More Delays at Russian CW Destruction Site

Russian officials have again postponed chemical weapon destruction activities at the nation’s Maradykovsky facility, ITAR-Tass reported yesterday (see GSN, Dec. 21, 2007).

The site has been preparing for a next stage of destruction activities after completing some initial work last year.  So far, more than 21,000 chemical munitions have been neutralized at the site as well as over 4,000 tons of chemical agent, ITAR-Tass reported (ITAR-Tass/BBC Monitoring, Jan. 24).

Maradykovsky houses thousands of gravity bombs containing lethal nerve agent, and Russia has opted to destroy those weapons in a multistage process, according to chemical destruction expert Paul Walker of GlobalGreen.

The first stage entails workers drilling a hole in each bomb casing and pumping in a chemical neutralizer.  The bomb then sits for about three months while the chemical reaction fully neutralizes the nerve agent.  This stage has already begun, Walker said.

Next, Russian plans call for incinerating the resultant liquid waste in the bombs in a process similar to U.S. chemical weapons destruction activities at Newport, Ind. (see GSN, Jan. 10).

The bomb casings themselves are also supposed to be mutilated in a way that permanently disables them from any future use, Walker said.

Russia has repeatedly delayed the start of the incineration process, Walker said, leading to international disputes over whether the neutralized weapons should be counted as “destroyed” by the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention.  Russia has asserted that once the chemical neutralization has occurred, Russia should be able to count that weapon toward treaty requirements to destroy certain quantities by certain deadlines, Walker said.

The United States, however, has argued that treaty rules preclude counting weapons as destroyed until the waste water is burned, according to Walker (Greg Webb, GSN, Jan. 25).

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