United States:  Nerve Gas Leaks Inside Disposal Plant

Nerve gas vapor leaked inside the U.S. Army’s chemical weapons incinerator near Stockton, Utah, as a result of a “blip” in power Saturday, the Deseret News reported. No agents were released to the environment, a Deseret Chemical Depot statement said.

The vapor drifted inside the facility around 5 p.m. when utility power blinked off so quickly that emergency generators did not kick in automatically. Workers restarted the plant system within five minutes, according to the Deseret News.  The brief deactivation of airflow fans allowed gas to drift.

Plant operators took “contingency actions ensuring the safety of the workers and the environment,” the statement said.  “No worker was exposed to agent and all agent vapor was contained with engineering controls” (Deseret News, Nov. 28).

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Israeli Response:  Hospitals Run CW Response Exercises

Israel closed a hospital in Netanya yesterday for a chemical warfare exercise stemming from concerns that Iraq might attack Tel Aviv or Jerusalem with missiles carrying chemical agents in response to a possible U.S. attack on Iraq (see GSN, Nov. 28).  Other Israeli hospitals planned to conduct similar exercises in the near future. 

Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan indicated yesterday that Iraq would retaliate against Israel in the event of a U.S. attack on Iraq, according to the Ottawa Citizen (Christopher Walker, Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 29).

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Russia:  Duma Considering Destruction Budget

Russia plans to spend more than $250 million (almost 7.7 billion rubles) for chemical destruction in 2002, ITAR-Tass reported Monday.  A budget drafted for next year would provide about $175 million (5.3 billion rubles) specifically for scrapping chemical weapons and securing their storage (see GSN, Nov. 21), said Duma member Maj. Gen. Nikolay Bezborodov (ITAR-Tass, Nov. 26 in FBIS-SOV, Nov. 28).

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Russia:  More Funding Needed for Disposal Plant

More U.S. funding is needed for the Shchuchye chemical weapons disposal plant, Russian officials said last week.

“We appeal to the United States to once and for all solve this problem and provide us with the money,” Gen. Valery Kapashin, head of the Munitions Agency department responsible for chemical weapon stockpile security and destruction, said at a public forum in Moscow organized by the environmental organization Green Cross.

Global Green’s Legacy of the Cold War Program Director Paul Walker said that two U.S. conditions for funding have yet to be met: the development of a practical plan for the destruction of Russia’s nerve agent stockpile and the enactment of a law requiring Russia to eliminate all of its nerve agents at one site.  “In essence that means that our American Congress is telling Russia that it has to come up with a new plan to destroy the nerve agents,” Walker said.

The Russian Federation Council approved a bill to allow the transportation of chemical weapons throughout Russia, which is an attempt to fulfill the single-site requirement, said Munitions Agency spokesman Dmitry Timashkov.  It would cost about $888 million to destroy all of Russia’s chemical weapons at Shchuchye (see GSN, Nov. 1), according to the Moscow Times.   Chemical weapons from only one site will be transported to Shchuchye, said Zinovy Pak, head of the Munitions Agency.

Shchuchye residents, however, believe that chemical weapons from all over Russia will eventually find their way to the town.  “I just got a letter from people in my region who found out about the bill and they said public opinion is stirred up because chemical weapons from other places will be brought to our area,” said Galina Vepreva, head of the Green Cross’ information center in Shchuchye.  “We don’t know how much will be brought here and how much it will increase the danger for us,” Vepreva said. 

The funding for the plant is almost available, said Arms Control Association analyst Seth Brugger.  The funding has passed through both houses of the U.S. Congress and a single, compromise version of the bill only needs to be worked out in committee, Brugger said.  The United States might have imposed the funding conditions on Russia in order to get the most use out of the Shchuchye plant, Walker said.  “They want to make sure that if we spend $1 billion in Shchuchye, we get rid of all the nerve agents in Russia.”

Some Russian experts, however, oppose the U.S. conditions.  “The American side is putting substantial political pressure on Russia, dictating conditions it must meet to be given its aid,” said government expert Natalya Kalinina.  “So what does it mean?  Either the American party is consciously pushing Russia not to fulfill the convention, because it is just impossible to fulfill all these conditions and we are heading to a trap—or this is intended to exercise even more political pressure on Russia, to win total governance over the process of chemical weapons disposal in Russia” (Yevgenia Borisova, Moscow Times, Nov. 21).

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