry said after he returned from the dismantling shop.

As a matter of fact, Dmitry walked along a gallery raised several meters above the ground and leading from an administrative building to a disassembly shop. The "air passage," completely insulated and self contained, is also an element of a multi-tier protection system. When he found himself in the shop, Dmitry could see that the huge building was filled from floor to ceiling with many kilometers of piping, comprising an enclosed technological production line. Even­tually he calmed down, so now our readers can at their leisure take a good look at how these horrible chemical weapons are destroyed.

Procedure

The destruction of CW agents per se accounts for just 5-10 percent of the plant's technological capacity. Everything else is geared to preparing chemical weapons for dismantling and decontamination, and ensuring the total safety of the operation. Although there are dozens of tried and tested methods of neutralizing CW agents, only two of them have been perfected to the level of effective, generally accepted technology. The first, incineration procedure, is used in the United States. The second, neutralization through reagents, is used in Russia.

The State Scientific Research Institute of Organic Chemistry and Technology has developed a procedure for breaking down and decomposing the Vx type of CW agents without actually dismantling the CW ordnance. It is used in handling large air bombs. A certain amount of reagent is inserted into the warhead through a hole drilled in its shell. Bombs with such a "brew" inside of them are "cured" for three months until the fermentation process produces reaction masses that have lost their damage effects. Then they are retrieved, analyzed, and sent to the second stage of destruction - i.e., high temperature processing until they are completely reduced to a chemically inactive state. As for the bomb shells, they are further decontaminated and sent to the metal parts furnace, and then melted as scrap metal. This procedure is used at the Maradykovo plant.

In late April, the second stage of the Federal Program "Destruction of Chemical Weapons in the RF" was completed. A total of more than 8,000 metric tons of CW agents were destroyed at three facilities (in the Saratov and Kirov regions, and in the Republic of Udmurtia in the Volga region). The Maradykovo plant has made a substantial contribution: 19,618 air bombs with over 4,000 metric tons of the Vx agent have been destroyed there. That is more than 50 percent of the facility's total weapon stocks. The destruction of the other half will begin next year and will be completed by 2012 - strictly in accordance with a time table drawn up as part of Russia's international obligations.

Within the next several days, a second production, or rather, destruction line will be brought on stream at Maradykovo, which will ensure the completion of the destruction of neutralized CW weapons before the end of the current year. The equipment has been installed and is being fine tuned to ensure 100 percent safety both for the operators and the environment.

Incidentally, after a one-hour presence in the shop, our photo correspondent Dmitry took another checkup and weighed in at minus one kilo. Well, better lose a kilo after sweating under a several layers of a protective suit than run even the hypothetical risk of becoming exposed to a milligram of a lethal CW agent. N

By Oleg Vladykin

FACT BOX

Russia signed the Chemical Weapons Convention on January 13, 1993 and ratified it on November 5, 1997. The country declared an arsenal of 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons in 1997, and has so far destroyed 8,000 tons. The convention stipulates four phases of weapons destruction. One percent of the weapons were destroyed in the first phase and 20 percent in the second phase. Forty-five percent will be scrapped in the third phase, and the remaining 34 percent in the fourth, by the year 2012.

Lt. Gen. Valery Kapashin was quoted by RIA Novosti as saying that Russia will scrap 45 percent of its chemical weapons arsenals by the end of 2009, despite the lack of financial assistance from other signatories to the convention. Russia has been destroying its chemical stockpiles with aid from other countries such as the United States, Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and Canada. However, the general said the country has so far received only slightly more than 25 percent of the pledged $1.6 billion financial assistance.

"By December 2009, when the third phase [of chemical disarmament] is to be completed, we will scrap 18,500 metric tons of chemical weapons, or 45% of the total stockpiles," Gen. Kapashin said.

Russia has allocated $7.2 billion from the federal budget for the implementation of the program and built at least three chemical weapons destruction plants - at Gorny, in the central Saratov Region, at Kambarka, in the Republic of Udmurtia, and at the Maradykovo complex.