Russian Chem Demil

With some fanfare, the long-awaited opening of the Russian chemical disposal facility at Shchuchye is finally taking place - after a $1 billion US investment into its building. It's taken way too long (talks were initiated in 1996), confounded by Russian bureaucracy, anti-incineration foes, US congressional foot-dragging, and yes, even the Russian mafia, but here it is.

The new facility, built with $1 billion in American aid, represents a milestone in a longstanding partnership between the United States and Russia to safeguard and in many cases liquidate enormous quantities of chemical, nuclear and biological weapons manufactured by the Soviet Union.
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The shells and warheads at Shchuchye contain about 5,950 tons of nerve agents, including sarin and VX. To dispose of them, a hole will be drilled into each, and the agents will be drained and mixed with other chemicals to neutralize them. The residue will be solidified in asphalt or a similar material.

While the facility’s formal opening is on Friday, it began preliminary operations in March. Russia ended up allocating roughly $600 million for the project, and other countries contributed as well.

It has taken years to develop the process to eliminate the nerve agents, with the Russians choosing not to incinerate them because of local opposition. It might be five years or more before all the weapons are neutralized.

“It turns out that it is a lot easier to produce chemical weapons than to destroy them,” said Igor V. Rybalchenko, a scientist who is a senior adviser to the Russian government.
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Shchuchye, in fact, has only 14 percent of Russia’s chemical weapons, which are kept at seven sites.But Shchuchye is considered perhaps the most critical location because many of the nerve agents are in shells. The city is close to Kazakhstan, which itself is near Afghanistan.

If you ignore the inflated hype in the article about the "deadliness" of one chemical artillery round, this isn't a bad article. I'd like to tell Igor there that he's full of crap - it's very easy to destroy chemical weapons, and incineration works fine. If you want to generate millions of gallons of liquid waste instead of much less solid waste, hey, it's your country. Russia does have six other chemical weapons disposal sites already running, but off the top of my head, I don't know if they are incineration-based or neutralization sites. It's not as if they have a nice web site with all the information as the US Army does here. But no, they're not going to make the 2012 deadline either.

Comments

[Ray]

the relationship between the US and Russia is a strange mixture.
Aid from the US and co-operation on a serious scale yet Russia talking about war in the Arctic: over resources:
http://article.wn.com/view/2009/05/14/Russia_raises_prospect_of_war_over_Arctic_energy_reserves/
Also giving prior notice of increased submarine activity and possible confrontations with US Navy.
R.

[James]

"The city is close to Kazakhstan, which itself is near Afghanistan."

I can't believe you missed this howler. This is a pretty comical attempt to link Russian nerve agents to the Terrorist Threat. Kazakhstan is the world's largest landlocked country. It does NOT share a border with Afghanistan. "Near" is a comparative term. It's rather like saying that "Austin is close to Mexico, which itself is near Guatemala." Almost exactly, in fact: both distances are about a thousand miles. Every American reading the NYT would recognize the Austin-Guatemala axis as fear-mongering bullshit, but the casual linkage of this old Russian CW dump to the conflict in Afghanistan passes into the public consciousness without a whisper of informed comment.

Such is the state of US journalism these days...even the Foreign Affairs Editor at the NYT is using maps on too small of a scale.

[Ray]

Mind you, James, it saves type in the article if you miss out the intervening countries. Dear ol' George Bush did it a lot.
R.

[J.]

I did miss that point, James - thanks for pointing out the scaremongering.