April: InfrastructureThe U.S. on course to deactivating all its chemical weapons
On 25 November 1969 President Richard Nixon unilaterally renounced the first use of chemical weapons and renounced all methods of biological warfare; the United States has been deactivating chemical weapons ever since, and to date has destroyed about 45 percent of the chemical weapons it had produced; it is not likely, though, that the United States would achieve the complete destruction of its chemical weapons stockpile by 2012, as mandated by the Chemical Weapons Treaty
We wrote yesterday about a new nerve gas deactivation method developed by David Atwood from the University of Kentucky and Daniel Williams from Kennesaw State University and co-workers, and added that “Thousands of tons of chemical weapons are still stocked on land…in rusting drums on military bases, and once or twice a year there is a big debate in professional journals about what would be more dangerous: To keep these volatile weapons as is in their dusty tombs, or to try and deactivate them.” Wesley Stites, associate professor of biochemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Arkansas, wrote to say the first part of this sentence is true, but that in the United States at least, there is no longer a debate on whether to deactivate these weapons or not. Instead, there is an enormous effort to destroy the U.S. chemical weapons stockpiles, primarily by incineration. “By enormous,” Stites adds, “I mean on the scale of tens of billions of dollars.”
Professor Stites is correct. Even a cursory look at the good work done by the Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland-based U.S. Army Chemical Materials Agency (CMA) would prove that the United States has been engaging in a serious, sustained effort to deactivate its stockpile of chemical munitions. Just a few weeks ago the CMA has reached a major milestone with the destruction of another munition type at one of its sites. This milestone was reached on Friday, 29 February 2008, when the Pine Bluff Chemical Agent Disposal Facility (PBCDF) at Pine Bluff Arsenal, Arkansas destroyed its last M55 rocket. The CMA says that the end of the M55 rocket campaign reduces the overall cumulative storage risk to the public by 94 percent counting all sites. CMA has already safely destroyed all GB and VX-filled M55 rockets stored at Johnston Island in the south Pacific; Tooele, Utah; Pine Bluff, Arkansas; Umatilla, Oregon; and Anniston, Alabama. CMA director Conrad Whyne said that “By destroying the last M55 rocket at Pine Bluff, CMA continues to do its part to improve the safety of those living nearest our stockpiles. We have reduced the chemical storage risk for the communities around our sites as well as the risk to our workers who are charged with destroying some of the most dangerous weapons from our past.”
Note that rockets represent a greater risk in storage than any other munitions in the
